Oh, say can you see a happier introduction to that strange language known as American English than Bill Brysons book? For that matter, it would be hard to find a better introduction to that oddball land of the free, known as the United States than Made in America.
Bryson is better known as a travel writer with a penchant for straying into the territory of the offbeat, the oddball and the seriously zany. Its a pleasure to discover that hes equally good at exploring the unmapped territories of language. With the zeal of a linguistic Sherlock Holmes, he chases after the elusive origins of proverbs, tracks down errant neologisms and in the process, gives you a quite unusual perspective on the colourful history of the US.
This book should appeal to people who have an interest in one or more of these things: American history, travel, language, trivia of all sorts, entertaining anecdotes and Bill Bryson. Alternatively, its a book worth picking up simply because its such a smooth read.
Bryson has a way of going from the particular to the general without pause, of digging deep into the history of words and the language till he elevates the commonplace to the extraordinary.
Sample this: Eenie, meenie, minie, mo is based on a counting system that predates the Roman occupation of Britain, and that may even be pre-Celtic. If so, it is one of our few surviving links with the very distant past. It not only gives us a fragmentary image of how children were being amused at the time Stonehenge was built, but tells us something about how their elders counted and thought and ordered their speech. Little things, in short, are worth looking at.
And suddenly, a perfectly ordinary nursery rhyme bit of doggerel is metamorphosed into a small slice of history, a palimpsest that pushes the door to the past ajar for just a moment.
Bryson marches chronologically through history, giving the reader a panoramic view not just of the US, but of the ebbs and flows of English itself. On the way, he demolishes one pretty little myth after another. Lets begin with the name America itself: Amerigo Vespucci, who lent his monicker to two whole continents, did very little to deserve the honour.
Vespucci was in the ship supply business who, incidentally, outfitted a fellow Italian called Christopher Columbus. He did sail to the New World, but never as an accomplished crew member. But in 1504, letters of unknown authorship began circulating in Florence that claimed that Vespucci had been the captain of the ships he sailed on, and that he had discovered the New World. No one paid much attention, except for an obscure instructor in a college in eastern France who was putting together a new map of the world, and decided that Vespuccis name would do for the two new continents.
Then there was poor Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine and promptly had the patent stolen by one Isaac Singer. Howe, who wasnt very flush with funds, took Singer to court. Singer, who was making a great deal of money off Howes invention, hired the best lawyers he could find. He lost, ultimately, and had to pay Howe royalties: but he won a place in posterity.
Bryson tracks almost every major linguistic trend that swept the Americas. There was the huge volume of slang terms connected with money that were coined, if youll pardon the pun, back in the 19th century small change, buck, easy money and flat broke among them. Without this new breed of people bursting with energy, you wouldnt have the following verbs derived from nouns: to highlight, to package, to progress, to hustle, to bank, to donate and much, much more. More recently, America yielded gridlock, drive-by shooting and jump start; glitch, mission control and astronaut; and the twin threats of Aids and computer virus.
Clear, direct prose, which we take for granted these days, was virtually another American invention.
What comes through most is the vitality of a young nation and the manner in which different ethnic groups added colour to a language that was in dire need of pepping up. And, of course, the people whose stories are so indelibly linked with the American dream. The icing on the cake is what Bryson calls stories that have no pressing relevance to the topic but must be let in. Now thats a real bonanza. Hmm, bonanza: coined in 1844 by Spanish-speaking cowboys.
