The Great Railway Bazaar

[shamatha1]

by Paul Theroux. He likes trains. I like trains. He writes about riding trains from London to Tokyo and back again. I read about it. I'm only as far as Instanbul so far, but it's good.

I like Theroux's travel writing because he loves to travel purposelessly, and he doesn't romanticize things like abject poverty or exoticize the poor as somehow being happier in their simple, impoverished lives than us westerners with all our gadgets. Probably because Theroux was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa in the 60s. That's probably also why a lot of people find his travel writing 'grumpy.'

[lescaret]

I always liked Paul Theroux's travel writing and never put too much stock in critics who complain about him being "grumpy" (and worse).

Good point about the appeal of his travels - their purposelessness (that's an ungainly word!).

YES to the flaneur, the meanderer, the wandering beholder of unfamiliar lands.

Ralph Rumney, the Situationist painter and provocatuer, dubbed this sort of aimless ranging "psychogeography". Classically, Guy Debord sought to jargonize the term and came to define it as:

"The study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals." Whatever. Just get out and walk!

The Situationists also practiced the dérive, "the drift". More jargon went into that but basically it, too, is about wandering, the aimless perambulation with mind, eye, heart open to come what may.

That's straying a bit off the Theroux-vian path (so to speak), but I take your meaning, Shamatha.

Theroux, as you rightly point out, doesn't indulge in the romanticising of places nor go on endlessly about important cultural "sites". He travels to experience place (and all that "place" implies - people, food, cities, landscape, etc.), and then he writes about what he experienced so we all might read and be entertained, inspired, amused, moved to reflection, persuaded to travel and see for ourselves.

Maybe that's my point. Theroux, in his travel writing, doesn't make you think "Gee, I want to go THERE!". Rather, he makes you think "Gee, I want to GO!".

[mindbum]

ah that wanderer's warm ensconcing robe.

paul theroux is as high as my list gets for travel writing... with a special kind of tie with bruce chatwin. few others stand up to it... and bruce is dead...

i havent read great railway... but i've read: riding the iron rooster, old patagonian express, pillars of hercules and some others... he has a new one and apparently an erotic novella... so a girl in a coffeeshop told me.
also read his novel: my secret life. fictional autobio.

i never did read sir vidia's shadow about vs naipaul though i heard theroux talk to terry gross about it on npr.

he is a misanthrope's misanthrope. and he's interested in the going. and trains are the best way to travel.

[lescaret]

Hey Mindbum, you really should read The Great Railway Bazaar, it was the book that (if you'll pardon the unintended pun) put Theroux on the map. At least sort of. I believe it's his first travel book.

In reply, you can say "Les, you really should read Chatwin" because I haven't.

Those two seem to go hand in hand (figuratively speaking). Chatwin is certainly a giant of the genre.

I haven't read much of Theroux's fiction besides The Mosquito Coast (a book I thought was great but that was turned into an utterly dreadful movie). Do you recommend it?