On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Road Trip (2019) is a travel memoir. It is a car trip along the border and the length of Mexico from the frontier to Chiapas. Before Paul Theroux left for his road trip, he received many reasons not to go.
The author begins his Mexican journey in a border town between Mexico and the United States, where he meets an ‘iconic’ figure of an old man in the desert. Theroux too is old, he says, writing his memoir at the age of 76.
The ruins of a convent is called San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca – the plain of snakes. The memoir continues in five parts from the Borderlands to the Way Back, from travel to politics.
And then Theroux sees a snake – ‘a hank of shimmering scales.’ Of the milk snakes, blind snakes, rat snakes, pit vipers, garden snakes, and boa constrictors, the first snake he saw was a coachwip snake. This novel is not just about snakes. It is also about vegetation, landscapes, birds, animals, the border fence, food, and people. Theroux also compares his journey to the one taken by American author Jack Kerouac in his 1957 novel On the Road.
From Nogales on the Arizona-Mexico border, he tells about the lives and crossings of Mexican migrants and the border fence. In Monterrey, he sees undulant butterflies, visits the markets, and sees Mexico by day and night, on foot and on the road. He attends language school and culinary school to learn along the way.
In Mexico City, he stays long enough to ‘slip into the urban routine’ and finding that it was ‘easy to see how so many foreigners visiting Mexico City decided to spend the rest of their lives here.’ For four days in Puebla he strolls around the city, thinking about the English travel writer Grahame Greene and his 1939 novel The Lawless Roads.
He joins in celebrations and festivities and whatever he encounters. He publishes articles, befriends Mexican writers, speaks at literary events, and finds a Mexican publisher.
This is another interesting travel memoir from the prolific author. It is evocative and eloquent, observant and insightful. And at the end are a selection of wonderful colour Steve McCurry photographs of the author and his travels.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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