Recently in Theroux, Paul Category

This is really a very enjoyable book, but I just have little to say about it. It's really just a series of short stories featuring the same character. Great book, relaxing to read, but I don't have much to say about it.

Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

I don't have much to say about this book on Theroux's travels through Africa, but that's not a bad thing. Like many of Theroux's travel books, I made it my own travel book. I read it on the train to my parent's house, while waiting for the start of a health care town hall meeting with John Kerry, on the subway for a visit to the JFK library, and more often than not at the cafeteria at work during lunch. I still love reading his books slowly. In some ways, I like to read them almost as slowly as he travels.

This was in some ways a sadder book than his others in that he is traveling through areas of such poverty. There are also gripping accounts from various dissidents who had been thrown in jail and tortured by past oppressive governments. Theroux was essentially meandering through Africa, and he sees much that those who fly in quickly will miss.

This also seems a little more political than his other books, if only because he had spent so much time in Africa with the Peace Corps in the 1960s. (As he describes, he was actually kicked out of the Peace Corps, which somehow makes me like him better.) He spends much time bemoaning the Western aid workers who seem to be hurting Africa more than they help it. He mocks them for their big Land Cruisers, their hypocrisy, for always refusing to give him a ride, and essentially for creating a society that is far too dependent on foreign aid money.

Africa needs to help itself, I think he would say. In some ways, it all reminded me of the classic Sam Kinison bit about world hunger.

I will remember this book mostly for the snotty bookstore in which I bought it. It was a tiny store near Harvard Square that seemed to specialize in out-of-print books. I was browsing and remembered that I was looking for a copy of Jerome Holtzman's excellent sports classic "No Cheering in the Press Box," which is out of print. And so I asked:

"Do you have a sports section?"
 
You wouldn't believe the sneer on the man's face as he told me that they dealt mostly in books about philosophy and that they certainly didn't have a sports section.

As I was leaving, I spotted this Theroux book on the $2 shelf and decided to buy it. Now, at that point, I was willing to believe that I was just being paranoid. Maybe I was just being sensitive and he wasn't looking down on me for my interest in sports books.

Then, I went to the cash register, and he asked, "Oh, did you find your sports book?"

"No, you fucker, I've found a collection of short stories by Paul Theroux about an American diplomat set in post-colonial Malaysia, a dreamy surreal book about an odd group of characters living on the edge of civilization that to me seems strangely reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson's 'Winesburg, Ohio,' even if the two books are set in different eras on different continents."

That is what I should have said, but instead I mumbled no and gave him my two dollars.

These are the types of things that happen in Cambridge. Earlier, I entered another two-room bookstore and had this conversation with the proprietor:

"Welcome. By the way, all the books in this room are about architecture."

"Oh, thanks. Are there more general books in the other room?"

"No, all those books are about horses."

"Oh."

Incidentally, "The Consul's File" is excellent.
 

On The Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

When I reread Paul Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar, I was disappointed that I was not able to read it on a train. This time, I made sure to read his sequel to that book on the rails. In fact, I saved Ghost Train specifically for a train trip to Maine, on which I read the first 100 pages or so. That was back in October when the leaves were changing, so I spent as much time looking out the window as I did reading. Somehow, that seemed fitting.

When I saw him speak at the Harvard Book Store in September, Theroux pointed out how few travel writers have ever gone back to the places they wrote about, and that was part of the appeal for him to take this trip again over thirty years later. I like the idea of that, and I spent part of my time with this book daydreaming of revisiting foreign cities I've visited.

This is a far more personal book than The Great Railway Bazaar, which is odd because I always thought that book was incredibly personal. It turns out that Theroux's marriage was falling apart during that trip, but he never included any of those details in order to make it "a jolly book." This time, he writes much about how he has changed during those years, and overall he is a much calmer traveler.

Ghost Train is also a more adult book (and not just because he visits a six-floor Tokyo porno shop at one point!). Because of who he is now, Theroux meets Arthur C. Clarke, Pico Iyer,  and other writers. He also partakes in more activities off the train than in the first book, whether it is going to a call center in India, visiting a gulag in Russia, or exploring the weird totalitarian state of Turkmenistan. That chapter alone, in which their leader Turkmenbashi makes North Korea's Kim Jon-Il seem well balanced, makes the book worth purchasing.

Most of all, Theroux remains foremost a reader. Towards the end, I thought this was an interesting quote:

I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike -- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits. If you have gotten this far in this book, you are just such a singular person.

Theroux spends a great deal of time on this trip, talking with people about books. And in many ways, this is an extremely literary travelogue. Many of the sights he points out are literary landmarks, and often he writes about the books he's reading on the train. This really is as much a book about reading as it is a book about traveling.

Finally, it may be a cliché to say so, but this is a book to be read slowly. Theroux always travels slowly, and I find it best to read his books that way as well, preferably over a few months.  That's why I started this in October and just finished now.

My only disappointment in rereading this book is that I wasn't able to read it aboard a train. I did occasionally try to read it while in motion, but alas the MBTA is not exactly the Trans-Siberian Express.

This is one of my favorite books, and I'm not entirely sure why. For a book about such a long trip, not all that much happened. At times, Theroux barely got off the train, but it was still captivating. I shouldn't really be fascinated with all the strange conversation he had with fellow train travelers, but I was just about every time.


Theroux has written a sequel to this called "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" in which he retraces his original route thirty years later. That's the main reason I decided to pick this up again. I also was lucky enough to see him at a reading earlier this week, though "reading" might be a little strong. It was mostly an entertaining though rambling talk by Theroux, with a little bit of reading at the end to justify the name of the event.

Theroux has written many travel books beyond this one. He says he tries to write them all while traveling. The idea is that just as he finishes his trip, he's also finishing the book. It's a wonderful idea, although I've never been able to make it work myself, even on a small scale. He says he carries a small notebook around with him and takes notes all day long. He then transfers the notes into a much bigger notebook at the end of the day.

It's all very orderly and makes me really think I should have taken notes while reading this book. In that case, I might have had more to say here.

I enjoyed this novel about a British mother and son living in Hong Kong just before the handover of Hong Kong to China. However, the ending did disappoint me. This is a common feeling for me with fiction. I often have trouble getting into novels, and I'm sometimes disappointed with endings. But the middle! Oh, I love the middle when I can get into the characters and gradually figure things out. This is why I don't usually like short stories. They are all beginnings and endings and no middles.

With this, though, it makes sense that the ending disappointed me. It probably disappointed the protagonist too, just as the whole handover of Hong Kong to China likely disappointed the British who were still living there.

I'm a big fan of Paul Theroux, although I'm much more familiar with his travel writing. After The Mosquito Coast, this is only the second of his novels that I have read. As he's a travel writer, it's no secret that his novels usually have a strong sense of place. This one has a strong sense of time too. While reading this, you really do feel like it's 1996 and you're in Hong Kong.

Bunt Millard, the protagonist, is a 43-year-old British national who has spent his entire life there. He still lives with his mother, has always worked in the family clothing business, has some -- shall we say -- issues with women, and is terrified of change. This fear of change isn't all that helpful with the British government about to abandon Hong Kong, and it's even less helpful when a mysterious Chinese man offers to buy the family business for a large amount of money. While compelling, Bunt is not particularly likable, though he is a sympathetic character, as he discover himself completely out of his element.

One final note: don't read the blurb on the back. It pretty much gets you up to page 131 of my 248-page edition.