256
pages, Henry Holt & Co., ISBN-13: 978-0805069808
Joe Queenan, the acerbic satirist
on everything from Hollywood films to sports fandom, takes a crack at travel
literature with his new book, Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's
Pilgrimage to the Mother Country. Ever the sly wordsmith, a look at the dust
jacket depicts the author (four of him actually) crossing a road (Abbey, perhaps?)
in a homage to one of England's greatest exports, the Beatles. Four poses? A
nod to the Royals? Four Queenan Country?
Queenan Country doesn't just
discuss the difficulties in traveling around this ancient civilization. The
Philadelphia-born and raised Irishman decries the necessity of torturing
American schoolchildren with the works of Thomas Hardy, the Bronte’s, Charles
Dickens, William Thackeray and Jane Austen, among others: “At a very early age,
I became aware that Great British Literature breaks down into three broad
groups: books that are very depressing, books in which nothing happens, and books
that are incomprehensible.” Sacrilege purveyors of fine fiction might bellow,
but this is what Queenan does best: pull the rug out from under those he deems to
be pulling the wool over our eyes, be it traditionally important writings,
cinema, or history. For example: Why, he posits, does a nation that prides
itself on civility seem to have so many historical characters that have employed
the most horrid examples of torture (see Braveheart, aka William Wallace)? Along
the way, he also pokes fun at British cuisine, entertainment, soccer thugs, and
the unfathomable logic of public transportation.
Queenan makes no bones about his
avocation as a curmudgeon: “I am a crass American and I rather enjoy being one,”
he proudly declares. At one point, he compares his latest work to that of Paul
Theroux: “During his travels, [he] visited an almost unbroken chain of comatose
little towns, and seems to have encountered every bigoted, stupid,
parsimonious, or boorish person in the United Kingdom…Congenitally miserable
myself, a writer whose sole source of income derives from shooting large, evil
fish in a small, morally neutral barrel, this was my kind of reading.” To be
sure, Queenan meets various cheap, mean, or clueless citizens. Were they the
only ones he encountered? Probably not, but he has always been the sort whose
philosophy seems to be, “If you don't have anything nice to say, say it anyway
because readers love to hear that kind of stuff.” One potentially charming
story, in which he finds himself searching for the Beatles' old residence, turns
out to be a tale of deception at the hand of a duplicitous cab driver.
Queenan's wife is English-born, so
he travels back to the motherland on occasion and sees things from a
non-touristy point of view. The small town where his in-laws reside is described
in the dreariest terms (as is most of the country, except on the rare occasion
where the sun shines for several consecutive seconds). For all his tough-guy
posturing, he does show small pieces of sensitivity. At the conclusion of
Queenan Country he describes the sadness he felt as he witnessed the funeral of
the Queen Mother, shortly before his return stateside: “Standing in the park as
the drone of bagpipes receded into the distance, I was reassured by the thought
that there would always be Highlanders, there would always be Coldstream
Guards, there would always be the queen, there would always be an England. The
alternative was simply not acceptable.”
Maybe he's not such a tough guy
after all.
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