I have to admit I was fairly satisfied with life and my position in it until I came across Bill Bryson's latest book, I'm a Stranger Here Myself. Now, everything bothers me and nothing is quite right.

I've named this situation A Bryson as in, "I think I'm having A Bryson about this."

It occurred to me early this morning, for example, when I couldn't sleep, that I was having A Bryson over our new leg pillows. In a recent moment of weakness, and we've been having more of these lately, and that in itself, of course, could be considered A Bryson, my wife and I purchased from a catalog two pillows designed to fit between one's legs while sleeping.

This is the kind of event with which Bill Bryson can fill an entire Neither Here Nor There column. His new book is a collection of short pieces rich in complaint -- Bryson is having A Bryson about airline seats, incontinence pads, people who stand in long lines and, when they get to the front, have not yet decided what kind of mocha latte they might want, and if they'll have the "three-cheese pumpernickel fudge croissant" or perhaps "a low-fat cream cheese sourdough bagel with the pimento grated and on the side."

Sensitive and caring Americans will recognize our worst selves in many of these paragraphs, and of course, being sensitive and caring Americans, will feel ourselves exempt. Those people! I find myself silently exclaiming. Those people! I've met some of THEM, alright.

Bill Bryson lived for 20 years in England and got to be a well-known American curmudgeon in those parts. Now he's back with his family, living in New Hampshire, and has been writing a weekly column for an English newspaper. The columns are collected in I'm a Stranger Here Myself.

While he was gone he composed two popular books about the English language, and a couple of infinitely amusing travel memoirs. His circular trip around Britain is recounted in Notes From a Small Island and his trip on the European continent in Neither Here Nor There, a book that got us in trouble this summer for snorting and chortling out loud in a respectable first-class train car in middle Norway.

In a piece called The Great Indoors Bryson observes, "I was out for a walk the other day and I was struck by an odd thing. It was a glorious day -- as good as a day can get, and very probably the last of its type that we shall see for many a long wintry month around here -- yet almost every car that passed had its windows up."

Even Mrs. Bryson thinks Bill Bryson complains too much. Bryson writes, "I was intending this week to write about some exasperation or other of modern American life when Mrs. Bryson (who is, may I say, a dear woman) brought me a cup of coffee, read the first few lines off the computer screen, muttered, 'Bitch, bitch, bitch,' and shuffled off.

"Pardon, my dewy English rose?" I called.

"You're always complaining in that column."

"But the world needs righting, my luscious, cherry-cheeked daughter of Boadicea," I rejoined tranquilly. "Besides, complaining is what I do."

"Complaining is all you do."

By now you may sense how thoughts about our new pillows have taken on the shape of A Bryson. For one thing, we already have a lot of pillows. We could have put THOSE between our legs, and often do. For another, our pillows don't smell funny. Why do these new, expensive, pillows smell like a SuperFund cleanup site? The wrapper mentions that the odors will dissipate after two days. It's been more than a week and the pillows continue to smell like Archie Bunker's socks.

Bill Bryson got me in this mood and I'm not happy about anything right about now. Why is the catalog that sells these pillows named "Self-Care"? How Self-Centered is that? As I stuff them into their returns box they're fuming, I'm fuming -- Hey -- I'm having another Bryson and it feels so good.

Aired Friday September 10, 1999 at 8:35 am and Sunday September 12, 1999 at 10:55 am