Paul Theroux on the importance of traveling slowly
“Travel is transition, and at its best it is a journey from home, a setting forth. I hated parachuting into a place. I needed to be able to link one place to another. One of the problems I had with travel in general was the ease and speed with which a person could be transported from the familiar to the strange, the moon shot whereby the New York office worker, say, is insinuated overnight into the middle of Africa to gape at gorillas. That was just a way of feeling foreign. The other way, going slowly, crossing national frontiers, scuttling past razor wire with my bag and my passport, was the best way of being reminded that there was a relationship between Here and There, and that a travel narrative was the story of There and Back.”
–Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari (2003)
November 5th, 2004 at 4:52 pm
Yeah, isn’t that a great book? It tells you a lot about Africa; it tells you more about how to travel. Theroux is so dyspeptic that I think his publisher should package each book with a bottle of Maalox, but, boy! No one can capture and communicate the spirit of a place like Theroux
November 8th, 2004 at 6:35 pm
Yeah, Theroux is cranky but always very smart and perceptive as well.
November 8th, 2004 at 10:34 pm
I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I actually LIKE his crankiness.
Go figure.