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Aug 23, 2024 · Paul Theroux (born April 10, 1941, Medford, Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American novelist and travel writer known for his highly personal observations on many locales. With bestsellers that include the nonfiction travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) and the adventure novel The Mosquito Coast (1982), he is credited with creating a new brand of travel literature that remained influential in ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
from the BBC programme Bookclub, September 1, 2013. [ 1 ] Paul Edward Theroux (/ θəˈruː /; [ 2 ] born April 10, 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films.
About Paul Theroux. Paul Theroux (‘The world’s most perceptive travel writer’--Daily Mail) is the author of many highly acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Great Railway Bazaa r (1975), The Mosquito Coast (1981) Riding the Iron Rooster (1983), and Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories (2014). In 2015, Paul Theroux was awarded a ...
- Overview
- Leslie Trew Magraw: You grew up in Medford, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston. What do you love about where you grew up?
- LTM: What’s your favorite town in New England?
- LTM: What’s the best way to experience a place?
- LTM: Why do you think it’s important to travel?
- LTM: What do you say when people make excuses for not traveling?
- LTM: What do you bring with you wherever you go?
- LTM: Do you have a favorite travel book?
- LTM: What made you realize that you wanted to make travel a permanent part of your life?
- LTM: What’s the best road trip you’ve ever taken?
Paul Theroux has been charming readers–and rooting out surprising adventures in far-flung places–for more than half a century. Known for his fondness for train travel, love-hate relationship with Africa, and literary panache, the veteran travel writer and novelist, now 73, continues to share his global insights with the world.
Theroux’s most recent book, The Last Train to Zona Verde, may seem like a fitting bookend to the book that kickstarted his career, but I have a feeling we’ll be hearing from this literary legend for years to come.
Paul Theroux: Being a coastal New Englander really shaped my life. I would find it almost impossible to live in an inland city or town. I simply can’t do it. I need to live where there’s the smell of the sea, where there’s water. Because of the feng shui, I suppose.
I also like the idea of forest next to a sea–like the Maine coast or the California or Oregon coasts. Where there’s sea and forest going up to the sea. That’s heaven to me.
PT: Thomaston, Maine, has everything. It has a village green. It has lovely houses. It used to once be a sea captain’s town. It’s unprepossessing. It’s not posh, but it’s beautiful. There are a couple of nice restaurants now.
It’s at the top of the St. George River, which goes out to the sea, so you could leave Chesapeake Bay and sail to Thomaston. Every Fourth of July they have a parade, and at Christmas there are decorations. It just seems to be the quintessential New England coastal town.
PT: Living there, I think. Living there and probably having a child in school [there]. If you can’t do that, just staying as long as possible and making friends. It’s certainly not breezing through.
The best way is to have something in common with people and to somehow see what kinds of burdens they have. Being a taxpayer in England, which I was for 18 years, taught me everything about living there.
PT: [Travel allows you to] know about the world, and to see how other people’s problems are closely related to your own–how other people’s lives are linked to your own.
PT: It’s like people who say, “I don’t have time to read.” It’s just an excuse, and it’s a pretty lame excuse. I can understand why someone might not have enough money to travel to distant places, but you don’t have to go very far to travel. You can find difference, and something to see, anywhere.
PT: I really wouldn’t go anywhere without a book to read. Also a notebook and a pen.
PT: I always say the same one, and it’s The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. In the process of writing The Tao of Travel, I found that there were 300 books that were worthy of quotation. That’s why I wrote that personal anthology of travel books.
PT: Going to Africa with the Peace Corps. I didn’t choose; I was sent to Nyasaland [now Malawi], and it was like going to another planet. I loved it. I was also away from my family, and that was a thrill, to be far, far away.
PT: Really the greatest one I took, the most memorable, was from the southern province of Malawi–through Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya–to Uganda in 1965. There were lions in the road, Maasai warriors, road blocks, giraffes. It was about 2,000 miles of dirt roads, and it was ’65 so there was very little other traffic. It was sort of pre-safari, pr...
Jun 14, 2018 · Paul Theroux is the godfather of contemporary travel writing, known for his transporting, first-person classics such as Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Deep South, The Tao of Travel and Dark Star ...
Apr 6, 2021 · Five Takeaways from a Conversation with Paul Theroux. With a new book out this month, the novelist and travel writer talks about his famous family, hanging with fellow Medford native Michael ...
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Mar 30, 2021 · For five days, Paul Theroux, the famous US travel writer, dined on hard-boiled eggs, microwaved dal and wine. He had set out cross-country in a rented Jeep Compass on the day before Thanksgiving ...
