Bill Bryson
America perduta

LA RECENSIONE

“Lost America” subtitle: “Travelling Across the USA”

After living for ten years in England, the author returns to his homeland and crosses it, traversing 38 States in a battered family Chevrolet (precisely his mother's), traveling mostly on back roads, from one city to another, seeing almost everything he had anticipated and much of what he had not planned.

The present mixes with the past, reliving episodes of his childhood when the family would always travel by car to go on vacation, often getting lost due to his father's unusual driving.

The tone of the book is very sarcastic, both towards Americans of every social standing (including presidents from Lincoln to Reagan) and towards his own family, sparing no one as he takes aim at the tics and flaws of anyone he encounters, whether they were yellow, red, black, or white, including Mexicans and even a Danish woman (whom he considered beautiful).

I started the book before leaving for Morocco about ten days ago and finished it this evening, thanks in part to several hours without an internet connection. It kept me company even in the airport and on the Ryanair cabin from Treviso to Fez.

From the very beginning, I was tempted to close it and read something else, mainly because of the tone mentioned above, but then I would pick it up again and continue reading lazily. Despite the constant humor that filled its pages (and there are a good 302 pages), I was drawn to try and understand this breed of, um, “Americans,” whom cinema and other books show us in one light, while here it is totally different. According to good William "Bill" McGuire Bryson, they all seem to be quite the fools, with many completely out of their minds, from humble farmers to rangers or police officers in general, from waitresses to clerks to slot machine players, etc.

In the end, I'm glad I read it, learning that not everything in the USA that glitters is gold as believed... and that's it.