Paul Theroux: ‘The Travel Book Was a Bore’

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 03.24.08 | 11:24 AM ET

We recently noted that Paul Theroux’s next book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, due out in September, retraces the journey he chronicled in 1975’s The Great Railway Bazaar. Perhaps that’s why he’s now reflecting on his motivations behind the original journey, and his feelings about travel writing at the time. Whatever the reason, fans of “The Great Railway Bazaar” should enjoy this essay in the Guardian.

Writes Theroux:

The travel book was a bore. It annoyed me that a traveller hid his or her moments of desperation or fear or lust. Or the time he or she screamed at the taxi driver, or mocked the folk dancers. And what did they eat, what books did they read to kill time, and what were the toilets like? I had done enough travelling to know that half of travel was delay or nuisance - buses breaking down, hotel clerks being rude, market peddlers being rapacious. The truth of travel was interesting and off-key, and few people ever wrote about it.

Theroux, of course, went on to write about all of those things, which is why so many travelers love that book, and its cranky author, so much.