Notes from a Small Island
Walking past a tea-tray lying on a table, it occurred to me how perfect it was, how delicately designed, how ripe to be snatched up and whanged, like a Jackie Chan prop, against an assailant’s face. And already my mind was filling in the details of the prospective whangee, like the identikit computer in Robocop; the round specs, the shaggy beard, the patronising grin. Yes, in a weird moment of prophetic Armageddon, my subconscious had picked out as my spiritual antithesis the fat, florid face of Bill fucking Bryson.
Bill Bryson. I don’t suppose you’ve got much of a chance, really, if that’s your name. What else can a Bill Bryson grow up to be but an avuncular fat four-eyes, with his shirt collar sticking up through the neck of his mauve cardigan? Yes, true, but he didn’t need to be such a cunt about it.
It’s the manufactured tweeness, the void of intellectual curiosity that does it for me. It’s like he’s writing from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where everything that’s ever going to be known or discovered already has been, and since there’s nothing new to say all that matters is how you say it. And as far as that goes, Bill Bryson has set his fucking stall out, make no mistake.
The next time the Mormons come to your door, don’t turn them away. Be nice. Take one of their lifestyle magazines. Read it. It’s the same thing. Total walled garden. Everything you need to know about everything, from mainframe programming to Manchester United, is in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Anything else, if it’s acknowledged at all, is presented in the “Did You Know…” format of quirky condescension and eye-rolling tolerance. “DID YOU KNOW that Manchester are estimated to have nearly 100,000 followers? By comparison, the Latter-Day Saints Movement can boast more than 15 million members! (Sorry, Sir Alec!)” Bill Bryson’s the exact same. His books hint at nothing outside of themselves, nothing but the sleepy turnings of a comfortable mind. No way out. No way out.
And the childish ingenuities! The dumb bookending of his dumb books in the formula “Aren’t post offices funny things?”/”Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to post.” You can almost hear the self-satisfied pause, see the red-faced, scarcely-repressed beamer as the mums and grans at the school assembly go fucking mental. “Thank you, thank you, William!” the headmaster bellows over the deafening applause, “What a wonderful insight into post offices from one of our school’s most talented pupils!” Bleuch. Probably I’m missing something. Well, I just hope I go on missing it.