Figures in a Landscape: People and Places (2018) is not really a memoir by author Paul Theroux—it is more of a collection of 30 essays and remembrances about his travels.
Theroux begins by offering tips for travel writers: ‘True travel and the inquiry of the essayist requires the simpler stratagems of being humble, patient, solitary, anonymous, and alert.’ He adds, ‘I don’t see how it it possible to get at the truth of a country without seeing its underside, its hinterland, its everyday life. Not bureacrats in offices, but figures in the landscape.’
Writing in his late 70s, he laments the old style of writing: ‘The writing profession that I have always known is changing, old media is ossified, and what I know of new media is that it is causal, opinionated, improvisational, largely unedited, full of whoppers, often plagiarized, and poorly paid.’ But admits that he is probably wrong. Even if he is wrong, he has a lot of things to say about his travels.
Theroux says books have led him astray—books led him to Africa, India, Burma (Myanmar), Patagonia, and ‘to the ends of the earth.’ He writes of the books that led him astray, and their authors, such as writer Graham Greene, who wrote Journey Without Maps (1936) and Joseph Conrad who wrote Heart of Darkness (1899).
He begins in the 1960s in Ecuador. He discusses travel and all sorts of things with famous and/or the well-travelled. He tells of seeing Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch with Elzabeth Taylor by helicopter—and dedicates a long chapter to her. And to actor Robin Williams and singer Bono.
I liked the chapter on My Life as a Reader, in which Theroux starts with the books that were banned in the United States and how it affected his reading and his hometown library in Medford—‘coming of age at a time of forbidden books.’ These include D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. But he found a lot more books in the library—and his list is interesting. Personally, he focuses on the writer, rather than solely on one of their books: ‘Rather than read a book, I read a writer.’ He writes of the authors he loves.
The collection of essays spans 14 years and provides a fascinating insight into a writer’s life, his travels, his friends, his interviewees, his travel companions, his father, and his reading.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Comments
Post a Comment