Word: ghosts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That's true even if you're Paul Theroux, arguably the dean of all living travel writers and certainly one of the most accomplished. In his latest, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux retraces the steps he took in his first notable travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar, published more than 30 years ago. Ghost Train's conceit is Theroux exploring not only how the places he visited back then have changed, but how he has as well. "The decision to return to any early scene in your life is dangerous but irresistible, not as a search for lost...
...Vincent eventually quit the call center and go to work for another company (or maybe found one, Theroux doesn't quite say) that makes low-cost shirts for big American brands like Kenneth Cole and Tommy Hilfiger. These guys are "exploited?'' They don't seem to be. Considering Ghost Train is supposed to hark back to the journey Theroux took three decades ago, we might get a better sense of whether or not Vidiadhar and Vincent are exploited if we knew what their parents' lives were like. But Theroux doesn't bother to find...
...also a mystery at the core of the novel: What happened to Felix Atwood, the man whom Nelly used to be married to and who disappeared under mysterious circumstances? In keeping with its pervasive and carefully modulated echoing of Henry James - especially of his open-ended and slippery ghost stories - this is a book full of hauntings, specters, doubles, reflections and revenants. They stalk the two types of art or mimetic representation that the book brings into contact with each other: Tom's, in language; Nelly's, in images. They also mark the lives and memories of the characters...
People say that John Keats' ghost haunts his house below Rome's Spanish Steps. And, according to legend, a dragon lurks beneath the columns of Castor and Pollux's temple in the Forum. These are just a few of the tidbits to be found within the new Rome edition of The Ruyi, a series of guidebooks (www.theruyi.com) that turn visits to Italian cities into intriguing treasure hunts...
...there is a big catch to having a production classified as Chinese, and that's censorship. Mainland regulations can stifle creativity and place tight restraints on Hong Kong cinema's anything-goes style. Ghost stories are ruled out or carefully tweaked, as are sociopolitical comment and almost anything racy. Finales with wrongdoers walking off scot-free are among other no-nos, too. For some, meeting Chinese standards is a matter of good business sense. "You just have to adapt when it comes to the market," says Wellington Fung, secretary general of the Film Development Council (FDC), a government body established...