On Finishing "Neither Here Nor There"

At the beginning of his book, Bill Bryson never states exactly why he took this cross continental trip. He did say that he travelled across Europe as a young adult and wanted to go back to appreciate it yet again as an older man, but the first time he went with his friend, Stephen Katz. This time he did it entirely alone. Here is my question: Why would anyone want to backpack across Europe for an indefinite amount of time alone? What could be enjoyable about that? Certainly, I can understand wanting to spend an afternoon alone, a day, perhaps even a weekend. But I would never ever want to go to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language and have absolutely no one to rely on but myself. Doesn't Bill Bryson enjoy human companionship? He even left his pregnant wife at home! Why couldn't he have waited and taken this trip once she had their baby and had a lovely family vacation? I suppose it makes sense that perhaps his wife wasn't interested in traveling in an unknown land for that long, so maybe that was their compromise. He could have, however, travelled with a friend who was interested. Maybe even Katz again. Or, he could have gone and done whatever he wanted in whatever countries he wanted and then met his wife (and possibly children) in a more family and tourist friendly city. I just don't understand how he stayed sane. He couldn't even communicate with many of the locals. I just don't get it.

Who do you think is the intended audience? Why?

I think that Bill Bryson never writes for a specific group of people. I think that he knows he is funny and just wants to get as many people to read his work as possible. I mean this in the nicest way possible: I think he just likes attention. He doesn't care who reads his books as long as a large number of people read them. In this specific book, however, and actually when I think about in probably most of his books, he writes for the Baby Boomer generation. Bryson is a baby boomer, and he makes baby boomer jokes and allusions. This doesn't contradict what I said earlier: he directs some of his jokes and references to baby boomers, but they are never such that other readers won't get them. He wants everyone to enjoy his books.

The reason that I think his main audience in this book is the Baby Boomer generation is that his topic is one that many baby boomers will relate to. When he was a young adult, he backpacked through Europe, just like lots of others in his generation. Now he's writing about repeating that trip but this time as an older man. The places and experiences are probably things that other people around his age would appreciate. In addition, he tells the entire book from his perspective, obviously. He is a baby boomer. It would make sense that he wrote this book for others his age. Other baby boomers would be able to relate to his reactions to experiences, to his emotions, and to his wishes and desires on his trip, more so than young people or much older people.

Does the author seem to have a friendly, unfriendly or some other type of relationship with the content of the book? Why do you think so??

I finished The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and am now reading Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson. In response to your last comment, yes, I did enjoy The Time Traveler's Wife. I don't, however, think I enjoyed it as much as everyone else I've talked to. I think maybe it got too hyped up before I read it and I expected too much. It still was really very good, though.

Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There is an account of Bryson's travels through Europe. He saw Europe when he was twenty years old, and this is his account of his return trip as an older man. As always, Bill Bryson is funny. On his relationship with the content, it completely depends on the circumstances. For example, as he is walking along the canals of Amsterdam in the early hours of the morning, his relationship with the content is very serene and satisfied. However, when he is discussing the rudeness of people in a town I don't remember the name of, his relationship with the content is less friendly and more annoyed and frustrated. He conveys his annoyances not with the perfect words, but more with the perfect absence of words. I think he has mastered the art of omitting. When he talks about a funny situation, he never talks about what made it funny, or why he thinks it is funny, he just gives the reader the information and delivers it in a way in which you have to laugh at it. For example:

"...my seatmate turned out to be an acned string bean with Buddy Holly glasses and a lineup of ballpoint pens clipped into a protective plastic case in his shirt pocket....He spent most of the flight reading Holy Scripture, moving both sets of fingertips across each line of text as he read and voicing the words just loud enough for me to hear them as a fervent whisper in my right ear. I feared the worst....Somewhere over the Atlantic, as I was sitting taking stock of my two hundred cubic centimeters of personal space, as one does on a long plane flight, I spied a coin under the seat in front of me, and with protracted difficulty leaned forward and snagged it. When I sat up, I saw my seatmate was at last looking at me with that ominous glow.

'Have you found Jesus?' he asked suddenly.

'Uh, no, it's a quarter," I answered and quickly settled down and pretended for the next six hours to be asleep, ignoring his whispered entreaties to let Christ build a bunkhouse in my heart."

This is funny only because Bill Bryson never tells us that it is funny. He only provides us with the background information. He doesn't even tell us what he thought about the situation, so we have to draw our own (though obvious) conclusions about his relationship with the content. It's like with stand-up comedians, their jokes are usually only funny as long as they don't laugh too.