Paul Edward Theroux

1
Paul Edward Theroux

• I often think that I became a writer because I
  have a good memory
• it is a very full and accessible one, packed
  with images and language.

2
His life

• 1941 Born in Medford, Massachusetts on April 10.
  Turning 64 in 2005.
• 1963 University of Massachusetts (BA)
• 1963 Joined Peace Corps and was sent to Malawi,
  Africa. Taught at a college and wrote sentimental
  articles for Christian Science Monitor. Also for
  Playboy, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly.

3
His life

• After leaving Peace Corps, taught English at
  Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
• He met his wife, Anne Castle, and also the writer
  V. S. Naipaul (Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001)
  there.
• V.S. Naipaul

4
His life(cont.)

• 1968 First son was born in Uganda. He also
  published his first 4 novels during the time
  staying in Uganda.
• 1968 Taught at the University of Singapore for 3
  years.
• 1970 Second son was born in Singapore. Theroux
  decided to be a full time writer because teaching
  life is monotonous.

5
His life(cont.)

• 1977 Awarded Fellowship from the American
  Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
• 1978 Awarded Whitbread prize for Picture
  Palace
• 1982 Awarded James Tait Black Award and
  Yorkshire Post Best Novel of the Year for The
  Mosquito Coast.
• 1989 Awarded Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for
  Riding the Iron Rooster.

6
Fictions

• Waldo (1967)
• Fong And The Indians (1968)
• Girls At Play (1969)
• Jungle Lovers (1971)
• Sinning With Annie (1972)
• Saint Jack (1973)
• The Black House (1974)
• The Family Arsenal (1976)
• The Consul's File (1977)
• Picture Palace (1978)
• The London Embassy (1982)

• Dr Slaughter (1985)
• O-zone (1986)
• The White Mans Burden (1987)
• My Secret History (1989)
• Chicago Loop (1990)
• To the ends of the Earth (1993)
• My Other Life (1996)
• Kowloon Tong
• (1997)
• Hotel Honolulu
• (2001)

7
Non-fictions

• The Great Railway Bazaar (1975)
• The Old Patagonian Express (1979)
• The Kingdom By The Sea (1983)
• Sailing Through China (1983)
• Sunrise With Seamonsters (1985)
• The Imperial Way (1985)

• Riding The Iron Rooster (1988)
• To The Ends Of The Earth (1990)
• The Happy Isles Of Oceania (1992)
• The Pillars Of Hercules (1995)
• Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998)
• Fresh Air Fiend (2000)
• Dark Star Safari (2003)

8
Non-fiction Fresh Air Fiend (2001)

• Collection of essays on travel writing it
  demonstrates how the traveling life and the
  writing life are intimately connected.
• Recollection of his work on travel writing. He
  made himself out of reach by others during
  traveling
• I found out much more about the world and myself
  by being unconnected.

9
Travel writing

• The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) rail journey
  across Europe, the Middle East, India, South East
  Asia, Japan Mongolia and Russia.
• The Old Patagonia Express (1979) journey from
  Boston to the southern tip of the America
• The Pillars of Hercules (1995) tour around the
  Mediterranean

10
Reflection on the process of doing travel
writing

• the difference between travel writing and
  fiction is the difference between recording what
  the eye sees and discovering what the imagination
  knows. Fiction is pure joy how sad I could not
  reinvent the trip as fiction.
• The Great Railway Bazaar

11
Riding the Iron Rooster (1988)

• Railway was the best way of traveling to Peking
  from London
• Iron Rooster (Tie Gongji) is the literal
  translation of how Chinese people call the train.
• It implies stinginess.

12
Background

• 1986 London ? Paris ? Germany ? Poland ? Moscow
  ? Irkutsk ? Mongolia ? Peking and continue to
  other parts of China
• Readers are able to take the journey with the
  author

13
Authors solitary on train

• The use of I all
• through the story.
• Isolated himself from
• other tour group
• members.

14
Ion the train

• I have been proud of the fact that no one on
  the tour had the slightest idea that I was a
  writer
• I hardly ever entered a conversation. I
  listened, I smiled, I made notes.
• I was the man who got up from lunch before it
  was over
• I was the man who was constantly drifting away
  the man with no last name.
• I was the quiet, dim, dull fellow in the old
  mackintosh, standing and whistling tunelessly on
  the platform.

15
However, being secretive wasnt much fun at all

• I had been so secretive on the tour it was like
  being invisible. It certainly wasnt much fun to
  be the dim, dull fellow in the mackintosh,
  keeping out of every conversation. Keeping quite
  gave me chest painsand if they gave me half a
  chance on the subject of travel I could seize
  their wrists like the Ancient Mariner and a tale
  unfold.

16
Women as the object of desire

• Like most men, I find myself staring at strange
  women, at the way they are dressed, and try to
  account for the fact that I am aroused.
• It is about seeking joy. Most of all, it is the
  recognition of a love object.
• Fresh Air Fiend

17
Hallo, Miss Ma said.

• Miss Ma is a young Chinese girl slipping her arm
  into Pauls in the street of Peking and became
  like a pair of old-fashioned lovers.
• Men, no matter which ones, look at women and
  begin to solve the sexual equationis she
  displaying sexual interest? And if so, is it
  directed at me? Fresh Air Fiend

18
He was from Singapore, she was from Hong Kong

• A couple slept in the berth above him on the
  Shanghai Express.
• The Chinese men was murmuring to his snickering
  bride.
• it reminded me even more strongly of the book I
  was reading, the Jin Ping Meithis was one of the
  most sexually explicit novels Id ever come
  across.

19
Jin Ping Mei

• Paul Theroux is not embarrassed to acknowledge
  that he read this pornography with over 2000
  pages of sexual acrobatics.
• The last scene in the novel (Golden Lotus not
  able to have sex with her husband) has been
  quoted to parallel the scene of the couple
  happening on the train.
• Also, as suggested by Mark Kramer, the structure
  of mixing of tales is able to amplify and
  reframe events.

20
Continueon the train

• The young woman swung across the ceiling into
  her own berth, and her fat little husband went
  after her. She laughed and dived into the berth
  above me. Was this going to go on all night?
• They began like the rustle of curtains, andthe
  thrashing of a body in a bed
• There was a whisper. It was so low I could not
  say whether it was the man or the pretty woman
  the word Nononono, repeated in a breathless
  yes-like way, Bubububu.
• He took his wife on his lap and tickled her
  until her shirt-tail came loose. Her stomach was
  the pale floury colour of a steamed bun and her
  small breasts hardly dented her bra. I found this
  tormenting.

21
Image-making

• The human sexual imagination isabout recovering
  the onset of sexuality, locking on to a desirable
  image.
• Craft of writing involves rumination, mimicry,
  joke-tellingand long period of solitude.
  Fresh Air Fiend
• Therefore, through different scenes, Therouxs
  object of desire is described in detail.
• The scene with two ladies proposing sex service
  also comes with details when Theroux is in Moscow
  in earlier part of the story.

22
Hotel HonoluluHis other writing about love and
the object of desire

• Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and
  therefore so penetrated with life and death.
• A novel about a writer starts his new life
  working in a Hawaii Hotel.Through living there
  with chaotic guests, he returns to writing again.

23
Annoying practice on train

• Bedding collection by car attendant at 5.30 am
• The sleeping-car attendant in a white
  pastrycooks hat and apron dug her fingers into
  my hip and yelled at me to get up.
• The train doesnt arrive until 7.15! Get up
  and give me the bedding!
• Shhlloooppp she whipped the bedding off me and
  left me shivering in my blue pyjamas in the
  pre-dawn darkness.
• The same trick happened on his way towards
  Mongolia

24
Changes in China

• The author uses the voice of the
• American Consul-General to
• intensify his amazement towards
• the changes in China.
• The Consul-General Stan Brooks said all the
  changes came by surprises.
• Paul Theroux noted that there are not only
  superficial changes, but also more substantial
  ones, like the way people talked about politics,
  money and their future.

25
Changesstudying English

• English is the unofficial language of the new
  China
• In Peking, Paul Theroux was told by a Chinese
  teacher, Chen, that the biggest single change in
  China is the peoples attitude towards education.
• Theroux made himself an English teacher for 3
  nights there.

26
In the classroom

• I felt a sort of giddy depression at the sight
  of so many students toiling in the semi-darkness
  of this haunted-looking building. The light was
  poor, the chalk squeaked, the desks creaked, the
  text-books were greasy and frayed, and the
  dictionaries were crumbling. The youngest student
  was eight, the oldest seventy-four. All of them
  worked during the day

27
It is always difficult for a writer to make
virtuous people interesting.

• The lengthy monologue by Theroux to the 3,000
  students expresses his recognition towards the
  courage and hard working attitude of the
  students.
• This is a scene that expresses his positive and
  admiring attitude. However, he is not sure if
  their effort will pay a price or not.
• What can one do except to say that they are
  worthy and that they are doing all they can to
  find their way through the Chinese mob?

28
English corner in Shanghai

• There were about 200 Chinese in Peoples
  Parksome were practising or looking for friends,
  but many of them I discovered to be seeking
  advice about English-speaking jobs or
  applications to English-language universities.
  English speakers in Shanghai comprised a sort of
  subculture, as in no other Chinese city.

29
Continue

• Paul Theroux thinks that this group of people
  wishes to distance themselves from the other
  culture i.e., the love for its own country.
• The scene with the German-speaking old man, Mr
  Zeng, suggested the variation of languages in
  China.

30
Dialogue

• About Therouxs thoughts
• Example of his dialogue with the wife of the
  American ambassador to China
• people mainly read diaries to discover trivial
  things and indiscretions. My advice would be put
  everything down, dont edit or censor it, and be
  as indiscreet as possible.
• I only keep a diary when I travel because
  travel writing is a minor form of autography.

31
Continue

• About Therouxs idea on people
• Example of Chinese hawker in flea market selling
  an opium pipe
• 40 yuan and worth every bit of it. Take it
  away.
• Listen, if you werent with this Chinese man I
  would have written 120 on a piece of paper and
  said Take it or leave it.
• I dont have to sell you this pipe, but youre
  a foreigner and I want to do you a favour.
• This is an antique, comrade. Its a collectors
  item. Its a pipe. Its a weapon. Take it.
• ? The dialogue in this scene expresses Therouxs
  attitude towards the Chinese. The non-stop
  dialogue can show the pushy way in selling away
  an item.

32
Scene

• Therouxs description of first impression on
  Peking seems like scene from movie.
• Dawn came up on Peking. It was immediately
  apparent that this sprawling and countrified
  capital was turning into a vertical city. It was
  thick with tall cranes, the heavy twenty-storey
  variety that are shaped like an upside-down L. I
  counted sixty of them before we reached Peking
  Central Station. They were building new blocks of
  flats, towers, hotels, office buildings.

33
Continue

• Buildings in Shanghai also create a special scene
  
• Following comrade Nings suggestion I walked to
  Suzhou Creek and looked at the Spiritual
  Civilization sign (CLING TO THE FOUR BEAUTIES).
  Then I walked farther, to the docks, a tangled,
  greasy, busy place of warehouses and the
  storerooms that Chinese call godowns, and little
  indoor factories of tinsmiths and lock-makers and
  box-assemblers and rope-twisters. I came to the
  Shanghai Seamens Club, a venerable building with
  teak-wood panelling and Art Deco lamps and fluted
  cornices and a serviceable billiard room. It was
  a big old building and covered with soot, but it
  was attractive in a gloomy and indestructible
  way.

34
Continue

• The scene in Datong Station expresses Paul
  Therouxs sadism in bureaucracy
• The glowering and barking woman at the gate in
  Datong Station at midnight was exactly like
  Cerberus. Three minutes before Lanzhou train
  pulled out she slammed the entry gate and
  padlocked it, leaving a group of soldiers and
  many other latecomers clinging to the bars, and
  making them miss their train. As a further
  indignity she switched off the overhead lights of
  the ticket barrier and left us all in the dark.
  She would not let me through until the Peking
  train pulled in. And then she slammed the gate
  again and made more latecomers watch while I
  boarded. It is not merely unbending there is
  often a lot of sadism in bureaucracy.

35
Novels that turn into movies

• Half Moon Street (1986)
• based on his novel Dr. Slaughter
• The Mosquito Coast (1986)
• based on his novel
• The Mosquito Coast

36
Colour

• It was at Xuzhou in the yellow light of early
  morning that I saw the first real greenery since
  leaving London over a month beforewith big black
  pigs balanced neatly on their trotters in the
  foregroundwhite swimming ducks and fluttering
  geese, a small girl in a blue tunic sitting
  astride a buffalo on his way to Shanghai

37
Continue

• Shanghai is an old brown riverside city with the
  look of Brooklyn, and the Chineselike it for its
  mobs and its street-life.
• the women workers showed up at their factories
  with bright sweaters and frilling blouses under
  their blue baggy suits

38
Continue

• There is no more austere sight in nature than
  birch trees set among small snow-covered hills, a
  study in black and white that is made starker by
  the crows and their nests, the fat black birds in
  the branches or looking deranged, flapping in the
  white sky.
• when Paul is leaving Moscow to Irkutsk

39
Sound

• Incorporating Putonghua into sentences are able
  to create an exotic mood.
• The average person couldnt read a book that was
  neican, and there was another phrase, neibu, for
  the things they couldnt talk about to
  foreigners
• From the train Peking had looked impressive a
  city on the rise, cranes everywhere, and workmen
  scrambling across girders, and the thump of
  pile-drivers going Zhong-guo! Zhong-guo!
• Most of Chinas successful fashion designers
  work in Shanghai, and if you utter the words Yifu
  Sheng Luolang the Shanghainese will know you are
  speaking the name of Yves Saint-Laurent.

40
Words with sound

• And she was always fluttering and giggling she
  was dizzy, didnt know anything, couldnt cook,
  didnt even speak English in spite of having
  grown up in a British colony
• All day the pile-drivers hammered steel into
  this soft soil to fortify it, and one was right
  outside my window cruel and dominating noise
  that determined the rhythm of my life. Zhong-guo!
  Zhong-guo! It orchestrated my talking, too, it
  made me write in bursts, and when I brushed my
  teeth I discovered I did it to the pounding of
  this pile-driver, the bang and its half-echo,
  Zhong-guo!

41
Critics on Riding the Iron Rooster

• He is the master of describing minor characters
  in everyday life.
• Stephen Greenblatt said the cumulative power
  of these fragments is considerablethese
  glimpses of the strangeness of the everyday
  disclose a redeeming quality that lies behind Mr
  Therouxs grumpiness and cynicism.
• Example Use of dialogue to highlight the
  characteristics of the Chinese hawker in the flea
  market bargaining scene. It shows how Paul
  Theroux is cynical about the Chinese thinking We
  can always fool a foreigner.

42
Critics on Riding the Iron Rooster

• I write the kind of travel book that I would
  want to read myself, if I were the reader.
• Quote from interview with Stephen Capen
  of Worldguide in 1995
• However, he is thought to over-generalize on the
  characters and he goes overboard trying to
  convince his readers that the majority of the
  Chinese are contemptible or foolish.

43
Examples from New York Times

• I hated sight-seeing in China. I felt the
  Chinese hid behind their rebuilt ruins so that no
  one could look closely at their lives.
• Mr Tian shrugged, shook my hand, and without
  another word walked off. It was the Chinese
  farewell there was no lingering, no swapping of
  addresses, no reminiscence, nothing sentimental.
  At the moment of parting they turned their backs,
  because you ceased to matter and because they had
  so much else to worry about.
• ?New York Times thinks that the behaviour of
  these Chinese cannot be assumed to be typically
  Chinese.
• ?It comments that the end result of being over
  generalized is being opinionated, petty and
  incomplete portrait of that country.

44
Now

• He still writes.
• New York Times, March 20 He talks about his
  shortwave radio that he uses when he travel.

45
His private life

• Theroux currently divides his time between Cape
  Cod and Hawaii, where he lives with his second
  wife
• He has two sons Marcel Theroux, writer and TV
  presenter Louis Theroux, TV presenter.
• His second profession bee keeping! Theroux sells
  his honey under the brand name Oceania Ranch Pure
  Hawaiian Honey.