Word: theroux
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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...
...FAMILY ARSENAL by Paul Theroux. Shades of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene hover about this tale of inept terrorists trying to play house in London...