Word: theroux
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THERE ARE SOME WRITERS who seem quite fund of the characters they create. Paul Theroux, on the other hand, dislikes almost everyone here writes about. But frankly, the persons he presents in his in test book. The London Embassy, suggests that Theroux himself is eminently dislikable...
...Although Theroux is American, The London Embassy is set, like all his other books, abroad. It is a collection of short stories with continuing characters, most of whom belong to the staff of the American Embassy in London. The milieu of the foreign service career is appropriate for the sorts of people Theroux writes about rootless by nature, somewhat surprised at having aged so quickly without realizing it, and with a nagging suspicion that in all their travels they have always missed out on something, although they're not quite sure what...
...narrator, Spencer Monroe Savage--who remains unnamed until the last page of the book--seems a contrived sort of literary ventriloquist's dummy for Theroux. Through Savage, the author indulges in his witty and merciless taste for characterization, which invariably portrays his subjects in their weakest and most unattractive light. This dispassionate and always slightly disgusted--sounding tone is familiar from Theroux's previous books, including his non-fiction. The narrator of The London Embassy always seems to be presenting a bland, agreeable face to the people he is speaking to, while in his thoughts--to which we are privy...
Jorge Lulls Borges: No cute stuff here, the man is my candidate At 83, this writer has endured. Person made him Impactor of the Chickens or something like that to humiliate him. But check out Paul Theroux's account of his meetings with the Argentine master in The Old paragoning Express-it'll left you how well that worked. The old men in the Academy have been stringing Borges along for more than 25 years now and everyone knows it. If I were Mike Barnicle, I'd call that the mark of bunich of human dirt bags (I wish...
...waterbugs skittering across the surface of other cultures without learning anything important that they can express. They learn fugitive skills-how to avoid being cheated, how to cross borders. They come back in a daze of wonder. But even today's writers who travel are remarkably good: Paul Theroux (The Great Railway Bazaar), Edward Hoagland (African Calliope), Jonathan Raban (Old Glory: An American Voyage) and the splendidly mordant V.S. Naipaul...