Bill Bryson: One Summer - America 1927

 Bill Bryson: One Summer - America 1927

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/26/one-summer-1927-bill-bryson-review

26 September 2013:

"The memorable summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh's historic flight across the Atlantic and ended with the release of The Jazz Singer, which ushered in sound cinema, and Babe Ruth's record-setting 60 home runs for the New York Yankees. In between came the notorious Ruth Snyder murder case (inspiring the film Double Indemnity); the execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti; the great Mississippi flood, which lasted longer than any other American natural catastrophe; the Dempsey-Tunney fight; Henry Ford beginning to develop the Model A; and the starting of work on Mount Rushmore by the improbably named Gutzon Borglum."

Jack Dempsey

Al Capone (1899-1947)

Seine Herrschaft beruhte auf der wegen der Prohibition extrem verbreiteten Korruption in Chicago. Bemerkenswert, dass Capone schon im Alter von 27 J. Bandenchef wurde und dass sie nur etwa eineinhalb Jahre andauerte.

"The police force of Chicago became in fact Caponee's private army."

Babe Ruth (1895-1848) Lou Gehrig (1903-41)

Folge von Lindberghs Atlantiküberquerung: "Aviation became for the 1930s what radio was for the 1920s." (S.471)

Bill Bryson: The Road to Little Dribbling

Ich stelle dies Buch und seinen Vorgänger für den Augenblick nur durch Zitate und den Wanderbericht eines Bekannten vor, der eine charakteristisch unspektakuläre, liebenswerte Landschaft beschreibt. Es ist schon wahr, was der Amerikaner Bryson nicht müde wird, zu betonen: Es gibt auf der Welt vielleicht keine Gegend, wo auf engem Raum eine so vielseitig reizvolle Landschaft und so beeindruckende kulturelle Zeugnisse versammelt sind wie auf der größten der Britischen Inseln, das liegt nicht nur am British Museum. Spektakulärer, erhabener, aufregender ist manches andere, was man auf der Welt findet. (Relativ viel davon habe ich in diesem Blog beschrieben gesehen.) Aber ...

"The High Street at first seemed pretty much unchanged. The buildings offered a pleasantly higgledy-piggeldy mix of styles, sizes and materials, yet formed a comfortable and coherent whole in that way that British towns seemed to do effortlessly for centuries and now often can hardly do at all. Though the buildings were the same, the buisinesses within them were completely changed. It is remarkable, when you think about it, how many types of shops have vanished from British high streete in only a few years: most butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, ironmongers, repair shops, gas showrooms, electricity board showrooms, most building societies, travel agents and independent bookshops, and loads of once famous names - Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Woolworth's, Dillons and Ottokar's bookshops, Lunn Poly, Dolcis, Radio Rentals. Richard Shops, Beatties toy shops, Netto, John Menzies, Army and Navy Stores, and Rumbelows, to name just some." (S.148/49)

Massey's Folly (S.171) in Farringdon

Silbury Hill (S.182)

West Kennet Long Barrow (S.182/83)

"In other coutries they fight over politics and religion. In Britain it is over who gets to walk on a windswept moor. I think that's rather splendid." (Bill Bryson: The Road to Little Dribbling, S.344)
"Brochs are prehistoric stone towers, [...] what I particularly like about them is that they are completely mysterous. No one has any idea what they were for." (The Road to Little Dribbling, S.467)

Was ich an dem Buch so liebe, ist die unverbrüchliche Liebe zu seinem Gegenstand, einem Land, das nicht seine Heimat ist.
Ich kann nicht sagen, dass ich diese Art von Liebe teile, aber ich kann sie ihm intensiv nachfühlen.

“Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it. [...]
 What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course." (Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island)

mehr Zitate