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Book Review - Riding the Iron Rooster, By Train Through China by Paul Theroux  Reading Mr. Theroux' travelogue of Chnia made me realize I should know more of Chinese history than I do (which is practically nothing). School history textbooks in India focus mostly on local, state and national history. In higher grades you deal with European history, India's colonial past and some American history - for example, we learned of the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. Of communism, our textbooks focused mostly on the USSR. However, besides the common knowledge that China had a communist government and India fought a war with the Chinese in 1962, our history textbooks were woefully inadequate in their coverage of contemporary Chinese history.Mr. Theroux' twelve month journey through China takes place in 1986 and 1987, as the country is still dealing with the effects of Mao's Cultural Revolution. The author's journey, like many of his other great travel stories, begins in London as he heads to Mongolia by train. From Mongolia he takes a myriad of trains to explore the most far flung reaches of that immense country. From the freezing city of Harbin to the mostly inhospitable and deserted Tibetan Plateau. The book is funny, caustic and filled with the kind of absolute generalizations that Mr. Theroux excels at. He talks to fellow travellers, government orderlies, train conductors and hustlers in tourist towns. You get not just his perspective, but also of the people he meets and finds interesting. Unlike most of the author's other travels, he is forced to travel here with a Chinese "guide" who is there to ensure the author is not up to any kind of mischief. Mr. Theroux extracts his revenge by subjecting his handler to interminable train rides through the remotest parts of the Middle Kingdom. Because of the timing, the book also adds color to understanding the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. I learned a few things about the Cultural Revolution I was never aware of - my knowledge of that event is restricted to a few books and the Zhang Yimou movie, To Live. Some of the author's cultural observations are worth repeating - he ascribes a hidden meaning to they way the Chinese laugh, because they don't laugh with mirth but to convey something they'd rather not express verbally. The Chinese landscape is almost completely devoid of birds, trees and wild life - because the Chinese have cultivated and subjected all of the land to human use and eaten everything that can be masticated. And finally, the Chinese were enthusiastically adopting capitalism and the free market in the 1980s - it is not something that just happened. The last section on driving to Lhasa from Golmud is the funniest - it is filled to the gills with ridiculous comedy. I've often asked myself while reading a Theroux book, why does he do this? In this instance he is in a near fatal car crash and then spends the night in a prison like hotel with stairs covered in human excrement and run by a crazed looking Tibetan man. Maybe that's why. Highly recommended. Labels: 2010, april 2010, book review, china, cultural revolution, history, non fiction, paul theroux, reviews, tibet, travel, travelogue, xinjiang
Quick Review: Sailing Through China by Paul Theroux
 More a long essay than a book, Sailing Through China is Paul Theroux' report of his time on a cruise on China's greatest waterway, the Yangtze. Mr. Theroux is characteristically dark in his prognostications and reliably vitriolic in his description of fellow American travelers. I read this book as a prelude to Riding the Iron Rooster, a description of Theroux' travels by train through China. Recommended.Labels: 2010, china, march 2010, non fiction, paul theroux, travel, travelogue, yangtze
Book Review - To the Ends of the Earth by Paul Theroux
 To the Ends of the Earth is a selection of Paul Theroux' writings from six of his previous books. I have been reading Mr. Theroux' books in reverse chronological order so all the material in this collection was new to me. I've often wondered about Mr. Theroux' formula. What drives him to travel through frightfully uncomfortable and bleak environments? The writer reflects on this in his introduction to the book. Alluding to his first work, The Great Railway Bazar, he says "It is often the case that only when someone asks you specific questions do you begin to think clearly about your intentions. In my mind this travel book had something to do with trains, but i had no idea where i wanted to go - only that it should be a long trip". The author's next trip, described in The Old Patagonian Express was inspired by nothing more than the desire to go on a journey. There was no destination, he wanted to take trains all the way to Patagonia and then turn back. I find these reflections invaluable. The collection here is a trip around the world, the typical characters and places and the sometimes acidic style I've come to know and enjoy is evident from the beginning. I found the chapter on the author's meeting with Borges particularly surreal. I wondered if that was an accident? But no, it couldn't be. Great writing is deliberate. In the chapter we meet a large white cat, a blind Borges showing off his library and the author reading to the story writer. There is this memorable paragraph - "The restaurant was around the corner-- I could not see it, but Borges knew the way. So the blind man led me walking down this Buenos Aires street with Borges was like being led through Alexandria by Cavafy , or through Lahore by Kipling. The city beloved to him, and he had a hand in inventing it" The author's experience with Borges reminded me of his account of meeting Paul Bowles in Tangiers, narrated in Pillars of Hercules. The author's stated ambition when this book was published was to "complete a shelf of travel books, which, between bookends, will encompass the world". In a minor way, that goal is accomplished within the covers of To the Ends of the Earth. Highly recommended. Labels: 2009, anthology, book review, paul theroux, travel
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
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 |
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