Paul Theroux Approaches Sixty

Towards the end of “Ghost Stories: A Letter from Hong Kong on the Eve of the Hand-over,” the last of three China pieces in Paul Theroux’ second essay collection, Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings 1985–2000, the author does something unusual. He tires. When he does so, he is in the Jeremy Irons-Sinead O’Connor suite of Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel, attending a farewell party for Ruben Blades. After the passing around of sushi, smoked salmon, champagne, and coffee—the writer cannot have any; he has the gout—Theroux excuses himself. He has an interview to do in the morning. He goes home early.

In the Paul Theroux canon, moments of fatigue are worth remarking. He is, after all, the writer famous for having crossed and re-crossed planet earth’s maximum east-west railroad breadth (London to Tokyo to London), the writer who has gone by train from Boston to Patagonia, the man who walked around England, paddled the Pacific, and circled the Mediterranean. Significantly, in his accounts of these journeys—The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, The Kingdom by the Sea, The Happy Isles of Oceania, The Pillars of Hercules, respectively—he rarely confesses to turning in early, or, on those occasions when he does, he is driven to do so by his own sulks or by the ignorant conversation of those around him, not by lack of energy. Hence, the alarm caused by his being the first of Irons’ guests to say goodnight. The world asks, has Paul Theroux lost some of his go?

Happily, the answer seems to be no. The first good news that comes out of Fresh Air Fiend is this: that into late middle age, the writer remains indefatigable. Comprised of essays published between his forty-forth and fifty-ninth years, the book brings together short, journalistic work written while approximately fourteen full-length books were also in the making. That is a great deal of writing. The essays in Fresh Air Fiend, moreover, describe several impressive outlays of physical energy—a hike through seven African countries, Cape Cod in a kayak, Maine on skis, Hawaii and Micronesia also by kayak. In its pages, the author swims with sharks, camps with bats, bravely dips his hat in Africa’s Zambezi River, and drinks. Significantly, in the course of his exertions, the early departure at the Peninsula Hotel is the sole instance of his backing off from a write-able experience, or a challenge. To the contrary, he claims repeatedly, “Dire warnings [against the doing of something dangerous] make me feel as if I am doing the right thing.” This, of course, is an adolescent way of thinking. So too is his definition of a fun time, indirectly given at the end of a Pacific kayaking excursion. He judges the trip a “wonderful time” because, during it, he has “camped on empty islands and went up rivers and saw snakes in trees and had his tent butted by monitor lizards, and in seaside villages everyone complimented him on his tattoos, and he had several marriage proposals.” At the end of this “wonderful time,” he is so deliciously “content, naked, alone and happy” on an uninhabited island that he shouts out to himself, “I am a monkey.” This moment—and the book in general—would seem to rout all suspicion that Theroux has grown old, or up. To the degree that his six decades have not made him sedentary, they also have not taught him verbal discretion. Bold, memorable, and politically irresponsible sentences continue to occur to him, and he continues to report them. In Fresh Air Fiend, the writer, who once wrote off New Zealand as “seventy million sheep farting in the glorious meadows,” now says of the African townships of his Peace Corp era that “they were superficially English, like English culture made out of mud.”

Of course, all of this physical vigor and verbal irrepressibility can have only one meaning: that in this book, Theroux’ subtext is his age...