About book Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings (2001)
From this book and 'Sir Vidia's Shadow,' which I also recently finished, I can say that I very much trust Theroux as a reliable guide and observer, an insightful writer about people and place. I've read little of his fiction so far (only a few stories here and there, never a novel) but I liked this collection of travel writings a good deal. The book is divided into thematic sections, which really helps as there are numerous essays here, all written between 1985 and 2000. Early on Theroux makes a case for travel writing and the kind of writing one should aspire to: "An unlikely source, Nabokov's novel, 'Laughter in the Dark,' contains a passage that amply illustrate a justification for Chatwin's sort of travel writing. One of the characters says:"A writer for instance talks about India which I have seen and gushes about dancing girls, tiger hunts, fakirs, betel nuts, serpents: the Glamour of the Mysterious East. But what does it amount to? Nothing. Instead of visualizing India I merely get a bad toothache from all these Eastern delights. Now, there's the other way, as for instance, the fellow who writes: "Before turning in I put out my wet boots to dry and in the morning I found that a thick blue forest had grown on them ("Funghi, Madam," he explained)...' and at once India becomes alive for me. The rest is shop." [49-50].Theroux continues: "In seven long travel books and an assortment of shorter ones, I have been, figuratively speaking, putting my wet boots out to dry and describing what the morning brings. I've taken people as I've found them." [50]And now for your amusement, an excerpt from Theroux's essay, "Unspeakable Rituals," in the very last section of this collection:The Mouse Missions of the Plashwits"Among the Plashwits, a pastoral people in central Asian Turkestan, the ability to carry a live mouse in one's mouth for a great distance without harming the creature is regarded as an essential skill, acquired in the passage from boy to man."A Plashwit boy becomes a warrior by feeding flesh from his own body to the mouse, and once the mouse is fattened in a way that impresses the commander of the Plashwit army, it is eaten."The male organ in Plashwit is also known as a mouse. Plashwit women are forbidden to look at a mouse or even utter the word." [444-45]Not all of the book is this exotic of course, and in fact this essay is unlike any of the others, being composed only of these curious rituals from around the world.No matter the subject, Theroux is consistently engaging and insightful.
This was a strange mixture of Paul Theroux's non-fiction writing. There was less of his usual travel writing, which I enjoy so much. Near the beginning was an large, difficult-to-digest chunk on modern China reminiscent of the least enjoyable swathes of a school history syllabus. I willed myself through it and ended up feeling I knew a bit more about the country, if not attracted to it. However, it is surely a worthy report and analysis. Theroux really does get right into the thick of places and his anecdotes about individual people are vivid.The remainder of the book featured travel writing in the form of articles and essays. Of particular interest, I thought, were those on the Upper Zambesi and the hand over of Hong Kong. Other parts discussed diverse themes including the actual business of travel writing and a fascinating one about other travel writers including Graham Greene and Bruce Chatwin. A bit of a mix, this book, where one might be inclined to skip sections, but there is much of interest and several delightful pieces.
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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 ofWai-nani, High Chiefess of Hawai’i-Her Epic Journey
—Linda
Theroux is smart. Theroux is voracious. Theroux is downright fearless -- he travels to obscure places and interviews everybody, and he doesn't mind getting stuck in hairy situations. His profiles on exotic locales and his literary reviews are wonderful to read. People like me often aspire to be a writer like him.And yet.Where some people find him egotistical or glum, I think Theroux's biggest weakness is his self-satisfaction. There are many pieces in "Fresh Air Fiend" that flirt with arrogance. Theroux not only criticizes others for their way of life (Americans, Brits, the Chinese), but he applauds his own lifestyle with joyless pride. Theroux reminds me of a lot of fellow New Englanders I've known -- unafraid to quote themselves, to cast themselves as heroes of their own narratives, then matter-of-factly condescend to others. Theroux is an empathetic fellow, and he claims that travel is an optimistic pursuit; these are the qualities that keep me reading. But I think I'll need a break from Theroux for a year or so. Spend enough time with him and you get the sneaking suspicion that Theroux is something of an misanthrope. He seems rootless and distant, a man of strong opinions and very little emotion."Fresh Air Fiend" is my favorite kind of book, a collection of vignettes gathered over many years, as was his "Sunrise with Sea Monsters." I look forward to delving into Theroux's work again, but like two friends who have road-tripped too long together, I think we'll need to book separate rail passes. Sometime in the future, we will rendezvous again, and I'll remember solely the things I liked about him.
—Robertisenberg
On the whole I found it quite enjoyable, though I must say it was fairly erratic as the pieces are not really connected together in a smooth flowing timeline.The perspectives, analogies and explanations for the travel experiences in each country were unrepentantly incisive, and that made this a rewarding read. Strange how even the earliest travel writings here are still very topical and relevant.The style of writing took some time getting used to though. The more detailed out event descriptions sometimes related to the most mundane of topics, and the points that would have been interesting (for me at least) were wrapped up in a couple of tines...
—Vineet
