For Paul Theroux, the seeds of wanderlust were planted early. Coming from a
large family, he spent his younger years longing to escape the bustle of his
daily existence, yearning for a space of his own. He first sought this other
world in books, calling reading both "a refuge and an indulgence," but soon
he found another refuge, hiking the woods that bordered his family's home:
"On my own, I had a clearer sense of who I was, and I had a serious curiosity
about what I found in the woods. The taxonomy of the trees and flowers and
birds was a new language I learned in this new world."
Theroux has been traveling ever since and has documented his worldly exploits
in a plethora of books, many of which have become travel literature classics.
His latest, FRESH AIR FIEND, a collection of writings accumulated over the
last 15 years, is a showcase for just how entertaining travel writing can be.
FRESH AIR FIEND is divided into eight sections: Time Travel; Fresh Air Fiend;
A Sense of Place; China; The Pacific; Books of Travel; Escapees and Exiles;
and Fugues. The essays in Time Travel deal specifically with the various
aspects of his creative process, the dubious reliability of memory as well as
Theroux's personal opinions on the respect good travel writing should garner
in the literary world. In "Travel Writing: The Point of It," he states, "A
book has the capacity to express a country's heart, as long as it stays away
from vacations, holidays, sightseeing, and the half-truths in official
handouts; as long as it concentrates on people in their landscape, the
dissonance as well as the melodies, the contradictions, and the vivid trivia
--- the fungi on the wet boots."
Theroux takes a magnifying glass to that fungi, and this quality in his
writing is what lifts him above the average travel documentarian. From his
kayaking adventures to his camping trips, Theroux gives us stroke-by-stroke
details with one difference --- he comments as much on the inner landscape as
the outer terrain. In "Camping in the Snow," Theroux writes, "It is simply
impossible to explain except in metaphysical terms, yet who wants to hear a
camping trip deconstructed as a critical aspect of enlightenment? The motives
of this effort are a personal matter, yet no bystander --- and no reader ---
ought to be subjected to a pompous discussion of the wilderness experience
and the Meaning of Life. Nonetheless, it is nearer to the truth to understand
this passion of solitary skiing along narrow forest trails in the winter as
an exploration of the heart and mind --- an inner journey."
Yet Theroux writes no dry dissertations on the metaphysical flights of fancy
his mind takes as his body is hurled through violent waves, skates across
snowfields, or trudges the weary miles of some mountain trail. No, his gifts
lie in the quality of the writing itself, as in his description of the sky in
"Down the Zambezi:"
"In the extravagant African sunset, the Zambezi River was deep red,
reflecting the crimson sky, and it shimmered in oxbows across the dusk-black
landscape of the floodplain like a vessel thick with blood."
China is brought to life in several essays. In "Down the Yangtze" Theroux
describes this great river of the Far-East: "The Yangtze is China's main
artery, its major waterway, the source of many of its myths, the scene of
much of its history. On its banks are some of its greatest cities. It is the
fountainhead of superstition. It provides income and food to half the
population. It is one of the most dangerous rivers in the world, in some
places one of the dirtiest, in others one of the most spectacular. The
Chinese drink it and bathe in it and wash clothes in it and shit in it. It
represents both life and death. It is a wellspring, a sewer, and a tomb;
depthless in the gorges, puddle-shallow at its rapids. The Chinese say if you
haven't been up the Great River, you haven't been anywhere."
It seems Theroux has been everywhere, from the islands of the South Pacific
to the wilds of northern Maine, from the Far East to the Middle East. He
travels the literary landscapes of Graham Greene, Bruce Chatwin, Joseph
Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, William Least-Heat Moon, and
John McPhee. In one essay he gives us an around-the-world litany of
"Unspeakable Rituals and Outlandish Beliefs."
Through all of the pieces contained in "FRESH AIR FIEND," the reader is
compelled to listen to what Theroux is saying, compelled to read on, sensing
that Theroux himself is such a good listener...a listener not only to the
people he encounters, but a man with an ear to the ground, a hand cupped
toward the horizon, seeking out the mysterious whispers on the wind.
--- Reviewed by Vern Wiessner
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