Krishna
Bill Bryson is one of my favourite authors. Some of the best books I have read have been written by him. Two examples of his previous work we reviewed are The Mother Tongue and A Short History of Nearly Everything. Incidentally most make it to the list of his best books in my mind.
This book, unfortunately, does not join that elite list. Read on to find out why.
The book starts in 1927, when the wooden scaffolding around the tower of the then brand new Sherry- Netherland Apartment Hotel caught fire. It was thirty eight stories high. Even though the firefighters were helpless (and their water from hoses did not reach the upper floors, the fire burnt itself out and only the top floors were damaged. The building was new and no lives were lost.
The first chapter is about intrepid adventurers in America and elsewhere trying to prove that the newfangled machine called ‘aircraft’ can go across the Atlantic. And many lost their lives in the attempt. The details are entertaining, but do not lend themselves to abridgement. So I will leave it to you to read about them.
Then he goes on to the rise of tabloids and how one very inept murder – fairly stupidly done and lacking in any arresting detail – captured the imagination of the nation.
Charles Lindberg reached fame with a long flight and captured the nation’s fancy. He learnt to fly by himself, as there was not even a licence needed to fly. Aeroplanes were new then.
Lindberg’s plane was a patch up job, with two food pedals and a stick between his legs. There was no fuel gauge and no view forward either! It had no brakes either.
The sense of wonder and surprise you feel in Bill Bryson’s book is thin on the ground here. But there are some. Edgar Hoover, who became President of USA later, was known as the Greatest Humanitarian but he was part of many shameless self promotion and did not tolerate dissent. Worse, he engaged in activities which, had they been known at that time, would have amounted to treason and had him shot!
He talks engagingly of the greatest tennis player on earth, Bill Tindin, a self taught player, played his games but since the sport was amateur was not paid anything and had to make a living by other means!
Charles Lindberg, the first man to cross the Atlantic to Paris in a plane that seemed to have been rigged with canvas and wood, became the target of a media frenzy around the world.
Lindberg got far wider frenzy and fame than he ever expected. The populace wanted Lindbergh to forever be exempted from paying taxes etc. All baseball games were free. Minnesota even considered changing its name to Lindberghia, before the mania passed.
Then Bryson moves on to George Herman Ruth, born in 1895 in humble, even squalid surroundings, and achieved everlasting fame later as Babe Ruth. He did not know his exact age until he was thirty nine and he even got his mother’s maiden name wrong. When young, in a school for orphaned children, he learnt to be a tailor and dressmaker – a vocation taught to him.
Harry Stevens, an Englishman who came to America, saw and loved baseball instantly. He realized that all the fans who are watching may like something to eat and experimented with various snacks. He found that sausages in a roll kept warm the longest and got rights to sell them in baseball games. He called them, optimistically, ‘red hots’ but a cartoonist, Red Dorgan parodied them as ‘hot dogs’ implying the meat in the sausage was not from a cow. But Stevens loved the term and eagerly adopted it!
Babe Ruth transformed baseball and won eternal fame but his inept and outrageous behaviour, the unhealthy food he ate and his obsession with sex were all legendary too. He was careless with his money though generous to a fault.
Then the book alternates between Lindbergh being mobbed and Babe Ruth suddenly springing to action in baseball. It is still fun to read, as the descriptions from Bill Bryson’s unique point of view are almost never boring. But there is not much here to summarize.
When the topic of prohibition is broached next there is a lot to discuss. The single mindedness of Wheeler in achieving countrywide prohibition; his ‘convincing’ the politicians by a demonstration or two that if you were not on the side of prohibition, you were apt not to get re-elected.
The breakout of the First World War and America staying aloof initially. But they were outraged when the Germans sank Lusitania travelling in international waters killing women and children. 248 of the passengers were American. The head of the German Red Cross in US, said that the passengers of Lusitania got no more than what they deserved and was expelled immediately. In addition, the practice of bombing civilians as Germany did daily over Paris (and was new at that time in war) caused even more outrage in USA.
The prohibition, incidentally, got a leg up since it turned out that all bars were owned by people of German extraction and so propaganda claimed ‘drinking is treason’.
He then explains the oddities of President Coolidge and how lightly he took his duties and how the prosperity spread in US. His predecessor, Harding was involved in a lot of sex scandals and in comparison, the dull and reticent Coolidge seemed a god send.
Then he veers to the central banker convention and how that precipitated the Great Depression. He goes into economic details of the hyperinflation Germany faced and the fact that it laid the foundation for the rise of Adolf Hitler. And he talks about ‘buy now pay later’ schemes that originated at that time. Also drags in a discussion of the Gold Standard. A lot of economics in a few pages.
This book therefore seems oddly rambling from topic to topic. I know he is focusing on a single season in a single year but unlike his other books, there is no unifying theme except for the time when it occurred and so sounds rambling – an unusual feeling in reading any Bill Bryson’s book.
He paints pictures which are interesting. How Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth were best friends until the playboy Ruth slept with Gehrig’s wife!
He also talks about how narrow minded, illiterate and ‘off balance’ Henry Ford was, despite his world changing role in the automobile arena. His achievement is undeniable. However it is interesting to see how initially the Ford Model T did not have an oil level indicator or even a fuel guage. He had a lot of weird ideas. Having been impressed with the multi use of soya beans, he even tried to make a car out of soya plastic and wore suits made of soya fiber! He ran a really cookie magazine from his Ford factory which promoted weird theories, blamed a Jewish conspiracy for World Domination and also plotting to overthrow Christianity, among other things.
Jews were accused of Hollyeood pro Jewish propaganda and promoting Jazz (‘moron music’ according to his magazine). The magazine made losses throughout its publication.
He tried to implement ‘assembly line’ principles which were so successful in the Ford plant to his magazine work too. The editors created a framework and passed it on to successive writers who were assigned enhancements by subject (‘adding humour’ was the task of one). It fell apart.
But here is the odd thing : in spite of his anti semitic rants, he happily employed individual Jews in key positions in his company and had good relationship with them as individuals.
Nazi Germany which came to power later adored such views and reprinted a combined volume of his magazines no fewer than twenty nine times!
Henry’s constant overruling of his son Edsel’s stewardship of the company, even though he was installed as the chief executive is fascinating and heart wrenching, as his habit of publicly humiliating his son at every turn.
The famous sign of Hollywood was initially called ‘Hollywoodland’ and had nothing to do with the movies or even the area. It was put up by a property developer to promote a company! (The ‘Land’ was removed in 1949).
What was acceptable in writings and speech are remarkable during that time, though not very surprising. The number of ‘scientists’ who considered certain races inferior (not Jews and blacks alone but also Poles, Italians and a variety of others) and were unafraid to put their views in writing is truly striking, though not news to most of us.
You know what the problem with this book is, it joins together essentially disjoint stuff that happened during the course of the summer of 1927. Yes, I know. The title gives it away! But even Bill’s supreme eloquence cannot save this book from the mire it dug itself into.
5/10
— Krishna