Word: theroux
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...take as many trains as possible from London to Tokyo-including a few spur lines of the moment-and then back again? This notion would no doubt horrify the hapless U.S. rail commuter and send him reeling back to the bar car. Yet in late 1973 Novelist Paul Theroux 35, spent four months chugging over just such an odyssey. Surprisingly, he not only survived but entertainingly tells the tale...
...PAUL THEROUX 342 pages. Houghton Mifflin...
First he explains the mania that provoked him. Like such disparate figures as Molly Bloom and Richard Nixon, Theroux says he has always been lured by the siren song of a train whistle: "I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it." Thus his trip represented a once-in-a-lifetime act of massive self-indulgence, plus the chance to experience firsthand "the trains with the bewitching names: the Orient Express, the North Star, the Trans-Siberian." As an added bonus, the trips threw him together with several novels' worth of offbeat characters...
Alexander L. Theroux, Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English: "I haven't been following it very closely. Is Providence out it yet? I'll say this: I'm against UCLA. You could say I'm disinclined to see anything from California be successful. That's where I hear funeral parlors stay open all night...
...tastes change, even in the Singapore of the '60s. Jack discovers that exhibitionism, sadism and much, much more are in demand. When he refuses to pander to such tastes, he feels the first flush of sainthood. Theroux's title is teasingly ambiguous. Is it merely an ironic claim for Jack or a portentous comment on the corruption of the modern world? The book is clever, but its consistent facetiousness allows the author to avoid facing a basic fact: however one chooses to view it, in pimping there is always one party who gets a raw deal...