About book The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid (2006)
Book ReviewThe Life and Times of the Thunderbolt KidBy Bill BrysonReviewed by Tom CarricoI am not usually one to enjoy a memoir. There always seems to be a certain smugness that someone must possess to have the audacity to think that their story is better than, well, mine. This memoir, however, is different. Bill Bryson’s childhood ruminations could belong to anybody who grew up in the 1950s. Change Des Moines, Iowa to Arlington, Virginia and this story could even be mine. If you are under 40 you probably won’t enjoy this book as much as those of us who actually endured this particular decade. This book reads like a “Saturday Night Live” send-up of David Halberstam’s The Fifties. Like Halberstam, Bryson touches on the many social and cultural events and changes of the 1950s including the space race, the development of the nuclear bomb, the evolution of the suburbs coupled with the decline of the inner cities and the emergence of television. This author, however, takes great pride in pointing out the absurdities and ironic inconsistencies of that era. He describes his refusal to participate in the required civil defense drills, pointing out to his elementary school teacher the absolute irrationality of thinking that crawling under a desk could protect a child from a nuclear explosion. I remember thinking these same thoughts as I toted bottled water and canned goods to St. Ann’s School in Arlington which happened to be three miles from the Pentagon. Unlike Bill Bryson, I did get under the desk when told to. I feared for my life, not from an A-bomb, but from the wrath of Sister Mary Angelus. The author was able to jog my feeble memory about certain items which are long gone. In one hilarious segment he describes the cumbersome winter boots we all had. Bill Bryson claims that the clasps, which required an incredible dexterity to fasten, were actually made from razor blades. He is equally as funny when describing how kids passed their time during the fifties. He explains that parents would kick the kids outdoors in the early morning and not expect to see them again until dinner time. The ridiculous toys of the era are recalled in great detail. The authors favorites were Lincoln Logs (where the box shows all of these great forts and structures and the contents are only enough to construct a small hut with one window), erector sets and electric football. It is hard to imagine in this day of Xbox and Playstation that electric football ever existed. I actually had two of these sets, one a hand-me-down from my cousin Mike. The author wryly and accurately describes setting up the players on the metal “field” and turning on the electricity which caused the field to vibrate and all of the plastic players to fall over or migrate towards the wrong goal line. There is also an awesome description of the complete disaster which was constructing plastic model airplane kits.The name of the book comes from the author’s fascination with comic book heroes. He constructed his own alter-ego and named him Thunderbolt Kid. He imagined his super powers and practiced making teachers and principals disappear.The greatest segments of Thunderbolt are when Bill Bryson recalls the early days of television. He muses over the physical differences between the comic book Superman and the flabby television version. He fondly recalls the Sky King show (and how Sky would fly around endlessly in his airplane for no particular reason) and his crush on Sky’s niece Penny. Tell the truth: didn’t we all have a crush on Penny? He also points out that television cowboys in the 50s never really shot anybody. They shot AT people, for sure, but usually just shot guns out of the bad guys’ hands or shot their hats off. Yes, it was a different era. The television anecdote that evoked the most vivid memory for me was his description of how Walt Disney used his television show to make every kid in America dream of going to Disneyland in Anaheim. For you youngsters, this was when Orlando was still a backwater town and Disney World didn’t exist. Bill Bryson’s family finally went and, by golly, so did mine. My sister and her husband moved to California in the sixties and I remember going to visit them and getting to go to Disneyland. I was about twelve or thirteen, I guess, and I remember standing on Main Street and looking at Cinderella’s Castle in absolute awe. They gave you a book of coupons on admission in those days when you paid to get in. The coupons had different values and colors and the E coupons were the good ones (for the Matterhorn ride and Space Mountain). I remember not wanting to use the last E coupon because then it would be time to leave.There are some serious moments here as well. Mr. Bryson notes that with the passage of time the family farm has basically disappeared from the American landscape. He also regrets the loss of the supreme optimism and sense of innocence which pervaded America in the 1950s. This is a must read for anyone born before 1955. For you youngsters, this book may help you understand why we boomers are as odd as we are. One warning, though: there are segments that are so funny you want to stop and tell everyone around you about them. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson is available in trade paperback from Broadway Books publishers.
This childhood memoir was published in 2006. Little Billy Bryson admired the supernatural powers of the comic superheroes of the day and after finding a sweater with a thunder bolt in the basement dubbed himself "The Thunderbolt kid" and bestowed x-ray vision and lazer vision (the ability to vaporize objects) onto himself. Bill enlivens the Midwest in the 1950's. He provides the context ; the political landscape the accouterments or the time, culture, alongside personal anecdotes. The 'Thunderbolt Kid' is wryly nostalgic and lightly humourous against a backdrop of the threat of cold war nuclear annihilation. At the time 'people were charmed and captivated - transfixed, really - by the broiling majesty and unnatural might of atomic bombs', journalism provided readers with 'undiluted optimism and a kind of eager despair'. His hapless parents William and Mary Bryson are journalists, a sports writer and a home furnishings editor respectively. His mother was not a great success in the kitchen "As a rule, you knew it was time to eat when you could hear potatoes exploding in the oven. Happily, all this suited my father. His palate only responded to two tastes - burned and ice cream - so everything suited him so long as it was sufficiently dark and not startlingly flavorful. Theirs truly was a marriage made in heaven, for no one could burn food like my mother or eat it like my Dad.” He successfully builds this kid world. My favourite parts involved the ernest confusion that language can cause to a little kid, for instance his teacher asks him when he requests leave to go to the toilet if he's going to do a one or a two to which he replies I would think at least a four, needless to say he ends up in the corner. He tacks his high school high jinks onto the end of the book and introduces us to the famous Stephen Katz. This section seemed incomplete. Surprisingly for someone with an insatiable thirst for knowledge he hardly got out of bed before noon and skived off school.It's not uproariously funny but Bill enlivens a curious time in which communists lay in wait behind picket fences, racial segregation was de facto, television was new and wondrous and advertisements encouraged you to believe that even the most dangerous of substances could improve your health. Very enjoyable. I felt that these were the kind of stories that would have improved 'The lost continent'.
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Even though this is a memoir it is difficult not to think about it in the context of other superhero/childhood stories. Kavalier and Clay and Fortress of Solitude come to mind. Among these books the Thunderbold Kid falls flat. The image Bryson paints of the fifties is truly magnificent. He really captures the excitement of the beginning of the space age. It is when he is elaborating on this time that I am captivated, but when he speaks specifically about his own life I get a little bored. His life seems so cliche. Paper route, penny pinching father, evil dog, porn magazines, bully kid, smart kid, annoying kid, drunk kid ... etc. How sad, I thought, that his life was just a loose assemblage of every coming of age movie ever made. One aspect that could have made it different was the Thunderbolt Kid, but his presence was so minute that at one point I had forgotten he existed. I really feel that if a character is in the title (The thunderbolt kid for instance) that character should have more of a presence than just a snide snippet at the end of an occasional paragraph.I did not, however, hate the book. It is funny, well written and makes a good case against shopping malls and chain stores. It is just a little long winded at times, and the Thunderbold Kid parts seem especially pointless. All in all it's just OK.
—Michael Endo
No kidding...it doesn't help that we haven't been home for three weekends in a row and that the only thing I can motivate myself to do anymore is take a nap. I get home from work and take a one to two hour nap, wake up, stumble around like a zombie for an hour or so and am then in bed by 8:30 or 9 every night. I had to have a last-minute ultrasound earlier this week and since I've been so busy taking naps, I haven't shaved my legs in...ohhhh...a good while! So I ended up flashing some skinny-mini Edina woman with my hearty Scandinavian, farm-girl Sasquatch legs. To her credit, she laughed it off, but it was still humiliating, lol!I'd love to borrow "I'm a stranger here myself"...that's the one about England, if I recall correctly? And while we're talking about book swaps, if you haven't obtained a copy of this, I have one that's on the way out the door. I'm amazed that I actually bought this...I'm such a cheapskate, but I save very few books and this won't be one of them. So no backs!
—Jennifer
I really enjoyed this book. Not because it was a brilliant piece of writing, but because it did for me what any good book should do: made me feel something. I felt good. I had a smile on my face. I really long for a simpler life and the picture Bryson painted of his childhood in Iowa had me feeling as if I was there with him and also helped me reminisce about some memories from my childhood I cherish.Bryson’s writing style is at times all over the place, darting from one subject to the next, but that works for me. I also really sensed that I was reading a series of short stories that could have been edited together a little bit better with less redundancy in some of the chapters.I intend to read this book again in a few years to once again get the good feeling I got during the initial reading.
—ANDY
