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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
Published by Doubleday Canada, 2006
Reviewed by Bonnie Stewart
I wish I wrote like Bill Bryson.
If I wrote like Bill Bryson, this review would make you, dear reader, guffaw and snort with laughter; yet, remind you warmly of the precise wobble of your beloved Grandma's wattle when she used to sing "Amazing Grace" in a key never intended for the human voice. And this unexpected surge of recognition would occur, dear reader, even if you had never actually had a grandmother, or if yours was devoutly Jewish or Buddhist or atheist and sang like Julie Andrews: the scene being played on the page would nonetheless touch a cultural chord that would evoke recognition and identification, and you would hearken briefly back to those fine, illusory days of warbly, grandmotherly hymns. Of course, I can't write like Bill Bryson. But he can, and for that reason - if that reason alone - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir is worth reading.
The book is ostensibly the story of Bryson's 1950's childhood in DesMoines, Iowa. It's not so much a literal memoir of Bryson's childhood as it is a made-for-TV version of America's: a tongue-in-cheek homage to the simulacra of milk-fed American innocence and apple pie. In the fabled fifties, before Kennedy's assassination and Vietnam and the Summer of Love made a DesMoines childhood seem painfully square, Bryson's Thunderbolt Kid roamed soda shops and church picnics, smiting petty authority figures and trying to gain entrance to girlie shows. The Kid shares star billing in this revue with his frazzled fifties mom, everyman dad, and a cast of quirky characters who bring the foibles of this safe, narrow world to life with both nostalgia and humour.
The story doesn't entirely hold together, and there are places where even master storyteller Bryson gives the impression that he's taken a wrong turn and is struggling to find his way back to the narrative path. Nonetheless, when read in small doses, as a series of anecdotes, the book is laugh-out-loud funny. And wistful, too; not for the mythical cookie-cutter paradise of the fifties, which Bryson's sharp wit undermines more than sugarcoats, but for the remnants of individuation in that pre-mass market society. His DesMoines is different from all the other mid-Western cities its size, not just in landmark buildings and local historical monuments, but in available products. The world before McDonalds and Starbucks is a nice place to visit, in the pages of The Thunderbolt Kid.
What Bill Bryson does best is capture cultural memory, and make you feel like you've touched the core of a place or time you’ve never, personally, known. Thus, dear reader, even if you’ve never particularly pined for DesMoines, Iowa, in the Eisenhower era, this book is a boisterously funny ticket that will take you straight there and back again, all for the price of a hardcover. And you'll be glad you went.
Click here to purchase The Thunderbolt Kid.
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