Word: theroux
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that puzzled the blind men . How can one possdibly define a place that gave the world Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe, the Watts riots and the Mansion murders, not to mention the kosher enchilada? Los Angeles is a metropolis of 85 cities with no "center of gravity", as Peter Theroux writes in one of the witty, observant little essays that make up Translating LA (Norton; 271 pages; $21). Its user- unfriendly downtown center resembles Gertrude Stein's famous description of Oakland. (Where is the there?) Born as a city of immigrants, Tinseltown, the Rainbow City, Iowa...
Boston-born, Theroux in 1985 became an "accidental resident" of the city he calls "a whole flat planet with a Venusian veil of smog" after having spent ten years in the Middle East. He bought a tiny condominium in unfashionable Long Beach, best known as the final berth of the retired liner Queen Mary and as a popular haven for lesbians. The many bars where the ladies hang out, Theroux writes, "could be spotted by the combination of women waiting in line to get in and mystified sailors (from the local naval base) watching warily from across the street...
...child guest to defend herself against a New York Times review excoriating her book. Even when Rose asks Zlata, who is still struggling with English, if writing the diary was a "catharsis" for her. Returning to the green room, Zlata is delighted when Rose's next guest, novelist Paul Theroux, tells her she guessed the meaning of the term correctly. The young writer sweetly offers the older author an autographed copy of her book. And she doesn't even know the meaning of the verb network...
...Paul Theroux riffs on health food and Scripture...
This gut reaction to scripture is a deft stroke of literary subversion. It should not draw a Fundamentalist fatwa, though beef lobbyists and overweight- pride groups may grumble about the ceaseless bashing of carnivores and the amply proportioned. Theroux's main dodge is to see American puritanism in a frankly physical rather than spiritual light. Readers may take this sleight to heart or turn it into a belly laugh. Either way, the sorcerer and his apprentice encounter a nation with more than its share of knaves and hypocrites, including the Reverend Huber, a stock evangelist huckster, and Mr. Phyllis, cooing...