Book Review - Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Theroux

My first Theroux travelogue was Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, a journey in which the venerable travel writer retraced a trip he took thirty five years ago. In Dark Star Safari Mr. Theroux does something similar - he goes on a trip from Cairo to Cape Town, covering the landmass of that great and wondrous continent, a place that seems to cling hungrily to its moniker of the dark continent.

Theroux eschews air travel, as anyone whose read any of his travel books will know well. Mr. Theroux Africa is on a different planet, on a Dark Star as the author keeps reminding us. He compares the Africa of 2001 with the Africa he lived in forty years ago when he taught at a small school in Malawi and then at the Makerere University in Uganda, and most everywhere he sees an Africa "on the wane". He encounters pretentious aid workers driving around in expensive Land Rovers, self righteous missionaries, indifferent bureaucracy and superstitious politicians. He also meets some old friends and makes a few new ones. I found the story of an almost deaf Naguib Mahfouz holding court a Cairo hotel delightful.

There is much to recommend and very little to distract. f you are familiar with Paul Theroux' other work you already know his writing is not exactly full of hope but it is excellent. Highly recommended.

Labels: 2009, africa, paul theroux, travel, travelogue

posted by ubaid - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 4:12 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously

Book Review - The Pillars of Hercules, A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean by Paul Theroux


The Pillars of Hercules is a "Grand Tour of the Mediterranean", an encounter with the most storied sea on the planet. Paul Theroux is well up to the task of bringing his unique brand of spartan travel to a journey that has been written about since Homer's Odyssey.

Reading the travelogues of Paul Theroux is not just an encounter with exotic geography and customs, it is also an intensely literary experience. Mr. Theroux is a scholar, a linguist and in his uniquely curmudgeonly manner a keen observer of men. He is funny and mindful of his sour temper as he pokes fun at his own style. He makes generalizations as he sneers at the "snap judgments and obnoxious opinions" expressed by Evelyn Waugh in Labels (1930), an account of that writer's cruise around the Mediterranean. I found his description of an encounter with another traveler hilarious -

"In life, it is inevitable that you meet someone just like yourself. What a shock that your double is not very nice, and seems selfish and judgmental and frivolous and illogical."

The book begins on a fiesty note - at the Rock of Gibraltar, one of the "Pillars of Hercules" where the author clearly prefers the company of apes to 'tourists'. Tourists he thinks are the worst kinds of humans but he promises early on not to talk about them. Mr. Theroux of course is not a tourist, he is a traveler. The interesting fact is that I agree with his characterization, at least of himself. I found the overall tone less vitriolic than the one employed in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. There are three cities the author showers considerable praise on - Dubrovnik, Jerusalem and Venice. He is kinder to the Italians but ruthless in his criticism of the Greeks. He relates his frustrating experience with Israel's security and then talks about his meeting with American expat Paul Bowles that borders on the surreal. I've encountered Istanbul twice in Mr. Theroux' works - once in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and once in Pillars of Hercules - and I can't wait to go visit that grand city. There are encounters with other writers and other, more colorful characters, each contributing to a delightfully readable account.

Mr. Theroux says -
"But then a travel book is a very strange thing, there are few good excuses for writing one--all of them personal..The fairest way of judging travel books is by their truth and their wit"

If he were to judge his work by his own standards, I would say Mr. Theroux would be very proud. Highly recommended.

Labels: 2009, mediterranean, paul theroux, reviews, travel, travelouge

posted by ubaid - at 4:01 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously

Book Review - Traffic, Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt


I have been accused of being an aggressive and unsafe driver, much to my chagrin. I know I am aggressive, but unsafe? That I take exception to. It is true however that your own perception of how you drive is much out of whack with your passenger's perspective. Traffic - Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt seeks to explore this most mundane of everyday activities. Driving and Traffic are technically separate but closely related subjects and Mr. Vanderbilt provides a fascinating discussion of both.

Traffic begins with Mr. Vanderbilt's admission of being a 'late-merger', someone who waits till the last moment before exiting a closed lane and merging into a parallel one. There are some drivers who choose to merge early, as soon as they see a sign indicating their lane is closed ahead (or is exit only etc.), others wait right up to the last second and then indiginantly try to merge into the freer flowing traffic of the next lane. The first few chapters of the book focus on driving, taking into account factors like cognition, culture, human psychology (and psyche), self perception of who you are and who you want to be, reflex times and the meaning of gestures and signals. Chapter Five is provocatively titled 'Why Women Cause More Congestion Than Men (and Other Secrets of Traffic)' - but don't get offended yet, the author goes on to explain why that is so. Women continue to handle a lot of 'non-work' trips, taking kids to school and soccer practice for example. Women also tend to be engaged in what Vanderbilt calls "serve-passenger" trips, where they are taking passengers to places they don't have to be themselves and they tend to make several stops thus 'chaining' multiple trips. Women also tend to leave later for work than men and therefore drive right into already congested freeways. Hence, 'women cause more congestion than men'.

About half way through the book Vanderbilt shifts gears (I couldn't resist that pun) and focuses on traffic engineering and management. Chaper Six talks about the confounding observation that as more roads are built, traffic only seems to get worse. The author explores the idea and travels around the US talking to traffic engineers and looks into the externalities of America's obsession with driving. Chapter Seven was my favorite, presenting the most interesting ideas in the book. The author talks approvingly of the work of Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman who supposedly hated traffic signs. The author argues, by citing examples and urging the reader to analyze his own experiences, that roads deemed to be unsafe tend have a lesser proportion of fatal crashes precisely because drivers are a lot more careful when using them. A smooth flowing freeway tends to induce boredom and distraction, and distraction at 70mph can be fatal. Chapter Eight is a quick romp through two of the worlds' most congested cities Delhi and Beijing. Both culture and corruption seem to affect accident rates and fatalities on the roads of these dense and, for a western driver, terrifying cities.


Traffic could easily have been a work of pop psychology, filled with platitudinal wisdom. The appeal of the book is that it resists that temptation. This is a well researched book with a 110 pages of notes to satisfy the obsessive reader. The writing itself is engaging and enjoyable. Highly recommended. posted by ubaid - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously