THE ROAD TO LITTLE DRIBBLING: ADVENTURES OF AN AMERICAN IN BRITAIN
By Bill Bryson
Doubleday, 2015, 376
ppp.
* * *
Few travel writers rival Bill Bryson's magical mix of humor,
celebratory wonder, and gentle critique. Bryson’s search for the ‘perfect’
American small town in The Lost Continent
(1989) is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. In it—and books such as I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1999) and
his hilarious Australian sojourn In a
Sunburned Country (2000)—Bryson manages both to expose readers to
godforsaken locales, yet find the sublime in small moments and unexpected
discoveries. He has always called attention to head-scratching idiocy, and has
expressed bafflement when finding Homo sapiens in habitats unfit for human
consumption, but his barbs generally battle for attention with self-deprecating
humor.
The Road to Little Dribbling—the title is ironic; no such place
exists—is a sequel to Notes from a Small Island, his 1996
walkabout Britain. Bryson is an Iowan by birth, but has lived much of his life
since the 1970s in England—first as a student working at a defunct sanatorium
in Surrey, but also in Dorset, Yorkshire, Hampshire, and London. He is married
to an Englishwoman and is in the process of obtaining UK citizenship. Little Dribbling contains numerous
laugh-out-loud passages and, like his other books, takes us to out of the way
places where few wander and more should—Noar Hill, Silbury, the remnants of
Motopia, the Meon Valley, and Derwent Water among them—and regales us with
tales of long-forgotten English eccentrics. (No one does eccentricity as well
as Brits!)
What’s missing from Little Dribbling is empathy. What once
amused Bryson now infuriates him. The book is filled with discursions and rants
that, frankly, only a writer as famous as he could get past editors without
reworking the tone. At age 64, Bryson seems to be cultivating the image of grumpy
misanthrope. There is liberal use of the F-bomb, mostly for cheap affect, and
even more liberal denunciation of people he encounters as “idiots” and
“cretins.” Sometimes it’s richly deserved. He recounts an incident in
Austin—though what a trip to Texas has to do with a book about Britain is
uncertain—in which he checked into a major hotel. When he gave the clerk his London
address, she asked where it was located. When she couldn’t locate England,
Britain, or the UK on her computer pull-down menu, she insisted there could be no
such place. I despair for America’s future. How does one get out of junior high
school without having heard of London? But, wait—it gets worse. Our dumb-as-dung cowgirl was perfectly
content when Bryson told her to try “France!” Okay, she deserves the label
“idiot.” But the overall sense of the book is that a lot of people annoy Bryson—sometimes
merely for their audacity of occupying physical space.
At his best, Bryson makes us
chortle. Little Dribbling is filled
with quotable hoots. His take on Britain’s declining rail service: “It is like
rigor mortis with scenery.” He skewers a talentless but venomous authoress as
an airhead who finds herself “progressing through life with breasts that must
weigh thirty kilos each.” He uses the phrase “knobhead in ermine” to lampoon an
archaic British class system that bestows honors on people who don’t actually
do anything. He is equally witty in discussing Britain’s legendary
inefficiency, its penchant for erecting monuments to people it forgets the
moment the first pigeon alights, and its obsession with rules, especially those
that are contradictory.
The overall portrait of Britain
from Bognor Regis to Scotland’s Cape Wrath—places Bryson determined are the
actual most-distant points in the United Kingdom, not Land’s End and John
o’Groats as the tour books say—is less sunny than that of Notes from a Small Island. He sees a nation in the midst of
transformations that are destroying remaining pockets of charm and replacing them
with squalor, noise, and litter. He confesses missing the Britain he came to
love in the 1970s. Is he right, or is this a further manifestation of
encroaching Old Fuddydom? I’ve been to many of the places he writes about and
if the losses he mentions are accurate, I’d cast my vote for saying that Bryson
is on to something. Britain without charm is, well, Sheffield and Birmingham.
There is a palpable sense that Britain outside of Greater London is a dire
place interrupted up by enclaves of grace.
U.K. readers are sure to notice
that Bryson gives short shrift to Wales and Scotland and doesn't go to Northern
Ireland at all. Although he didn't intend this, Bryson's Anglo-centric travel
through what he constantly calls "Britain" might be a harbinger of the
U.K.'s post-Brexit future. Scotland desperately wishes to remain in the
European Union and will probably schedule a new independence vote. Northern
Ireland leaders now ponder whether unification with the E.U.-member Republic
would be better than remaining inside a declining United Kingdom, and some
Londoners have pondered leaving as well. Oh dear! Again, without intending to
do so, Bryson allows readers to imagine a post-empire Britain. In an odd way,
he gives comfort to American readers. At least we have our collective idiocy to
keep us together!
I don't mean to make this book
sound glum. Bryson recounts some
truly magnificent moments—and describes places I've added to my bucket
list. His humor is sharp, even
when he's more acerbic than amusing. My advice is to give it a spin, but don't
be afraid to skim when Bryson's ramblings turn into rants. Decline—broadly
defined—isn't pretty, but remembrance, time warps, and unexpected renaissance
can be. A final thing—avoid Bognor Regis!
Rob Weir
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