Theroux's Heart of Darkness
588833
With his 60th birthday approaching, Paul Theroux decided to give up the comforts of his home in Hawaii and take a trip overland from Cairo to Capetown.  He travels through some of the most forbidding locales in some of the world's poorest countries; and he travels alone, without a cell phone or internet connection, and without a plan.

Along the way he makes many literary references, mostly to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which he reads over and over again.  There are also some entertaining encounters with Nobel laureates, Naguib Mafouz at the beginning of his journey and Nadine Gordimer at the end.

Theroux describes the poverty and depravation of what he sees, which he claims is worse now than it was 40 years ago when he was a Peace Corps volunteer.  Over the past 40 years, Africa has undergone urbanization just like the rest of the world.  Today about 75% of Africa's population live in urban areas, many in squatter settlements on the outskirts of cities.  Theroux writes: "Even at their best, African cities seemed to me miserable impoverished anthills, attracting the poor and desparate from the bush and turning them into theives and devisers of cruel scams."

As people leave the villages, the civil society of the tribal life disappears altogether.  And since there are no jobs in the city, scamming and theivery become the only means of survival.  The only thing standing in their way are the local police, who Theroux claims are no more than "licensed theives" themselves.

Theroux has some very uncharitable opinions about much of what he sees in Africa, many other writers have described these conditions as well.  However, he unleashes most of his vitriol at the foreign aid workers.  He refers to them as "in general oafish self-dramatizing pigs, and often complete bastards."

It is not off the mark to criticize the foreign aid bureaucracy as it exits today in Africa.  It is true that aid corrupts both donors and recipients.  Aid programs have turned African problems into permanent conditions.  If the streets were lined with beggars before, the beggars now expect such aid with a sense of entitlement.  I think, however, that Theroux goes overboard in attributing most of Africa's problems to foreign aid, especially when he writes that the sharpest lesson foreign aid workers could teach is to turn their backs and go home.

Abandoning Africa as Theroux suggests is not the answer.  A more hopeful, but controversial, approach is outlined in Jeffrey Sach's "The End of Poverty."  Africa will need more aid in the future, not less.  Africa needs economic development so that they can reach "the first rung of the economic ladder."  This means going beyond the subsistence level of the village, which Theroux romanticizes, and producing goods for export which will allow them to participate in the current wave of globalization.  Only when they reach this level of development should anyone speak realistically about reducing foreign aid.

The way aid is currently administered it constitutes a large portion of revenue for many African governments.  And when governments get their revenues from abroad, and do not draw their revenues from the commerce and industry of their citizens, they usually take little interest in their citizens.  The result is always corrupt a government and an impoverish citizenry.  Many of the Arab countries in the Middle East that derive most of their revenue from oil are facing similar problems.

Although it is true that aid has not accomplished much in Africa in the last 40 years, it would be a tragedy to withdraw it at this point.  Aid must be administered in a way that would enable Africans to participate in the global economy rather than being its victims.  This is no small task, outsiders have thus far been unable to change things no matter how good their intentions.  Even with aid, Theroux is correct when he says that only Africans are capable of making a difference in Africa.
506931
This is my favourite Theroux travelogue in a long time. In fact it is much better than the volume that inspired it, The Great Railway Bazaar, better written, better researched and far more thoughtful in its interpretations of people, culture and the nature of travel. In many ways it was a much more challenging trip than the original. And far less cynical than The Old Patagonia Express and Riding The Iron Rooster. Highly recommended whether you are a Theroux fan or just a fan of good travel writing.
3932249
"Greyhound" opens in the darkest hours of the night. Sebastien can't sleep and soon, he'll be leaving. His Mother's getting married for the umpteenth time and he's not even invited to this ceremony. Dick, the groom du jour, doesn't like kids and it's apparent from the hits he's inflicted on Sebastien.

The couple needs some 'alone time.'  So, his Mother's packing him up on a Greyhound bus at 3:00 AM to ride from Stockton, CA to Altoona, PA where he will visit his grandparents. His mom gives him $35 and tells him to stay out of trouble. By the time he's boarded, there's not even anyone to wave goodbye to in the bus terminal. Thus, begins a cross-country odyssey for young Sebastien that will keep you turning pages through the night as the highway flies by beneath the bus's tires.

I first read Steffan Piper's extraordinary "Greyhound" when it was submitted for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (ABNA) contest in 2008. Every time I've seen a Greyhound bus passing on the highway, I've thought of Sebastien Rane or perhaps a kid like him riding alone...Yes, the story's that extraordinary.

Rebecca Kyle, April 2010
3464997
An absolutely wonderful book.
Not as cynical as Paul Theroux's rail books, more actual motorcycleism than Persig's.
I've been telling strangers about it for thirty years. B

So glad it's available on KIndle -- my old orange Penguin paperback is held together with a rubber band -- it's that beloved.
4665821
Theroux is a well-traveled, workmanlike writer with a fondness for the raffish and louche, apt to find in it a premature redemption in order to wind things up in a snappy Yank fashion. To his credit younger and shallower readers think he has a Bad Attitude, which is one of the names under which Moral Seriousness goes these days.

Saint Jack's original may be found throughout the formerly Far East, on many a bar-stool and in many an AA meeting. The hero of this novel is undistinguished by wealth or fame and is instead of the so-called Greatest Generation, who served in WWII.

Writers of the immediate postwar like Bellow celebrated the American "logistical tail", which was extensive and included any number of typists; Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day, for example, flew a desk.

This may have been for the writer a labor-saving device. Having the character serve in a rifle platoon would mean the writer would have to deal with the large issue of how the combat affected the hero.

As the reader, you should realize that Saint Jack is a creature of the 1970s and a Singapore that is, as the guy below me in the postings here says, no more. He dates in other words from an era when a middle-aged and undistinguished guy could carry a message, the twilight of the Common Man as opposed to the trooping masses, destined, if they know what's good for them, only for approved lifestyles, dragging the kids to Disneyland, or Camp Snoopy in Sha Tin, their hopes for a better world downsized permanently.

Thanks to the guy below me for the suggestion of Theroux's novel Kowloon Tong. I shall definitely give it a read.

One great benefit from reading Saint Jack was a number of jokes, wheezers and gaspers popular twenty years ago in the saloon bar of the Peninsula or Raffle's after the women had left the room, to conspire.
2151573
Scott Burroughs is a struggling artist and recovering alcoholic.  He is spending a summer in splendid, creative isolation in a beach rental on Martha's Vineyard, where he has made the casual aquaintance of uber-weathly housewife Maggie Bateman and her children.  When Scott mentions one morning at the Farmers' Market that he'll be going into the city to meet with his agent, Maggie offers him a ride on the family's private jet.  The Kiplings, another set of family friends, are also invited aboard.

Then, eighteen minutes into a routine, half-hour flight, the plane crashes into the Atlantic.  The only survivors are Scott and the Batemans' 4-year-old son, JJ.

As investigators attempt to unravel what exactly caused the plane to crash, the news media--in particular, the scathing, conspiracy-theorist talking head who fronts Bateman's media empire--is busy creating their own narrative. One in which Scott is a suspect rather than a fortunate survivor who managed to swim a dozen miles through open ocean with a toddler on his back.

Interesting read. And very relevant, in this world of the 24-hour "news" cycle.
4671225
You may find Theroux's openness and directness refreshing, or you may find his brashness, arrogance, condescension, and hypocritical judgementalism revolting.  If the latter is true, take heart that this book actually becomes enjoyable once you get past the first hundred pages or so...

Maybe others will better appreciate Theroux's attempts at humor, but the first hundred pages of this book could arguably compete for the most off-putting intro ever written.  Before even beginning to prove a thing about himself (unless he's relying on an established reputation?), he devotes a few pages to trashing the state of current travel literature as being formulaic and overly focused on the destination vs. the journey.  Beginning his story, he immediately picks a couple of confrontations with fellow passengers: correcting an elderly man who likens the New England winter landscape to Siberia ("Actually, there isn't this much snow in Siberia") and contradicting a 20 year old radical girl ("I wouldn't call them radical... they're smug views, self-important ones.  Egocentric, you might say.").

Clearly Theroux is self-aware enough that this impression must be intentional, but it just doesn't work.  Theroux is trying too hard to *tell* you to how to regard his work and the people he meets, rather than let you draw the same conclusions by just portraying people and their behaviors.  There are so many better travel writers out there today (maybe this wasn't the case in the 70s when this was written) that this is inexcusable.  Bryson is far funnier, Dalrymple far more insightful and also pretty funny.

Fortunately, Theroux gets more bearable further into the book.  He's most insightful when he reflects on the nature of writing and his reasons for traveling alone, avoiding idle chatter that gets in the way of more thoughtful observation ("I am diverted, but it is discovery not diversion that I seek.")  After pages of tolerating idle chatter from a fellow traveler Thornberry, I'm finally able to sympathize with Theroux's cruel fantasy of pushing Thornberry off the train.  The stories get more interesting as Theroux's adventurousness and openness lead him into situations where tourists rarely go- a Salvadorean soccer game where the players stop to watch a fight in the stands, the "simmering anarchy" of a Panamian high school (liken to a `50s American high school), the chaos of the utterly untouristy Barranquilla, mass altitude sickness on a train through the Andes... Throughout the journey, Theroux colors the narrative with short excerpts from books he is reading including the Adventure of Gordon Arthur Pym and Life of Johnson.  By the end of the journey, Theroux seems a little more humble, reflecting on the pointlessness of his journey, but knowing the story needed to be told.
3641222
A well written and well researched unemotional review of this horrendous crash. The author gives a factual, dispassionate opinion on what has become an ongoing mystery with so many uninformed opinions. I hope that many of his recommendations are taken up by both the search countries involved and the airline industry.  For frequent fliers a must read.
483200
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.  Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.  Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.  Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.  Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.  After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!  I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.  Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.  High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.  Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.  There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.  T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.  The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.  Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.
3466891
Sir Ranulph Fiennes, a man described as the greatest adventurer of all time, spins this tale of the horrors of Nazi death marches and derring-do in the unforgiving Antarctic. Fiennes claims to have found this story in a diary left behind in an abandoned arctic hut. But mindful of the embarrassment suffered by Der Stern magazine when it trumpeted that it had the official Hitler diaries when it did not, Fiennes does not claim it as non fiction.
You hope it is a piece of fiction, to be honest, but I suspect it is not. You find yourself wanting to drive down to New York and look up the Who's Who of real estate agents because the realtor MUST be known to SOMEONE. You badly want to find out.
Not for the faint of heart though - seriously.
303162
Personally, I don't think Paul Theroux was wisely chosen as editor and I don't trust his judgment in picking the best of anything.  I've read several of his books including novels (in which he "accidentally" appears) and consider him self-centered and just not a traveler I would want to travel with.

These aren't bad selections, but for the best part, were not inspiring.  I might read a future collection with a different editor... we'll see.
3983644
I love Paul Theroux's travel writing. I read one essay every so often. I'm not finished yet. So far I like this book very much. All of his travel books are so vivid - you feel like you're actually there.
481482
My Secret History was my first Paul Theroux novel. I tried reading Waldo, his debut effort, but could not finish it. (Waldo kicks off with promise, and humour, but stagnates in my opinion; Theroux was just 26 when it was published.) But My Secret History works. It is plainly written, even breezy, but it is extremely gripping. The novel is a fictionalized memoir. It plots epochs of the writer's life, buffs them up a bit, and presents them as creative writing, which it most certainly is not, as readers familiar with Theroux ought to recognize. The narrator, Andre Parent, grows up in Boston, works as an altar boy, moves to Africa with the Peace Corps, meets his English wife, moves to London, works on his writing career, becomes friends with a famous Indian writer (VS Naipaul), publishes six or seven novels, has a breakthrough with a piece of travel literature, is devastated to learn his wife has had an affair, threatens to kill the man she had an affair with, has an affair himself, and recommits to his wife while on a trip to India.

Because I have read almost all of Theroux's travel literature, I could see parallels - nay, identical situations -regarding his personal life. (For example, in the prologue to Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he talks about what a mess his life was when writing his breakthrough The Great Railway Bazaar, how his wife cheated on him, and how he threatened to kill her lover.) But readers unfamiliar with Theroux's travel literature or his other fiction would still find this a satisfying read - it just adds another dimension if you know something about his biography.

My Secret History is a page-turner, hard to put down. The first chapter, "Altar Boy," sparkles, as does the third chapter, "African Girls." I have read satisfying novels set in Africa by JM Coetzee, VS Naipaul, and Joseph Conrad, but Theroux manages to really bring Africa to life. He seems to capture perfectly what living there in the early 1960s must have been like. His descriptions and assessments of London are intriguing and so are other "admissions" about his "secret life." Indeed, one wonders how much of this novel really is fiction. I would conservatively wager less than 20 percent. I would not be surprised if it were only 5 percent. I had wondered why Paul Theroux never wrote a memoir; now I realize he did.

I only have two small complaints. At 444 pages, the novel is a bit long. It is also very conventional in style. Theroux, prone to analysing and discussing other writers, sometimes praises Hemingway and sometimes criticizes and mocks him. In The Pillars of Hercules, he accuses him of writing in Father Pilgrim English - but Theroux could be accused of writing in the same manner. But it doesn't really matter. His writing is always good, always consistent, and his story-telling ability is brilliant, almost never dull. The novel is also packed with irony, humour, and incisive observations about human nature. Recommended, and I look forward to reading more of Paul Theroux's fiction.

Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
3178120
As always, Paul Theroux delivers a full-color picture of the world clackety-clacking by outside his sleeper-car window.  His descriptions of the locations that I have visited are spot on; and his critique of many of the isolated places he visits leaves me longing to hop on the next train.
  Armchair travellers will love this book.  Real travellers can bring it with them and consider it an uncensored travel guide; portraying the stunning and the seedy, the corrupt and the compassionate, the delicious and the distasteful.
957904
Reading Theroux's MOTHER LAND was a grinding bewilderment, grinding because Jay Justus, the novel's narrator and also the thinnest possible disguise for the actual, historical Theroux, recycles the same complaints against a difficult, manipulative mother for hundreds of pages more than this sad antipathy can bear. This is bewildering because both in his fiction and non fiction-- not to mentional a half dozen volumes in which you would be hard pressed to say which was which--Theroux is a reliably superb writer. He is also an acute and often unforgiving critic, and for that reason it is jarring to me that he let this small premise go into print in this form and at such length.

In fairness, it is impossible not to cringe at the awfulness of the mother presiding over the seven children, including the narrator, whose emotionally scarred lives compose the Mother Land of the title. But Theroux reveals what you need to know about her in the opening chapters. Again, because I have been such an ardent fan of Theroux's other seemingly autobiographical novels, I read on only on the hunch that there had to be a strategic method at work in so much deadening revisitation of the same turf.

When Theroux writes about himself in his travel and other non-fiction, he is cooly, sometimes painfully candid, confessing to acts and motives that are sometimes boldly unbecoming, but the honesty in these revelations is impressive and in a distinctive Therouvian way, generous and even touching. In this novel, too, the narrator confesses to countless aggressive counter-measures against his mother and his damaged siblings. In fact the book is over-freighted with these hurtful gestures. Those interested in the puzzling and vicious  attack Theroux's writer brother Alexander unleashed on Theroux a decade ago in Boston Magazine will find it repackaged to the letter in this novel's account of the same event as played out between the brothers Jay and Floyd Justus.

And while this peek into the private lives of contemporary writers may offer a small compensatory pleasure in an otherwise deadening slog, it is not enough to redeem the enterprise.

At the heart of my frustration with this book is a too long wait for the foot to fall that would tell me the narrator learned something from his confinement to this Mother Land, that he emerged sadder but perhaps wiser, or even that he was tragically and forever wrecked, himself the sad lesson of the tale. But for a writer of Theroux's considerable gifts, there has to have been a better way to tell it.
94670
A US pilot is flying a high altitude (70,000 feet) U-2 plane somewhere in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle.  His assignment?  Grab radioactive samples from a recent Russian nuclear test in the area for US scientists to analyze. He has a major problem, however: he's lost.  Plus he is running short of fuel and, since he's been strapped in a small cockpit for over eight hours, he has certain biological needs to tend to.  He sends out several maydays (distress calls). Through his headset he receives a command to turn left. Another command tells him to turn right! He has no idea where he is. Then he picks up something from a ground radio station. It is folk music. Russian folk music. Not a good sign.

Charles Maultsby was the pilot who would end up flying approximately 1,000 miles off course and over Soviet Union airspace (the Chukot Peninsula).  The USSR dispersed two squadrons of fighter planes to attempt to shoot him down.  Worst of all, his flight took place on not just any old day but at the most critical point during the 13 day Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Maultsby's dangerous flight (he eventually landed safely in Alaska) is one of many dramatic episodes that form the basis of the most recent book on perhaps the closest the planet has come to nuclear annihilation.  And what a book it is.  The author, Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, takes readers to where the action was occurring, whether in Maultsby's U-2, or in a Russian sub in the Caribbean being bombarded with depth charges by the US Navy, or through the eyes of two Cuban-Americans who have been infiltrated into Castro's Cuba to sabotage a copper mine operation and, failing in their mission, find themselves abandoned inside  Cuba by their sponsors, the CIA.  We also observe meetings of both Russian and US policymakers as they attempt to find a peaceful way out of this madness. And there is much from the Cuban perspective as well.

The author devotes most of the book to the final couple of days of the crisis, especially October 27, dubbed "Black Saturday," during which Maultsby flew offcourse and when another U-2 plane was shot down (and its pilot killed) over Cuba.  In this very dangerous climate, Dobbs credits the two most important characters in the drama, US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev for holding the reigns on their advisers, many of whom were strongly urging military actions. The author suggests that because both Kennedy and Khrushchev had experienced war first-hand (WW II), they were able to subordinate their psychological and political needs and urges to the greater goal of humanity's survival and come up with a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Among new information on the crisis Michael Dobbs presents here: to reveal the exact locations of Russian missile storage bunkers in Cuba; to make clear the famous "eyeball to eyeball" confrontation between Russian ships approaching Cuba and the US blockade never occurred; and to publish a map of the flightpath of Maultsby's misadventure in the higher northern latitudes.

Despite my disgust at publisher A.A. Knopf for not supplying readers with a bibliography and my disappointment over the author's uncritical acceptance of the Warren Commission's "findings" about Lee Oswald, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, by far the most fascinating one on the subject I have read.  It'll grab you and keep you.  Strongly recommended, but I would really like to know what happened to Professor Irvin Doress, who fled the US for Australia during the crisis.(see page 263)
Tim Koerner January 2010
3596656
Is there a more despairing novel this year than "Caribou Island"?  This novel combines the scalding insights of Albee's famous play with the sense of terror you get from Jack London's farthest-out stories.  The physical extremity of Alaskan wilderness is almost another character in this novel; it destroys the facile hopes of the well-meaning but naive and the unprepared. Marriage, Vann seems to be saying, can be as brutal in its way as nature at its most unforgiving.  Deeply unsettling, to say the least.