The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, by Bill Bryson →

This book received only a 2 STARS review

. RSS

The Lost Continent had been lost primarily to Bill Bryson.  He returns from spending a decade in England, where he had spent a decade polishing his skill after growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. The comedy begins on the first page when he says, “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” Flippant approach to comedy, and it is mostly downhill from this point.

He returns to attend his father’s funeral and decides to explore the US by driving around it. For a better approach to that plot, check out John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. It is a great book and perhaps was the inspiration for Byson, but the attempt at the theme is similar, but Bryson’s version is not that good.

The plot unfolds with him crisscrossing the nation, complaining, and wisecracking most of the way, visiting mainly small towns. Bryson's grandparents' Iowa house, he tells us, is merely a "shack" surrounded by "cheap little houses." Mostly he finds plenty to complain about. His attempt to be positive comes with scenes like the Grand Canyon and the baseball Hall of Fame.

Finally returning to Des Moines, he declares that what he sees are all that make this city “friendly, decent and nice.”  How convenient the only place he finds worth like that is his hometown.

Bryson may seem funnier and smoother if you have read all his books and allow him to be on the pedestal he preaches from

#bookreview

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

. RSS

Kay Redfield Jamison wrote An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. A Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrew, whose work is centered on bipolar disorder, something she has had since she was a child.

Jamison says that the cultural and medical shift from calling the problem "manic depression" into the term "bipolar disorder" has not clarified anything or helped. She was criticized for saying about the condition of bipolar that: "We have known for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years that it is genetic.” She sees the illness as the effect of genetic disorders. The book presents her view and is her memoir that has shaped her life and ideas.

In the book, Jamison says, “Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try. Still, you know, and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable, paranoid, humorless, lifeless, critical, and demanding, and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened and frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself, but will be soon, but you know you won't.”

"People go mad in idiosyncratic ways," one chapter begins. This may seem obvious, but Jamison feels it is a clinical fact, and she shows it by writing about her childhood, family, work, and relationships.  

The book is considered one of the most fantastic about manic depression or bipolar disorder.

Important Quotes

“No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help; it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is accountable to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable.”

“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. ” 

“Which of my feelings are real? Which of me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of bot,h hopefully much that is neither.” 

The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr

. RSS

Stephen King's book, "A Memoir Of The Craft, On Writing" is a must have book for writers. The first paragraph of his book says: "I was stunned by Mary Karr's memoir, "The Liars' Club. Not just by its ferocity, but its beauty, and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular, but by it totality- she is a women who remembers everything about her early years.".....

Wow, that is high praise indeed.

The Wall Street Journal said of "The Art of Memoir" that it is a book that should be “required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir or who lives for literature”. Mary Karr can teach you about memoir but she becomes a little intimidating with her credentials. She is an English professor at Syracuse University, a successful non fiction writer, and you can tell she really knows her stuff.   

Karr is passionate about her belief in the memoir approach and important literary style. She says “There is a lingering snobbery in the literary world that wants to disqualify what is broadly called nonfiction from the category of literature”. 

As expected in a book like this she covers the basics especially focusing on importance of truth and the road to exaggeration and why memoirs fail. 

Chapter 23, "Michael Herr: Start in Kansas, End in Oz", stood out. Herr was an American writer and war correspondent, known as the author of Dispatches, a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine during the Vietnam War.  

Michael Kerr "Voice" in his on-war memoir “Dispatches” is much the same as his narration of “Apocalypse Now”. They both demonstrate that where you start and end is so important. Mary Karr uses this narrative and chapter to show the value of strong opening dialog.

Karr's discussion of this dialog, one sentence at a time, was a learning experience: “There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, I’d lie on my bed and look at it.....................”

"The Art of Memoir" will be an important book on both reading and writing in the years ahead.