The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America, |
It is strange that a book written almost twenty years ago would still seem so relevant, but in many ways Bryson was prescient about the direction of life in America, almost certainly more correct than he might have wished for. Driving through 38 states, stopping at both small towns and large cities (the subtitle is a bit of false advertising), Bryson really did get to the heart of what defines America as a nation: it's vast spaces, it's highways, and the incredibly commercially driven culture. Let's not even bother with crap like our indomitable work ethic or some such nonsense; we tell ourselves that to assuage our guilt about spending our lives at work while wishing we were on vacation. Bryson, who had lived almost two decades in England after growing up in Iowa, is constantly amazed by the size of the country, especially out west, and the huge variations in cultures that this allows for. If we are a nation divided at times, it is because some of us live over 3,000 miles from their compatriots, a greater distance than separates Western Europe from Eastern. As a result, our highways are an integral part of the culture, and in many ways have determined our evolution since the Federal highway system was built 50 years ago. More than anything else, it has led to a homogenization of America at highway exits. You can find the same chain restaurants, fast food joints, and now coffeeshops from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and only the accents of the waiters, waitresses, register operators, and baristas change. In the late 80's the process was well underway, and is essentially complete now. Champaign got it's first standalone Coffeeshop that dare not speak it's name a year ago; now there are three.
This touches on a topic Bryson dances around without attacking directly: Americans love familiarity, and seek it out away from home. We may speak of the quaint and quirky, but we love the familiar and convenient. Chain hotels with HBO and wireless internet, chain coffeeshops with familiar baked goods and wireless internet, chain restaraunts with vaguely Tex-Mex menus and occasionally wireless internet. We love to bash how tacky tourist traps can be, but they seem not only to stay in business but to prosper, especially in the emptier middle of the country, where it doesn't take much to be the best vacation spot around, and in coastal Florida, where all the longer-distance travelers go. If all the same curiosity museums (biggest ball of twine, etc.) and interesting cultural group-oriented trading posts/stores (Amish, Native Americans, ...) sell the same refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, and shot glasses, it's because that's what people actually want. Bryson is struck repeatedly by how ugly this can look to an outsider, with state parks in all their natural beauty surrounded by towns that are little more than a series of tacky strip malls, but this is how we really do choose to live. It is convenient and commercially viable. Maintaining beautiful old towns with manicured lawns takes work, and most of us have neither the money nor the time. Instead, we condense the places where we buy stuff into convenient but utterly personality-free plazas, typically near highways, and have collections of stores designed to maximize the amount of stuff bought by tourists, also near highways.
Bryson's favorite cities are particularly telling, especially to a transplanted upstate New Yorker. He may like the company of Midwesterners (they are remarkably friendly, if not a bit more passive aggressive than he acknowledges), but his favorite cities on the trip are Savannah, GA (pop. 128,500), Charleston, SC (pop. 115,400), and Cooperstown, NY (pop. 2000). The former two are quaint, older, midsize cities in the Southeast, not too big nor too small, and even if he doesn't think much of Southerners they are gorgeous to visit for a day or two. Cooperstown is smaller, but New York is densely populated even outside of cities; no town is an island, entire to itself. West of the Mississippi, where the population is concentrated in cities and towns with very little in between, smaller towns are, frankly, surprisingly boring. We refer to them around the house as "funesque", resembling fun without giving itself over to the hedonism of true entertainment. I'll suggest here, to create as much controversy as possible, that this results in part from a rejection of some elements in modernity that shows itself in cultural conservatism and a certain isolationist tendency in the definition of one's community. Even in central Illinois, there is a tendency to frown on the modern world and it's trappings. Many people in Champaign look down on the University students, the City of Chicago, restaurants with white tablecloths, and all the other signs of a world that they are pretty sure looks down on them. They are wrong in that; people in Chicago don't think about Champaign at all, much in the same way that New Yorkers are happy to consider the Midwest a million square miles containing a few important connection airports. In this culture, the tourist traps, which resemble islands surrounded by a sea of farms, take two forms: either the ultra-quaint visits into the past (typified by Amish country stores and towns that rebuild their 50 year-old facades), or frequently feeble attempts to ape the trappings of modernity after sanitizing it to be safe for families, typically involving indoor water parks. State fairs, with their cross of agricultural shows and QVC merchandise, incorporate both tendencies. Back east, the smaller towns seem to manage a better mix. Somehow, even the tourist towns seem like they would make it without the constant influx of visitors, just like all the towns surrounding them do. Newport, RI is within a few miles of Providence (as is the entire state), almost in its suburbs.
In the end, though, both of these are America. It's a vast place with a ton of people, and enough room to contain those who like to live near a few million of their closest friends, and those who prefer something a bit more off the beaten path. What it lacks in centuries of history and a certain aesthetic sense, it makes up for in the comfort of daily life. If it has shortcomings in the eyes of an outsider (as I am to the Midwest even after a few years here), it is generally because cities and towns aren't generally built for the tourists, they're built for the locals. In some places, it's amazing to look at; even in the other places, what the heck, it's home.
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