I picked up Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There, his chronicle of travelling around Europe, for a quid at a charity shop the other week and have been dipping into it now and again. Its back cover features praise from The Independent, Time Out and The New Statesman. I remember reading and enjoying the book when it was first published circa 1989 and buying several more Bryson books on the strength of it. Reading this again though . . . eww.
Much of it's amiable enough but he's intermittently leeringly sexist, treats the "gypsies" who beg from him more like mosquitos than human beings, implicitly decries African traders in Italian cities for depriving urban Italy of its native authenticity, thinks British unions are miserabilist, seems to see eye to eye with Farage on the European Union and has a series of passively hostile run-ins with receptionists, waiters etc which makes you wonder if the problem is him rather than the innate sullenness of Europeans. I'd hate to think that I felt a lot of this was "refreshing" 30 years ago but it certainly didn't strike me then the way it does now.
Much of it's amiable enough but he's intermittently leeringly sexist, treats the "gypsies" who beg from him more like mosquitos than human beings, implicitly decries African traders in Italian cities for depriving urban Italy of its native authenticity, thinks British unions are miserabilist, seems to see eye to eye with Farage on the European Union and has a series of passively hostile run-ins with receptionists, waiters etc which makes you wonder if the problem is him rather than the innate sullenness of Europeans. I'd hate to think that I felt a lot of this was "refreshing" 30 years ago but it certainly didn't strike me then the way it does now.
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