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BOOK REVIEW

PAUL

THEROUX’s

BOOKS

Fred H. Olin, M.D.

Author Paul Theroux, Photographer – William Furniss

Every now and then a TV magazine show such as “CBS Sunday Morning” or “20/20” will
present what they call an “Appreciation” of some person, often one who has died recently.
Now, to the best of my knowledge, as of this writing Paul Theroux hasn’t died, but I’m going
to write this anyway.
Mr. Theroux has been writing travel books for more than 40 years, and I have been buying
and reading them. These are NOT about beaches, cathedrals, castles, museums, sight-seeing
or fancy hotels, no, no, no! He decides to take a journey and does it the hard way… on the
ground, using railroads and local transit and walking.
His first travel book, “The Great Railway Bazaar,” tells about his 1973 trip by rail (mostly)
from London to Tokyo, via Istanbul, India, Burma, Vietnam and Japan (as well as places in be-
tween) and his return on the Trans-Siberian Express. He describes the various characters he
met along the way and tells us what he learns about them.
“The Kingdom by the Sea” recounts a walk/ride he took around the periphery of England
and Scotland. When asked about the rather acerbic tone of “Kingdom,” he said “No one had
written about the British as natives of a foreign country who talk funny, have funny eating
habits, wear funny clothes and have recreations and entertainments that seem strange.”
A relatively recent travel book, “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” (2008), is a veritable repeat
of the first except now the Soviet Union is gone, so he includes several central Asian republics
and China is now open to him.
Among the 14 travel books he recounts journeys through Africa (“Dark Star Safari” and “Last
Train to Zona Verde”), Latin America (“The Old Patagonian Express”) and the South Pacific
(The Happy Isles of Oceania.”) In “Happy Isles” he starts in New Zealand, checks out Australia
and then, traveling with a collapsible kayak, visits several of the island nations of the Pacific. In
2015, he published “Deep South,” his first travel book about the U.S., in which he tells about
driving from his part-time home in Massachusetts (he mostly lives in Hawaii) down the east coast
and across the South. He pretty much avoids big cities and freeways and visits dying small towns,
African-American churches, sharecroppers and Grandes Dames, and is both sympathetic and crit-

28 San Antonio Medicine • April 2018