Aspects of Paul Theroux's writing that I've always enjoyed are his astute observations, his acerbic jabs, and the vast range of his reading.
A self-confessed graphomaniac, he opens the book with an obscure quote from the bible (Habakkuk) and towards the end mentions a favourite book, Freud's Civilization and its Discontents.
His command of language is impressive without being pedantic. "Overegged" (used twice) is a delightful new word I learned. Its meaning was easy to guess at, or so I thought until trying it out on my wife. She figured it had something to do with a failed recipe.
Writers
Approximately a third of the 30 pieces are about writers -- Henry David Thoreau, Hunter Thompson, Joseph Conrad, E.B. White, Paul Bowles, Somerset Maugham, Harper Lee -- as well as:
Oliver Sacks - a brilliant man whose oddities make him resemble some of his patients. Theroux describes a walk around the streets of New York with him and one of his patients, a gifted artist with Tourette syndrome. Theroux observes Sacks observing how the patient interacts with others, including Theroux.
Graham Greene - one of the longest and most interesting entries consists of three articles grouped under the general heading of "Greeneland." One is about Greene himself, while the others focus on two of his books, Journey without Maps and The Comedians.
Muriel Spark - after reading this piece I rushed out and bought one of her novels.
Georges Simenon - predicted that he would win the "Swedish lottery" and was outraged when Camus did. Theroux remarks that there are interesting similarities in their work.
Travel
The core of the travel articles are set in Africa and include "Stanley: The Ultimate African Explorer," and Theroux's observations about Greene's African experiences.
In "The Rock Star's Burden" Theroux blasts aid projects, believing they do more harm than good, and takes specific aim at Bono's involvement, ridiculing "his role as Mrs. Jellyby in a ten-gallon hat, which he frequently talks through." (Dervla Murphy, in an Irish Times review of Figures in a Landscape, agrees with this assessment.) And when Theroux sees Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Sudan, "the image that sprang to my mind was of Tarzan and Jane." These views are dramatized in his novel, The Lower River.
Another accusatory piece is "The Seizures in Zimbabwe," which first appeared as the epilogue to the paperback edition of Dark Star Safari. It refers to farmers being forced off their farms and the country's resulting economic collapse. "Seizure" in this respect has a double meaning.
Autobiographical Musings
The last piece in the book is entitled "The Trouble with Autobiography," in which he writes:
I have no intention of writing an autobiography, and as for allowing others to practice what Kipling called "the higher cannibalism" on me (Henry James called biographers "post-mortem exploiters"), I plan to frustrate them by putting obstacles in their way. |
He then gives a brief but interesting survey of autobiographies by major writers, noting their evasions, omissions, and falsifications, but at the end confesses, "The more I reflect on my life, the greater the appeal of the autobiographical novel." The book's final sentence: "Therefore, when my Copperfield beckoned, I wrote Mother Land."
In fact, there are many items of an autobiographical nature in the book, and include pieces on living in England and Hawaii, raising geese, collecting art, travelling in dangerous places, a narrow escape from a sexual predator in New York, and "My Life as a Reader."
The article on England (where Theroux lived for 18 years as an official alien) veers between the hilarious and the horrific (riots, bombings). "I learned to smile the ambiguous alien smile when English people said, 'America's so violent.'
One of the longest articles in the book concerns his father who, though born in Massachusetts, spoke French with a Quebecois accent (much like Kerouac, I assume). Theroux incorporated aspects of him in Allie Fox, the protagonist of The Mosquito Coast.
This book is Theroux's third collection of essays. The dust jacket photo from his first collection, Sunrise with Sea Monsters: Travels and Discoveries 1964-1984, is below left. The one from this book is below right.
