Bryson's home truths
By Dominique Browning |
October 17, 2010, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
MANY adults have a fantasy that if they could go back to college - now that the desire to party, drink and sleep around has faded to a burnished memory - they'd get so much more out of it. Well, for those of us who wrestled with Rocks for Jocks, pined amid Physics for Poets and schlepped through college on 101s of any and every subject here's that most popular professor, Bill Bryson, with a fascinating new book, "At Home: A Short History of Private Life."
Bryson is best-known for "A Short History of Nearly Everything," which took a cosmic perspective on the creation of the place we call home.
With "At Home," his focus is domestic; he intends, as he puts it, to "write a history of the world without leaving home." You can take this class in your pajamas - and, judging by the book's laid-back, comfy tone, I have suspect that Bryson wrote much of it in his.
Or he should have. Pajamas might be one of the few subjects not covered in "At Home." Bryson's conceit is nifty, flexible enough to maintain a global scope without losing track of the mundane.
Join this amiable tour guide as he wanders through his house, a former rectory built in 1851 in a tranquil English village. "At Home" takes off from the second half of the 19th century, when, Bryson reminds us, "private life was completely transformed. ... It is almost impossible to conceive just how much radical day-to-day change people were exposed to." Moving from room to room, talking while we walk, Bryson points out and then proceeds to deliver explanations brimming with fascinating trivia behind all manner of household items from antique parlor chairs to suit buttons, vitamins to ice. Even the bedroom pillow.
Throughout "At Home," I kept thinking, "Who knew?" But many's the time I realized, actually, I did know.
If you have any interest in furniture, food, fashion, architecture, energy or world history, chances are you've stumbled across some (or all) of the information Bryson has on offer. But while Bryson may not have done much original research, it takes a very particular kind of thoughtfulness, as well as a bold temperament, to stuff all this research into a mattress that's supportive enough to loll about on while pondering the real subject of this book - the development of the modern world.
"At Home" is baggy, loose-jointed and genial. It moves along at a vigorously restless pace, with the energy of a dog, racing up to each person it encounters, pawing, sniffing and barking at every fragrant thing, plunging into icy waters only to dash off again, invigorated.
Bryson is fascinated by everything, and his curiosity is infectious. As a reviewer, I ought to be concerned with matters of focus and organization. Bryson himself seems to have had moments of anxiety on the matter. "We might pause here for a moment," he writes, about midway through, "to consider where we are and why."
Indeed. We have wondered, many times, just exactly where we are and why. By the time he thinks to do a head count, we have just examined the skeleton of the Statue of Liberty, watched the erection of the Eiffel Tower and met the nouveaux riches of the Gilded Age - while standing in the gloomy recesses of a windowless corridor. No matter. Bryson's enthusiasm brightens any dull corner.
Bryson is best-known for "A Short History of Nearly Everything," which took a cosmic perspective on the creation of the place we call home.
With "At Home," his focus is domestic; he intends, as he puts it, to "write a history of the world without leaving home." You can take this class in your pajamas - and, judging by the book's laid-back, comfy tone, I have suspect that Bryson wrote much of it in his.
Or he should have. Pajamas might be one of the few subjects not covered in "At Home." Bryson's conceit is nifty, flexible enough to maintain a global scope without losing track of the mundane.
Join this amiable tour guide as he wanders through his house, a former rectory built in 1851 in a tranquil English village. "At Home" takes off from the second half of the 19th century, when, Bryson reminds us, "private life was completely transformed. ... It is almost impossible to conceive just how much radical day-to-day change people were exposed to." Moving from room to room, talking while we walk, Bryson points out and then proceeds to deliver explanations brimming with fascinating trivia behind all manner of household items from antique parlor chairs to suit buttons, vitamins to ice. Even the bedroom pillow.
Throughout "At Home," I kept thinking, "Who knew?" But many's the time I realized, actually, I did know.
If you have any interest in furniture, food, fashion, architecture, energy or world history, chances are you've stumbled across some (or all) of the information Bryson has on offer. But while Bryson may not have done much original research, it takes a very particular kind of thoughtfulness, as well as a bold temperament, to stuff all this research into a mattress that's supportive enough to loll about on while pondering the real subject of this book - the development of the modern world.
"At Home" is baggy, loose-jointed and genial. It moves along at a vigorously restless pace, with the energy of a dog, racing up to each person it encounters, pawing, sniffing and barking at every fragrant thing, plunging into icy waters only to dash off again, invigorated.
Bryson is fascinated by everything, and his curiosity is infectious. As a reviewer, I ought to be concerned with matters of focus and organization. Bryson himself seems to have had moments of anxiety on the matter. "We might pause here for a moment," he writes, about midway through, "to consider where we are and why."
Indeed. We have wondered, many times, just exactly where we are and why. By the time he thinks to do a head count, we have just examined the skeleton of the Statue of Liberty, watched the erection of the Eiffel Tower and met the nouveaux riches of the Gilded Age - while standing in the gloomy recesses of a windowless corridor. No matter. Bryson's enthusiasm brightens any dull corner.
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