Book-A-Day #117 (11/10): The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Today we're here to talk about Boomer Exceptionalism, the sense that everything Baby Boomers did was the best and most exemplary of its kind that ever existed in the universe. Sure, every generation or group thinks that it's particularly wonderful, but Boomers were spoon-fed their own specialness from birth -- and, even worse, far too many of them seem to have wholeheartedly believed in it.

Bill Bryson is an engaging writer, mostly of travel memoirs (like A Walk in the Woods or Notes from a Small Island). He's also dabbled in language books (Mother Tongue), and recently seems to be trying to transition to a kind of narrative non-fiction that fits his writing style but that does not require extensive travel (A Short History of Nearly Everything and now this book). I've read every one of his previous books with real enjoyment and appreciation, and I'm not alone -- his books are generally bestsellers.

Sadly, Bryson is a Boomer -- born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1951, and Thunderbolt Kid is his memoir of childhood. (Every semi-famous person has to do it at some point; it's a rule.) And his childhood was so spectacularly golly-wow peachy keen that he spends the book wrapping us all up in the warm fuzzy blanket of his maudlin memories. Let me quote: "I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s." (p.5) "No human beings had ever been quite this happy before." (p.6) "But then most things in Des Moines in the 1950s were the best of their type." (p.20) I could quote more -- much more. Even granting him some points for sarcasm or humorous overstatement, he still goes on and on and on and on about how absolutely perfect everything was when he was a kid, without ever quite realizing (or saying so) that it was the childhood that made everything wonderful, not vice versa.

So Thunderbolt Kid is a book about growing up relatively rich and ungodly happy in the middle of the American Century. It's not without its charms -- Bryson had an amusingly odd family, and some quirky friends, so when his stories are actually about specifics the book gets quite sprightly -- but the overwhelming tone is "Gee! Isn't it swell to be a great kid, here in the best of all possible worlds?" And I felt like smacking the little Pangloss upside his cute widdle head. A little of that goes a long way, but Bryson insists on nudging the reader's ribs every couple of pages with tales and statistics about how wonderful the '50s were.

I can only recommend this book to Bryson fanatics, the terminally sunny-dispositioned or actual real live Baby Boomers, who will presumably lap this stuff up. I'm still not quite sure if Bryson is more guilty of self-indulgence or pandering; it's a close-run thing. And I'll hope fervently that his next book is more about the outside world and less about the beauty and splendor of his own navel. He can do much better than this.

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