I like Theroux's travel writing because he's more interested in people than in landscapes and monuments. Travel and our experience of the world are mediated through people and their stories, yet so many travel writers seem averse to the kind of real-life chat roulette that can only be had by travelers or barflies. If Theroux is a misanthropist — which I think he is, and usually in an entertaining way — then it's surely a consequence of his having spoken to his fellow man all over the planet and found him, on the whole, a bit of a pain in the ass. This seems to me a defensible attitude, much more so than that of the Baedeker-style traveler (Chatwin for example) who prides himself on an open mind but seldom looks up from his notepad. He's a "traveler as an agent of provocation" as he says in his somewhat self-aggrandizing way.
Recent reviews
Recent lists
Recent writings
✦
✦
✦
