Bath & North East Somerset Council, UK
|
Web Exclusive…
Q&A With Bill Bryson
Interview by Diane Brown, September 2006
Take a walk down memory lane
|
 
Q: You were born in 1951, in the middle of the country, in the middle of the biggest generation in American history. What was the best thing about growing up in Des Moines at that time?
A: It was a very special time. Our parents were children of the Great Depression; they had just lived through a terrible war and were starting their family lives, and we were the happy products of that. So you had this period where there was huge prosperity in the country, but there was also a kind of innocence with it. It was the first time people were able to have things but were innocent and excited about it. It was the last time people could get genuinely excited to buy a refrigerator. I can remember my father coming home with a popcorn popper, and he was practically trembling with excitement to get it out of the box. But because it was a new appliance and because he loved to pop popcorn on a Friday night, it was like the biggest thing in the world for him.
Q: Many boomers have been critical of the 1950s as too conformist and repressive. So why do you think you and others are so nostalgic about the era?
A: I think the '50s were a crazy period and probably quite a worrying one, but because I was small I was pretty well insulated and wasn't worried about the bomb or polio or Communist witch hunts or disasters of the day—all the things that were deeply worrisome to my parents and their generation. All I saw was that it was this time of great prosperity and lots of opportunity. The other thing I very clearly remember was that every magazine was constantly full of articles about the future and how exciting it was and how any day now we were going to have these new things—be able to go by jet to Mars for vacation or have your own jetpack or have a helicopter in your backyard or have underwater cities, things like that.
Q: Why did you call yourself the Thunderbolt Kid?
A: I had a top, an item of apparel, that had a thunderbolt on it. My dad dubbed me that when he saw me, and I remember him being amused because I was so preposterously overdressed. I put on everything when I became a superhero, including football helmets and anything lying around. I would strap on a catcher's mitt.
Q: You write "I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s." What do you miss most about that time?
A: There was a really nice structure to American life in terms of the way we lived and worked. Your mom and dad got up in the morning and went downtown to work. And you went downtown to do your shopping and go to the movies. Cities had a kind of coherence built on the fact that everybody went downtown and then everybody came back out. There were things that were really good—these gigantic movie theaters, which are all lost now. My feeling is that if we'd kept some of that and then built on it America would be a more delightful place now. I like shopping malls as much as the next person, but the world is turning into nothing but malls and box stores. We've lost some of the compactness of life, the orderliness of it, in order to have a lot of free parking and convenience.
Q: You write about all the unsupervised free time you and your friends had then compared to the crowded schedules kids today have. Do you think you were better or worse off for it?
A: Probably worse off in terms of using the time wisely. 'Cause you just didn't. An awful lot of it was just doing nothing, just hanging around. Compared with what's available now in terms of entertainment it was pretty boring. On the other hand, you were safe as a kid back then. You could go downtown on a bus when you were 10 years old and nobody thought it was strange. I've got four kids, and they've grown up partly in England and partly in America, and there isn't a single day in either of those countries you don't worry that something terrible will befall them. And I think we've lost that security for our children.
Q: What do you mean when you write that the nuclear threat "enthralled and excited us"?
A: Again, this is a kid's perspective, but I think a lot of men were excited by it, too. If you don't look at the carnage of it but just look at the science of it, there's something quite thrilling, cool, about an atomic bomb. But of course, at the same time it was completely terrifying because we were in the position to be able to wipe ourselves out.
Q: Thunderbolt Kid is a homage to Des Moines. But you're raising your own family in England. Why?
A: I don't think it was ever in the cards for me to stay in Des Moines all my life. I had ambitions, and I wanted to move out into a wider world. But I've always had a real fondness for Des Moines, even though I haven't lived there for over 30 years.
Q: What draws you back to Des Moines?
A: It's still my hometown, my home. Every time I go back there it's with a real proprietary attitude. There's a big part of me that wants it to be the way it always was, and that's not realistic. A lot of things I remember as really, really wonderful probably aren't today. I'm sure the ice cream parlor was no better than a Baskin-Robbins, probably a lot worse. But I really enjoy the experience of looking at memories and where memory leads. And it makes me appreciate how lucky I've been and how much life I've had. Once I started writing a memoir I started paying attention to other memoirs, and they're all so miserable. All the books about growing up are mostly about being chained up in the cellar, or trying to be made into another sex, and they're full of wretched, horrible experiences. For me, childhood was almost just one happy moment after another.
Q: Your career has been traveling. Where do you plan to go next?
A: Oh, I'm trying not to go anywhere if I possibly can. I'm trying to spend more time at home and slow down a bit. I turned 55 this year, and I've done a huge number of things in almost all the places I've wanted to go. The one thing I haven't done in the past 20 years is spend a lot of time at home. We've got a big house [in England] with a garden and three acres of grounds around the house, and they really take a lot of looking after.
Q: You immersed yourself in a lot of research of the '50s for this book. Did you want to get back to 2006?
A: Yes. For certain things we're very lucky to be living now instead of then. Certainly in terms of just personal health. Not only is medical treatment a lot better, but we're a whole lot smarter about our lives. One of the things that's striking about the '50s is that everybody smoked. Doctors smoked, even advertised cigarettes. People lived completely unhealthy lives. They didn't wear seat belts and they didn't wear crash helmets. So I think we're lucky now. I'm much, much better off entering my twilight years in the 21st century than in the middle of the 20th!
|
