Ever since I accidentally came across his work as a teenager in the mid-1990s, picking up a copy of his novel `My Other Life' at a book sale and being immediately drawn to its ambition and clarity of prose, Paul Theroux has been a hero of mine. His work has been an inspiration as I made my own way as an author and journalist, simultaneously delighting and depressing me - the former because he is so good, the latter because I doubt I will ever match his talent. Like a literary groupie I have read his every word, looking forward to each new release.
While his novels are always enjoyable - and some, such as `The Mosquito Coast' and `Milroy The Magician' can be described modern classics - I believe it is the narrative non-fiction and travel writing that is the strongest in his long portfolio, the sort of work that maybe bestows greatness upon him as a writer. He is entertaining, incisive, funny; and writes with beautiful clarity, seemingly incapable of putting a dull word on the page. While I sometimes disagree with his portrayal of places I have myself visited, he always seems to capture the essence of a place in a certain time.
Theroux's widely acknowledged travel classic is `The Great Railway Bazaar' his 1973 journey from London, through Europe and Asia and back again. It is a sort of journey without purpose or aim, a meditation on the wonders of rail. It is darkly funny, and tells of a world that no longer exists: Soviet Eastern Europe; Shahist Iran; an Afghanistan that is still on the hippy trail; war-riddled Vietnam; Communist Russia. So much has changed since then that it seemed inevitable that Theroux would eventually go back, and that he has done in `Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.'
I found it instructive and entertaining to re-read his 1970s classic with the new volume to see for myself how the world had changed, but also how Theroux had evolved as a writer (less funny, more contemplative, less likely to jump to the hasty conclusions he criticises other writers for; still a charming, erudite and likeable guide).
At 66 he is twice as old as when he embarked on The Great Railway Bazaar. The World has changed: He was refused a visa for Iran, told Afghanistan was too dangerous to visit; but he can stop en route in former-Soviet Republics, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan; visit North Vietnam; stop off on the Trans-Siberian route at Perm.
As a reader these places seem less foreign or strange even than they did when I first read The Great Railway Bazaar in the 1990s. While his accounts are, perhaps, less revelatory he is still perceptive and entertaining. He delights in seeing countries `with their pants down' and seeks out red light districts, sex shops, dodgy bars and other dives. An encounter with a Ukrainian prostitute in Turkey is particularly heart-breaking in its sadness.
Occasionally he interviews or meets up with other celebrated authors: Orhan Pamuk in Turkey, Haruki Murakami in Tokyo and the late Arthur C Clarke in Sri Lanka, the latter wearing a T-shirt saying, `I invented the satellite and all I got was this lousy T-shirt'. These add colour to his travels, but as pieces of journalism tacked on to the narrative they are marvelous and seem to transcend the ordinary literary interview. Perhaps this is because he finds his subjects in their natural arena.
The Great Railway Bazaar is referred back to regularly. Theroux fills in some of the blank spaces of that trip: he was terribly home sick and aware of his wife having an extra-marital affair whilst he conducted that first trip, but this was ignored (for obvious reasons) in the first book (save for a dream he has on the Trans Siberian Express that hints at his wife's unhappiness and perhaps her vindictiveness too). At the same time, I felt by reading the two books concurrently I learnt more than he told me.
Which brings me on to my principle niggle with Theroux, which is the sense, sometimes, that he isn't always being straight with the reader, that he is somehow playing games. He admits that a passage in The Great Railway Bazaar, where he met an aged hotel manager on a train, was largely fabricated (he transplanted the conversation to a train carriage to add to its dramatic appeal, he said) and you wonder where else he has been economical with the truth. Why is his second wife, Sheila Donnelly, referred to as Penelope? Is she really at home (in Hawaii) knitting? His first wife Anne is referenced often, but I don't think in any of his work he's ever mentioned his sons as adults, the novelist Marcel Theroux, and TV documentary maker and goofball, Louis. I think there's a side to Theroux which we will never see, unless his first wife - as has often been rumored - brings out her memoir of life with the writer.
But all this is digression. Ghost Train to The Eastern Star is a wonderful travel book - lyrical, funny, meditative - and the best I've read in years. Possibly it is Theroux's greatest work. But don't read it on its own, though; read it with The Great Railway Bazaar, chapter by chapter and appreciate how the world, and Paul Theroux, have changed.
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K. N. Grieshaber
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Reviewed in the United States on 25 May 2013
