The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir/dp/0767919378/ref=pd_bbs_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204681161&sr=8-5

This isn't what I thought it was going to be. For some reason I had the idea that it was going to be a fictionalized version of a kids life from the viewpoint of the kid being a secret super hero. And of course, being not much more than a big kid I thought it might be pretty cool. It wasn't even close. In fact, the whole Thunderbolt Kid thing barely gets a passing mention in the book and for that I feel like I was cheated some.

That's not to say it was a bad book. At times it was hilariously laugh out loud funny. Really laugh out loud, and it reminded me of stories I'd heard or lived when I was a kid. My friend Barry had a step dad named Joe Peck, and Joe Peck used to tell us stories about when he and his brother Henry were kids. My favorite was the one where they thought it was a good idea to throw rocks at the streetlight to try to break it. After missing several times with small rocks, Joe Peck picked up a big concrete rock and with all his might, hucked it towards the sky. He lost it in the glare of the light and seconds later found it when it hit him square in the head. Instantly he started losing pints of blood and he barely made it to the doctor in time to stop the bleeding. That story is hilarious and I wish Joe Peck were still around to tell it while we play Tonk, drink scotch, and listen to Barry's mother scold him for saying the word crap while his sister said the word fuck with impunity. Good times.
Bill Bryson's stories are told in the same way and the time frame is pretty much the same as the stories Joe Peck used to tell, the fifties and early sixties. Which, of course, means old people to me, and you know my stance on old people. Bryson starts out with stories as a small kid and as the book progresses, so does Bryson in age. I kind of think the younger Bryson stories are the most interesting, but the older, high school, version of Bryson has a few yarns to tell as well. Somehow I didn't just hate this book because it was one of the funnier books I've ever read. Not Confederacy of Dunces funny mind you, but still pretty funny. Maybe I liked it because Bill Bryson's father, Bill Sr. who turns up occasionally in the book, is considered one of the finer baseball writers of his era. You might see where I could get some interest from that. The fact that he managed to do so from Des Moines, IA, a town with no major league baseball team, is quite astonishing. He's also quite a character too, as is Bryson's mother. Whatever the reason, it wasn't because the book turned out to be what I originally thought it was going to be. I wonder how much I would have liked it if I hadn't come in with that preconceived notion?