'Real' Travel | Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings

THE WRITER COMES THROUGH AGAIN! | Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings | Paul Theroux

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	• Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings Paul Theroux Mariner Books, 2001 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Delicate Balance

Paul Theroux says normal people don't become writers. It is just not healthy to sit in a room for hours staring intently into your own mind. He counter-balances this basically inward condition by paddling thousand of miles in a kayak. In Fresh Air Fiend he explains why and how this type of therapy has become an intrinsic part of his life. This pot- pourri of his experiences and reflections, is more about Paul the human being rather than Paul the observer, than any his other books. He explains why he wrote the books he has, and why he took the trips that inspired them. He never intended to be a travel writer. Like Mark Twain, another great travel writer who needed to make a living as a writer, he did it out of necessity. The fact that he has always been an outsider--just the unhealthy prospective you need to succeed in his line of work--helped him become one of our best contemporary commentators.

Linda Ballou-adventure travel writer and author of
Wai-nani, High Chiefess of Hawai'i-Her Epic Journey

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'Real' Travel

Paul Theroux's travel books differ from most travel books;
he does not plop the reader down before a grand & famous site to behold it in silent and contemplative wonder. Theroux takes the reader with him on the train ride to the location which can be unbearably uncomfortable, tedious -- and delayed; and often interrupted by unpleasant if interesting men and women. This is travel as it really is not as we would wish it to be. This first-rate writer of fiction and non fiction, compulsively readable, is like the portrait painter whose portraits of the famous include 'warts and all.' Highly recommended.

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THE WRITER COMES THROUGH AGAIN!

I usually search for a Paul Theroux book when I'm travelling, be it a plane, ship or carriage, probably living vicariously through some of his adventures and watching for people and things along the trail that he noticed. I liked the way the book was broken up into quick-reading chapters and about places that I was interested in. Two of my favorite places, being a quasi-islander, are Hawaii and the Philippines, especially Palawan Island. He was right-on with his reviews, particularly Palawan, which I always consider a series of islands of mystery, unpredictability and never-ending beauty. I enjoyed his characterization of Bruce Chatwin, the funeral, and Chatwin's endless chatter and mimicry. It's gotta be interesting to go from the Maine Woods and down the Zambezi and then a trip to China, and demanding for the body's digestive system - many strange foods and customs. An excellent book that should be read by travellers, even if your "boat" happens to be an armchair. Buy it!

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Hodge Podge of a Book

Theroux gives us a literary delicatessen of vignettes and experiences from his writings and from personal experiences. Some of the chapters are great, some exceedingly boring. Every journalist has pieces of stories and experiences which, in themselves, would not constitute books, so they look for ways to package them in a saleable fashion. This is what Theroux has done here. This book seems to be less about his travels than about his opinions on a wide range of subjects. On the other hand, we learn a lot about this able and prolific author and how he thinks. It was a worthwhile read, but I did a lot of chapter skipping.

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A mixed (overstuffed) (travel) bag

Tackling a 25-hour cassette book is challenging enough without this narrator, whose gasping intake of breath is audible before nearly every sentence on most of the tapes. Perhaps he had a cold. I have not heard Theroux's own voice, so I will hear Dietz in my head from henceforth when Theroux is mentioned. When reading dialog spoken by Chinese or Filipinos, Dietz affects a high-pitched sing-song voice, although he is reading English. He does not do this for other non-English speakers. As for the book itself, a collection of travel-related essays is fine. However, such a huge portion of the book deals with Theroux's travels in China that these should have been made a separate collection. The essays on other travel writers and Theroux's own writing history could have been collected in yet another volume, though they're not out of place here. The essays on Defoe, Thoreau, and the polar explorers were enjoyable surprises. The couple on Bruce Chatwin were not. One essay on unusual social practices is particularly interesting. Nonetheless, after this behemoth, I'm through with Theroux for a while.

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Paul Theroux's first collection of essays and articles devoted entirely to travel writing, FRESH AIR FIEND touches down on five continents and floats through most seas in between to deliver a literary adventure of the first order, with the incomparable Paul Theroux as a guide. From the crisp quiet of a solitary week spent in the snowbound Maine woods to the expectant chaos of Hong Kong on the eve of the Hand-over, Theroux demonstrates how the traveling life and the writing life are intimately connected. His journeys in remote hinterlands and crowded foreign capitals provide the necessary perspective to "become a stranger" in order to discover the self. A companion volume to SUNRISE WITH SEAMONSTERS, FRESH AIR FIEND is the ultimate good read for anyone fascinated by travel in the wider world or curious about the life of one of our most passionate travelers.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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