Victor
Turner explains that we need “anti-temporal” rituals in order for
humor to operate. Bill Bryson's humorous take on American culture
works by setting up certain aspects of American culture as fixed
rituals—such as baseball, diners, and McDonald's—and then
humorously observing their success or demise.
In
Dr. Lukacs' American Literature class, we interpret most classics of
American literature as struggle between the old world of Europe and
the new world of the great American frontier. The old world is
history and civilization; the new world is nature, both in the
biological sense and the philosophical sense of the natural rights of
liberalism. America is timeless, a place where one can always come to
start anew, and this timelessness is constantly at risk of being
overtaken by the contingencies of history, the necessary evils of
construction and governing and trading.
Bill
Bryson doesn't enter into this debate of Nature versus History. But
his return to America is constantly marked by this tension, beginning
with his “coming home.” Bryson and his family seek a fresh
start—a constant American desire—in an old place: Hanover, with
its Dartmouth legacy and old-fashioned Main Street (1). Bryson
constantly refers to his youth, the days before baseball playoffs had
been invented, before motels were owned by major corporations, and
before garage doors were automatic.
The
irony in so many of Bryson's examples is that he treats as sacred
what was originally intended as revolutionary: drive-in theaters,
portable diners, junk food. As James Turner writes:
Thus we have two kinds of
anti-temporality: the perenially sacred, rooted perhaps in the
primordial manifestation of the eternal, generative unmanifest, the
Logos, that was “in the beginning,” but was Son of the
beginningless fathering will to manifestation; the perennially
sacrilegious, human freedom to resist and even transgress the
culturally axiomatic, the most sacred texts, the mightiest rulers and
their commandments.
In
“A Slight Inconvenience,” Bryson informs the reader that most
household appliances were invented in America. I would argue that a washing
machine or a microwave is an example of Turner's “perenially
sacrilegious,” because they are devices that transgressed the
cultural reality of work. However, these devices, as Bryson points
out, now have a “devotion” (186). America is always trying to
shortcut the eternal, the sacred, and the “beginningless” in
order to start anew. America is a country that is constantly
redefining itself.
Because of this constant redefinition, Bryson's book already seems out of date at
some points. Who remembers the days when baseball playoffs didn't
occupy the entire month of October? And the technological issues
faced by Bryson and his computer are far different today. Even when
Bryson mentions McDonald's, I'm reminded that Chipotle, along with other healthier restaurants, is beginning to eat into McDonald's profits. Perhaps even Ronald McDonald can pass away. This isn't a criticism of Bryson's book—I think he's even better at
self-deprecation than David Sedaris—but an endorsement of its
fundamental premise: America is always changing. I doubt that the
“farming village in the comely depths of the Yorkshire Dales”
with a pub and a baker's wife who would slice your bread for an extra
penny will have changed much if Bryson returns in two decades (Bryson
285-286). And, if it has, it will be a true societal shift in
England, not an expected change.
Bryson's
writing brings two truths to the surface. Firstly, he helps us in
asking what are the true anti-temporal, eternal rituals of American
life? Shopping? Lawsuits? Waste? Or is it:
baseball on the radio, the deeply
satisfying whoing-bang slam of a screen door in summer, insects that
glow, sudden run-for-your-life thunderstorms, really big snowfalls,
Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, the smell of a skunk from just
the distance that you have to sniff the air quizzically and say “Is
that a skunk?”, Jell-O with stuff in it, the pleasingly comical
sight of oneself in shorts. (3-4)
Even
at Bryson's best attempts to define an “eternal” America, I'm
left wondering if there's anything but our landscape that could never
change—and even that is at risk of destruction and suburbanization.
The paradox of America is that it's a country in a state of constant
re-invention. It's tempting to interpret Turner such that a
ritual-less America can never be funny. But Bryson's second truth is that
living in America can be humorous, and that the constant flux
of life's daily rituals means we will always be able to laugh at our culture. As Bryson says of the order of cable re-runs, “It has been
like this for years, as far as I can tell, and will stay like this
forever” (237).
No comments:
Post a Comment