Word: theroux
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...CONSUL'S FILE by Paul Theroux...
...tried to be moderate and dependable," says the young American diplomat-narrator of Paul Theroux's latest fiction, "for the fact is that colorful characters-almost unbearable in the flesh -are colorful only in retrospect." For ten years now the productive Theroux has been transforming the unbearable flesh encountered during his wide travels into pleasurable pages. His eight novels include Girls at Play, Jungle Lovers and Saint Jack, whose settings and atmospheres were drawn from the author's years as a Peace Corpsman in Africa and a teacher in Malaysia...
...Consul's File, the author returns to Malaysia where, among other things, he attempts to bury a romantic genre made popular by W. Somerset Maugham. Theroux has small patience for old Willie. Nailing one aging expatriate who spent most of his life drinking at the local white man's club, Theroux's mouthpiece observes that "he had failed at being a person, so he tried to succeed at being a character-someone out of Maugham. What tedious eccentricity Maugham was responsible for! He made heroes of these timeservers; he glorified them by being selective and leaving...
...opinions, pet hates, grudges, and a paradoxical loathing for bureaucracy and trust in authority." A Japanese businessman who is cold-shouldered on the tennis courts exacts revenge by elevating one of the club's Malay ball boys to guest status. "The war did not destroy the English," writes Theroux. "It fixed them in fatal attitudes. The Japanese were destroyed and out of that destruction came different...
...Theroux's Ayer Hitam, cultures no longer collide; they sort of frisk each other. "Between jungle and viability, there is nothing," he writes, "just the hubbub of struggling mercenaries, native and expatriate, staking their futile claims." Among them is Margaret Harbottle, one of the ubiquitous breed of freeloaders who roam the world as travel writers, and a toadish old sultan called Buffles, who keeps the past alive with elaborate polo parties. The village itself is a cultural stockpot of Chinese secret societies, Communist cells, Indian sports clubs and groups calling themselves the South Malaysian Pineapple Growers' Association...