Tag: Paul Theroux

Writer’s Desk: Travel, Travel, and Travel More

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

Consider this as advice for a post-pandemic time, whenever that day finally dawns. Some writers may never need to leave their garret in order to have all that they need to generate worlds. Others work better from life. Here’s what some authors had to say about getting out and exploring the world:

  • “I’ve always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind … Life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not to just one part of it.” (Paul Bowles)
  • “[We] need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.” (George Santayana)
  • “Partly from passionate curiosity and partly to make a living, I kept travelling. The risky trips I took in my thirties and forties, launching myself into the unknown, astonish me now. One winter I was in Siberia. I went overland to Patagonia. I took every clanking train in China and drove a car to Tibet … All these trips, 10 of them, became books.” (Paul Theroux)

Literary Birthday: Paul Theroux

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After graduating from college in 1963, Paul Theroux (born today in 1941) spent several years teaching in countries ranging from Singapore to Malawi before writing fiction, which often featured clueless Westerners getting in over their heads in foreign lands. Although some of his novels, like The Mosquito Coast (1981), met with success, it was not until Theroux turned his hand to travel writing that he became widely known. His first was The Great Railway Bazaar (1975).

A bestseller that inaugurated the modern travelogue genre, it recounted his four-month journey by train from Britain through Asia, partially on the Orient Express. Theroux spends more time describing his personal encounters than places he visits. At one point he strikes up a conversation with a sniffy British couple about Graham Greene’s new novel The Honorary Consul. “Graham sent me a copy,” the husband says off-handedly. “I always like seeing Graham,” the wife replies.

Reader’s Corner: Great Books of 2015

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, OmniculturalLeave a comment

BestBooks2015
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Looking for something to read? There’s plenty out there to choose from.

Check out “From Training Hawks to World War III: A Short List of Great 2015 Books” at Re:Print.

Here’s some other books from last year that really stood out:

After all, winter is (finally) here. Time to catch up on your reading.

Reader’s Corner: Paul Theroux’s ‘Deep South’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WorldLeave a comment

Deep South-coverPaul Theroux has spent decades traversing the world and writing about it. Although some of his fiction has been set in America, his travel writing has always been the sort of thing that required a passport. In his newest book, Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads, Theroux rectifies that oversight with a deep dive into the American south and its beautiful and fraught contradictions.

Deep South hit stores last week. My review is at PopMatters.

There’s an essay called “The South of the South” that Theroux published last year in the Smithsonian magazine that will give you some idea of what he was after in this book.

Writer’s Desk: Theroux on Travel Writing

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

TheOldPatagonianExpressFor the 2011 release of his bibs-and-bobs collection The Tao of Travel, Paul Theroux had an interview in the Atlantic where—after noting that “Blogs look to me illiterate, they look hasty, like someone babbling”—he dispensed some advice to those in the travel-writing game:

The main shortcut is to leave out boring things. People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I’m not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don’t want to hear about it.

It’s probably not advice that most travel writers want to heed. After all, once you’ve spent three months in Siberia racking up expenses, you sure as hell better have something that the magazine is going to want to print. If nothing happens, embellishment or poetic license might seem more enticing.

Theroux also suggests to travel light:

The minimum is a change of clothes, a book, a toothbrush, notebooks, an extra pen. I don’t bring extra shoes. Just the necessities. I travel with a small duffel bag that fits under a seat on the plane, as well as a briefcase. The briefcase is my office. I’m always happier when I don’t have a lot of stuff.

The fewer things you have, the less you’ll pay attention to them. A pen, some paper, and your eyes and ears are all you need.