Reflection on Bill Bryson's Memoir
Excerpts from the book The
Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid A Memoir by Bill Bryson that I most
enjoyed and will remember the best:
“Recently I
returned to the R&T looking for illustrations for this book, and discovered
to my astonishment that the picture library today occupies a very small room at
the back of the building and that nearly all the old pictures were thrown out
some years ago.
“They need
the space,” Jo Ann Donaldson, the present librarian, told me with a slightly
apologetic look.
I found
this a little hard to take in. “They didn’t give them to the state historical
society?” I asked.
She shook
her head.
“Or the
city library? Or a university?”
She shook
her head twice more. “They were recycled for the silver in the paper,” she told
me.
So now not
only are the places mostly gone, but there is no record of the either.”
“He was
always rebuilding something –a lawn mower or a washing machine; something with
fan belts and blades and lot of swiftly whirring parts – and always cutting himself
fairly spectacularly. At some point, he would fire of the thing up, reach in to
make an adjustment, and almost immediately go, “Dang!” and pull out a bloody,
slightly shredded hand. He would hold it up before him and for some time,
wiggling the fingers, as his he didn’t recognize it.” (Him describing his
grandfather.)
“But when
you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be a uniform
leaded gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts,
some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to
plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size
of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp
out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself
to some foreign object –a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a
passing animal –and becoming an infinitely long string.” (Describing a model
airplane kit.)
Reflecting
on Bill Bryson’s writing, it is clear to see that he has a way of presenting
most events that happened in his life through humor. He starts off telling you
that his book isn’t about much of anything, and in fact, that is the truth. He
tells many stories of his childhood, small memories, just for the reader to get
the hint of a taste for 1950’s life.
Something
that is presented quiet clearly through is writing is common experience and how
it shapes every one of us. From brief stories of his grandfather and the
entertainment sought out, you are able to relate to what he has to say. No, it
isn’t a completely significant event that occurred, but we all that have that
crazy person in our family who is a grease monkey that is brilliant and yet not
so smart at times and we know the frustrations of putting together the many
toys that shaped out childhood. It isn’t a big deal, but it was a way of life.
Bill Bryson
does an amazing job at describing the simple pleasures of life in a light that
makes them seem much less torturing then they once were.. We will never be able
to go back to the 1950s (unless time travel does exist in the future) nor will
life ever be how it once was. Having a record of how things were is very import
to him. In his last couple of chapters, you can see how sad he was to have
things change to vastly. His hometown wasn’t changed; it was made the same as
the rest of the world. Loosing its touch as being different and homey, but
turning into a chain – like the many restaurants that now have come in. His
book being nothing but a reflecting of his past was written not tell a story,
but to record history.
Even in a short story, it is seen that a character can take
on a new role or identity. They undergo a change that develops them, if only in
a short amount of time, that will greatly define them as a character. One of
the stories I read out of my book Places I Never Meant to Be, a
collection of banned short stories was Spear
by Julius Lester. In the beginning of this story, you are presented with your
typical American public school. There is a strong influence of African
Americans dominating the white portion of the class with close family and
friendship bonds making them all a very close-knit community. Within the
progression of the story, Spear is challenged with the unexpected falling in
love with the plain white girl Norma, in his Afro-American History class. There
would not be a problem with this if his father had not been a leader in
anti-white speeches who was killed for being so. After telling his mother she
reminds him of where he comes from and that this would not be acceptable to his
father. Everything his father had worked toward would be ignored by his love
for Norma. He is challenged with not only going against everything his father
was for, but what the community makes of him because of what his father did.
You see that during the story he already looses respect from his peers from
simply talking to her and being nice to her. The major change that occurs is
that even though he does not get the girl he is in love with (She moves schools
and they never see each other again. They only get brief phone calls to one
another late at night.) He goes by his real name, Adrian, rather then Spear-
the nickname given to him by the community after his fathers name Black Spear.
He learns to stand up for what he wants and not for what people expect of him. 
