Note: I intended to write a blog comparing two of Paul Theroux’s books- The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train To The Eastern Star using a scribbled junket of half-formed thoughts and sentences. Unfortunately, I accidently returned the second book to the library with all of those notes inside. Whoever checks out the book next will find themselves overwhelmed with thoughts, recommendations, revelations, and inside jokes, all of which were my planning stage for an long post. I was annoyed, but writing from the top of my head proved to be a useful exercise, even if it is poorly executed journalism.
And, believe it or not, the result is a much shorter piece.
If you missed it, I raved in short about Paul Theroux and his modernization of the travel novel a few posts back. Basically, I loved his observations and wit and I truly liked Theroux, the perfect traveling companion. He makes the reader feel as if they are both with him and alone, traveling in Theroux’s place. Most importantly, he instilled a sense of magic (excuse the platitude) on traveling by train.
In the second book, Ghost Train To The Eastern Star, Theroux retraces his route across Europe and Asia, thirty-three years later. What a difference those decades made. He is thirty-three years more wise, world-weary, bitter, self-important, and old. Gone is the adventurous and open-minded man I traveled with in Railway Bazaar. He begins Eastern Star by stating he dislikes most travel novels, which are simply recounts of visits to museums, artifacts, and notable places, with a hint of “mystery” and, most likely, invented characters encountered on the path. Just a couple pages in and Theroux is getting on my nerves.
He spends several paragraphs explaining how he lost his wife during his first four month journey and then several more on how he doesn’t wish to sound like one of those tired folk, “Back in my day…”. To paraphrase some of his meta-discourse, he tells those rhetorical old people to shut up about times past and move into the future.
I pushed through the dreadful opening to get to the meat of the book. Theroux is an excellent writer and I assumed Eastern Star would pick up and entertain. Nay, dear reader. Nay. His trip out of London into France starts on a dreary and cloudy day and he pines for the lost days of charming travel. He leans his head against the window and makes observations about changing times and changing scenery. In no way did he avoid sounding like one of the rambling elderly that he slanders in the introduction.
Frankly, Theroux pissed me off. He’s hypocritical, more sarcastic (in all the wrong ways), tired, and vastly self-important. He instantly gives off the vibe that he wrote the book to show up the legion of travel writers who followed in his footsteps. In his eyes, they are cheap imitations of himself, writing only to tap the cash flow of vicarious adventurers. Oh, Theroux, how can we possibly live up to your expectations? You set the bar so high!
I confess that I did not finish the book, and I haven’t read any of his others. Still, first impressions are half the battle. If the author’s ethos makes me hate him or her, why should I finish the book?
This also makes me wonder about the longevity of “seeing it live”. Clearly, I won’t be writing this blog for thirty-three years, and maybe not even a fraction of that, but Theroux’s change from joyful observer to bitter traveler scares me.
Life is a series of experiences, each event affects how future events are perceived, and not all of these situations are controlled. This is an obvious statement but one that needs to be observed because it brings up an important question- what was it about Theroux’s chain of life experiences that changed him for the worse? Case in point- had I embarked on the same trip as Theroux in Ghost Train To The Eastern Star, I would have seen an exciting new landscape and interesting characters, rather than a dreary landscape and poor people.
Is it even possible to retain that sense of excitement for travel after spending a lifetime making a career of it? Is this a case of too much of a good thing? I wonder if this happens to all people who choose to make a normal life activity into a job. Do racecar drivers dread the thought of driving home through traffic? Do accountants hate balancing their own checkbooks even more than the average Joe? I imagine chefs find the thought of cooking a family dinner to be a heinous chore. I hate to imagine that this is the rule or even a common occurrence. I plan to make a career of international service; God forbid I can’t enjoy a traveling retirement.
And it may seem silly to worry about this now, before I’ve even started a career, but I hope that I can avoid becoming like Paul Theroux, a bitter old man with a massive ego (although I have one of those, too. After all, I photoshopped myself consoling Leonardo DiCaprio on the movie poster for one this summer’s biggest blockbusters). So, we’ll see what happens. For now, I’ll just go with the flow, but it’s never a bad idea to look into the future.
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