All About Japanese

Bill Bryson

The Washington Post has published an interview with Bill Bryson, one of the world's most highly regarded travel writers.

You traffic in British-American cultural differences. Has the humor of it all become strained, with the tension over the war in Iraq?

No, although it's very easy when you live abroad to get that impression, because the British press portrays America as this kind of mad country that is war-mongering. And you have to stop and say, wait a minute, I know lots of [Americans] who are not completely pro-war and are, from my point of view, a lot more rational. Not everybody [in the United States] is as crazy as they come across in the British press sometimes.

I read that you'd like to get out of the travel-writing biz.

I never really tried to get into it. I stumbled into it by accident. The first book I did -- the first successful book -- was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more. And I still enjoy traveling a lot. I mean, it amazes me that I still get excited in hotel rooms just to see what kind of shampoo they've left me.

I still want to go places, but don't want to just write travel. . . . I've mined those veins. I sometimes think I cannot write another passage about a disappointing meal ever again, because I've done it so many times.

What are you working on now?

I'm doing a book which is a kind of travel book, except that it's a memoir about growing up in the '50s in Iowa. My feeling is that it was quite a magical time to grow up. The pattern of life was a lot more sensible and more appealing. And if we'd built on that, if we'd kept the downtowns vibrant places, instead of the way we did go . . .

What's Des Moines like now?

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city. The population of the city is the same as when I was growing up, but its footprint is at least five or six times what it was. The downtown is completely dead.

Who are your favorite travel writers?

I really admire the writing of Jonathan Raban. He wrote a book called "Old Glory," which is about traveling down the Mississippi, and he just described the texture of the water, over and over again. God, I wish I could do that. Paul Theroux I like a lot. I also really like an English writer called Redmond O'Hanlon.

Me too. He reminds me of you.

That's a huge compliment. I wish I could be more like him, because he's very funny, but he's also just so knowledgeable. And he's comfortably knowledgeable, he's not showing off.

I also very much like Tim Cahill. He does the brave stuff, which I admire because I couldn't do that. I'd much rather read about it than try and do it myself.

Any advice for all the would-be Bill Brysons and Paul Therouxes out there?

I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.

Washington Post Interview with Bill Bryson