Sep 07, 2008 04:28 AM
by Stefan Beck
The travel writer Paul Theroux, who is the subject of this weekend’s Wall Street Journal interview, is a giant in his field. He has written forty-three books, including the prize-winning novel The Mosquito Coast, made into a memorable film of the same name starring Harrison Ford. He’s also stuck his neck out to make some unpopular but important statements about the Western attitude toward African aid, even daring to question the wisdom of Saint Bono. Surely it’s fair to say, as Tunku Varadarajan does, that Theroux “practically invented the modern genre of travel writing.”
Perhaps, so long as we keep that “practically” in mind. Theroux wrote his breakthrough book The Great Railway Bazaar, about traveling from Europe to Asia by train, in 1975. Patrick Leigh Fermor published three books before giving the world Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese in 1958. This he followed with Roumeli, A Time of Gifts, and Between the Woods and the Water, three of the greatest books, travel or otherwise, ever written. I note this not to diminish Theroux’s enormous achievement but to direct the reader’s attention to a far more gripping interview, in the Telegraph, with Fermor, the ninety-three-year-old dean of travel writing. At sixty-seven, Theroux may still “turn heads,” but can he say that he romanced a Byzantine princess or kidnapped a Nazi commander (the latter while disguised as a shepherd)?
I know what you’re thinking—tough act to follow. Read the whole thing here.