Tag: Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux, V.S. Naipaul and the End of a Feud
by Jim Benning | 06.07.11 | 4:00 PM ET
Paul Theroux’s long-running feud with Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul has apparently come to an end. The two authors shook hands in the green room at the Hey Festival late last month in Wales. Writer Reza Aslan was there. He not only posted a message on Twitter about it—“Holy Cow! I caught first face to face reconciliation of Paul Theroux & VS Naipaul. Magical moment.”—but he just happened to capture it on video:
What caused the feud? Accounts vary. According to The Telegraph, Naipaul suspected that Theroux had seduced his first wife. A New York Times report, however, emphasized Theroux’s anger over a book he’d signed: “His decades-long friendship with Mr. Naipaul imploded some 15 years ago when he discovered that a copy of one of his novels, lovingly inscribed to Mr. Naipaul, had been put up for sale.”
Whatever the cause, Theroux went on to write a great book exploring their friendship and its demise, Sir Vidia’s Shadow.
Amazingly, Naipaul was back in the headlines days after the handshake, offending countless people, when he told the Royal Geographic Society that he doesn’t think much of women writers: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.”
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Yahoo! BuzzRetracing Paul Theroux’s ‘The Old Patagonian Express’
by Jim Benning | 11.04.10 | 2:10 PM ET
Rachel Pook My favorite Paul Theroux book is The Old Patagonian Express, in which he chronicled his journey by train through the Americas. Theroux had a grand time, enduring irritating travelers, witnessing a soccer riot in El Salvador and reading to the late blind Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
So I was happy to hear the other day from Rachel Pook, who is retracing the route Theroux followed in the book—at least from Costa Rica southward—and blogging about it.
As she explains on her site:
An urge for adventure teamed with huge admiration for Paul Theroux’s travel writing has led me to this project.
After seven years working at News International for The Times I decided to escape the confines of Fortress Wapping and do some exploring.
She embarked on the trip in August. Her last post, on Sunday, titled Altitude Sickness and a Tortoise, was from Peru.
Riding The Little Engine That Could
by Jim Benning | 09.17.10 | 10:16 AM ET
Illustration: Bill Russell What if travel writer Paul Theroux had been aboard the train journey that became a classic children's book? Jim Benning imagines the account.
Theroux: ‘The Netherlands has Struck Me as the Most Robust Literary Culture in the World’
by Michael Yessis | 04.21.10 | 10:29 AM ET
Paul Theroux weighs in on the state of fiction in the age of eBooks—and touches on travel—in an interview in the Atlantic.
Not a Tourist
by Tom Swick | 03.22.10 | 12:06 PM ET
On the evolving role of the travel writer in the age of mass tourism and YouTube
The Old Patagonian Express Rumbles On
by Jim Benning | 03.19.10 | 1:44 PM ET
I’ve always thought “The Old Patagonian Express,” Paul Theroux’s book about his trip from the U.S. down to South America by train, was one of his best.
I’ve sometimes wondered what became of the old train he writes about near the book’s end—the one he seized on for the title. It turns out, it’s still operating.
The same starkness of place that struck Theroux in the high Patagonian desert remains. Like a photograph from an earlier era, the train and the landscape remain unchanged.
Paul Theroux’s New Novel: ‘A Dead Hand’
by Jim Benning | 11.18.09 | 1:50 PM ET
Paul Theroux’s new novel isn’t scheduled to be released in the U.S. until February 2010, but it’s already getting mixed reviews in the British press. It’s a mystery of sorts set in Calcutta and featuring a down-on-his-luck travel-writer-protagonist named Jerry Delfont.
Intriguingly, writes Doug Johnstone in The Independent:
Midway through the book, Delfont meets a fictional veteran US travel writer called Paul Theroux, a more successful and famous version of Delfont, whom he despises. The next 20 pages amount to a diatribe by Delfont about the act of travel writing, describing it as an emotionally stunted, puerile and selfish pastime, and brutally denouncing anyone who is stupid and arrogant enough to do it. This remarkable interlude is compelling, like rubbernecking a psychological car crash - but the rest of the novel is distinctly patchy, the bad points eventually outweighing the good.
Apparently the sex writing in the book leaves something to be desired. Once again, Theroux has been nominated for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award.
Paul Theroux Gives Advice to Aspiring Writers
by World Hum | 11.05.09 | 2:43 PM ET
"Leave home, travel alone, and stay on the ground"
Paul Theroux: ‘The Cross-Country Trip is the Supreme Example of the Journey as the Destination’
by Michael Yessis | 08.24.09 | 2:37 PM ET
Yet one of the most intrepid travel writers alive had never driven across the U.S. So when the Smithsonian asked him and five other travel writers to take on their dream assignments, he picked the cross-country trip. He delivered a beautiful story. He writes:
In my life, I had sought out other parts of the world—Patagonia, Assam, the Yangtze; I had not realized that the dramatic desert I had imagined Patagonia to be was visible on my way from Sedona to Santa Fe, that the rolling hills of West Virginia were reminiscent of Assam and that my sight of the Mississippi recalled other great rivers. I’m glad I saw the rest of the world before I drove across America. I have traveled so often in other countries and am so accustomed to other landscapes, I sometimes felt on my trip that I was seeing America, coast to coast, with the eyes of a foreigner, feeling overwhelmed, humbled and grateful.
The other five writers involved are Susan Orlean (Destination: Morocco), Francine Prose (Japan), Geoffrey C. Ward (India), Caroline Alexander (Jamaica) and Frances Mayes (Poland). Here’s Jan Morris’s introduction to the project.
Happy 50th Birthday, Hawaii
by Eva Holland | 08.21.09 | 2:18 PM ET
The islands are celebrating five decades of statehood today. In the New York Times, Paul Theroux offers a very, well, Theroux-like tribute to his adopted home: “I have lived in Hawaii longer than any other place in my life. I have murmured to myself in Africa, Asia and Britain, ‘I’d hate to die here.’ But I wouldn’t mind dying in Hawaii, which means I like living here.”
Happy Birthday, Paul Theroux
by Tom Swick | 04.10.09 | 3:42 PM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
Morning Links: Paul Theroux Spits From Trains, Swimsuit Issue Locales and More
by Jim Benning | 02.11.09 | 10:42 AM ET
- Paul Theroux likes to spit out the window of a moving train—and other interesting tidbits from one of our favorite writers.
- With the economy in the tank, are travelers looking for “recession chic”?
- Any chance the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act we noted yesterday will actually pass? “Conditions are good for it,” one expert says.
- Cross-border bi-national marriages are great—until they fall apart. The Economist explains. (Via NYT Ideas blog)
- Kate Chambers on paying the porters, Zimbabwe-style.
- The Louvre is planning The Funeral of Mona Lisa. Paris-bound? Wear black.
- Sports Illustrated photographers went to the Grenadines to shoot part of the new Swimsuit Issue. “[A] ho-hum choice since the Caribbean is a Swimsuit Issue go-to location,” says Jaunted. Yeah, Swimsuit Issue readers around the world will be soooo disappointed.
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Morning Links: America’s Dirtiest Hotels, London From Above and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.29.09 | 8:59 AM ET
- Paul Theroux remembers John Updike.
- American Airlines has been flying some planes without enough life rafts. Its short-term solution: Cap the number of passengers on the problem aircraft.
- The Big Picture shows off more of Jason Hawkes’ lovely aerial photos of London.
- Here’s a Q&A with Renia Ehrenfeucht on “the higher meaning of the humble sidewalk.”
- How are Spirit Airlines flight attendants like players for Manchester United? They both wear ads on their uniforms. (via Jaunted)
- Inside the “war on Roquefort cheese.”
- TripAdvisor’s list of America’s dirtiest hotels is out.
- Are these the top 50 adventure books of all time?
- Jason Barger pays tribute to “one of the daily unsung heroes of the air travel experience: the de-icers.”
- The “bizarre crime spree” that got this drunken Irish traveler deported from Australia included demanding money to feed his goldfish.
- World Hum gets a shout out in a Guardian piece about Twitter and travel—yes, World Hum has a Twitter feed. We’re happy to have you follow us.
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Interview With Paul Theroux: Invisible Man on a Ghost Train
by Jim Benning | 08.18.08 | 5:00 PM ET
Photo by Yingyong Un-Anongrak Jim Benning asks the author of "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" about his new book, aging and the challenge of disappearing in the age of the BlackBerry.
Unsentimental Journeys: Wrestling With Paul Theroux
by Bronwen Dickey | 08.13.08 | 11:53 AM ET
Bronwen Dickey considers "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Great Railway Bazaar"
Paul Theroux on Why He Likes Obama
by Jim Benning | 04.22.08 | 2:04 PM ET
I just stumbled across this recent interview the travel writer and novelist gave in Bangkok on YouTube:
World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books
by World Hum | 06.25.06 | 7:00 PM ET
We recently counted down the best travel books of all time. Here's the entire list -- and loads of picks from World Hum readers.
No. 3: “The Great Railway Bazaar” by Paul Theroux
by Terry Ward | 05.29.06 | 12:58 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1975
Territory covered: India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and Japan
Sex, Drugs and Fish Salad
by Frank Bures | 08.14.05 | 11:29 PM ET
Paul Theroux's new novel, "Blinding Light," features a travel-writing protagonist with a remarkable resemblance to the master himself. The result, writes Frank Bures, is unlike so many of his other literary efforts. It is, perhaps ironically, a good airplane book.
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