The best travel stories on the internet.

Powered By Travel Channel

• Home»
• Features»
• Travel Interviews»
• Interview With Paul Theroux: Invisible Man on a Ghost Train

Interview With Paul Theroux: Invisible Man on a Ghost Train

And yet, as a travel writer and editor, I like to think that one needn’t go to the Congo to write about the world in an interesting way, and that there are places in New York or Los Angeles that are equally interesting and perhaps even untouched to some degree by globalization.

I don’t disagree with you. In fact, I completely agree with you. But I think that you need a method. The United States can’t be written about like other countries. It should be written about. And there are plenty of places in the States that are never written about. Somewhere in the book—I think I was in India—I talked about how accessible India is. India possesses the accessible poor. You can go up to an Indian and ask how much he makes and meet his family, and the accessibility of people way down on the totem pole allows you to write about them. You can’t do that in the States. You can’t go to a small town in the heartland and write about them as though they were tribal people in Asad. You can’t do it.

My youngest son made a documentary in Jackson, Mississippi. I really admire him for it because I don’t know anyone who’s made a documentary or written a book about Jackson, Mississippi, particularly the inner city, the dangerous part of Jackson. You hear about Jackson—it’s the capital and everything’s fine. It’s not all fine. It’s dangerous and difficult and no one writes about it. I’d like to write that book, but I don’t know how to do it. I’d love to write a book about the States; I wouldn’t know how to approach it. But I agree with you when you say, You don’t have to go to the Congo. I totally agree. You should be able to write about anywhere. In fact, people do. But that’s why the travel book is an amorphous thing. No one knows what it is or what it stands for.

There’s a famous 18th-century book called A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre. There’s actually an edition with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence. You can write that. Thoreau wrote a book about his hometown. It’s a great book. He considered Concord, Massachusetts, the equivalent of Brazil. He even said when a man wrote a book about the Arctic that every observation made in that book about the Arctic could be made about Concord. It’s not true, but that’s what he thought. I’d like that to be the case.

A book that impressed me is Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I wish I’d thought of that.  I really do. Of getting low-paying jobs and just traveling around the States and finding out how people live. It’s not a travel book, but it’s a book about America that penetrates it.

It seems that every other month some writer is declaring the death of travel writing. Do you read much travel writing these days? Do you read much of what is being published?

I don’t. I read books by my friends. Now and then if a book comes along that’s a real ordeal, I read it. I’m not looking for a well-written book. I’m looking for a book about something that appeals to me, an ordeal appeals to me, a place I’ve never been that’s written about in a penetrating way. I’m not looking for someone just joyriding or a stunt, someone riding a bicycle somewhere or whatever it is. But people used to talk about the death of the novel. That’s a kind of normal reaction to too much of something. But there will always be travel books, as long as there are places to go.

That sounds like a great place to end. Thanks very much.

Photo by Yingyong Un-Anongrak.

Travel Blog

Photos Courtesy:  REUTERS  |  iStockPhoto  |  flickr  

©2026 World Hum, All Rights Reserved

• About Us
• Submissions
• For Advertisers
• Visitor Agreement
• Privacy Policy