E-mail a friendPaul Theroux
airdate October 21, 2008
Paul Theroux has numerous acclaimed novels and travel books to his credit. He gained notoriety with The Great Railway Bazaar, an account of his train travel from London to Japan and back, and has penned a follow-up, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. Several of his titles have been adapted into motion pictures. Theroux previously taught in Malawi, as a Peace Corps volunteer, and also at Uganda's Makerere University and now divides his time between Cape Cod and Hawaii, where he is a professional beekeeper.
Travel writer explains how Americans are different from people in Third World countries when it comes to hospitality, acceptance and tradition. (4:04)
Full interview. (12:33)
Paul Theroux
Tavis: Paul Theroux is an acclaimed novelist and travel writer whose many notable books include "The Mosquito Coast" and "Dark Star Safari." For his latest project, he retraced the journey he took in 1973 for his book "The Great Railway Bazaar." The trip across Europe and Asia is the basis for the new book, "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star." Paul Theroux, nice to have you on the program.
Paul Theroux: Lovely to see you.
Tavis: Pleasure to meet you.
Theroux: Thanks very much.
Tavis: Is it just - most travel writers, at least to my knowledge, don't, 30 years later, retrace the route they took because there are so many routes to take, so why retrace?
Theroux: What you just said is true - very, very few writers go back. Graham Greene didn't go back, Eva Moore (sp) didn't go back, John Steinbeck didn't - he went traveling with Charlie and didn't go back. It's a rare thing. Normally, someone my age is writing his memoirs. Why I went back was I went to Africa. I was in the Peace Corps in Africa in the early '60s. I taught at a little school in Malawi in Central Africa.
And in 2001 I took a trip that became book called "The Dark Star Safari," so I went from Cairo to Capetown. The most interesting part of that trip, although Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda, where I had also taught, were interesting, the most interesting part was the school that I had taught at, in this little, very poor, very neglected, very isolated part of Africa.
And I discovered what had happened in the 35 years since I had seen the school. Taught there in the '60s, went back in 2001, and thought what happens - 35 years of aid, teachers, money, hope, Save the Children, World Food Program - what happens to a country when - and the fact was, nothing.
Not very much. The country hadn't prospered. And so I thought, revisiting a place is the thing. You see what time and hope and also emigration, AIDS - what had happened to that place.
Tavis: And what, specifically, did that do to your spirit?
Theroux: It made me think that nothing could be changed unless people wanted to change. That the jumbo jet that took people out of the country had altered people's perception of themselves. But also, people are accessible. If you go to India, you go to Africa - in this book, "Ghost Train," I talk to people in Cambodia, Vietnam, all over.
And they're accessible. Do you know where they're inaccessible? Jackson, Mississippi. East St. Louis. Probably parts of L.A. Probably parts of Montana. You ask the sort of questions in Wyoming, L.A., Boston - ask those questions. What's your name, where do you live, how much money do you make, how many children do you have? They'll say, "What are you, writing a book? Are you from the government?" People don't answer.
You ask those questions in Africa or India or lots of other places, you get answers. So the hardest place to write about is not Africa. This is a relative picnic compared to the sort of book that I might write about the States.
Tavis: To use your word, what makes, you think, us so inaccessible? That is to say, we Americans?
Theroux: Suspicion of the government. Lack of a folk tradition. Lack of hospitality. People in a lot of Third World countries are used to being hosts. In the Arab world, they say (speaks in Arabic). "You're a guest of the all-merciful. Come, have a cup of tea. Sit down, eat."
We don't have this same sense of "Come, welcome, you're a guest of Allah." Guests are from God. "A guest is God," they say in parts of India - "A guest is God. Let me wash your feet." We don't - that's not going to happen to you in lots of parts of the States.
Tavis: Juxtapose that reality, as you see it, at least, with the fact that most of us think that, as Americans, we are very friendly people. I can name some countries - I don't want to offend anybody - I can name some countries that are pretty universally regarded as not having the nicest people, not the most pleasant, not the most cordial.
But I'm trying to square your assessment of the American people with our assessment of ourselves - with the fact that we think that we're friendly, hospitable, nice people.
Theroux: We are in most places. People are different in cities from the way they are in big cities, or towns are different, villages are different. In parts of Maine, rural Maine, they're hermetic. It's one race, one religion, usually, one language. They've never seen outsiders. They see an outsider and they don't quite know what to make of him.
So cities are cosmopolitan; we're used to seeing a lot of different people. I think we're good people, we're hospitable, obviously. But we don't have - this is a multicultural, multiracial, very highly populated, mixed country with a lot of different traditions, so if you go to a country - Japan has one religion, one race, one set of rules.
If you have one set of rules, then you just said some countries are not friendly. Well, it's possible. It's harder to generalize about the United States. But I'm saying that the poor are accessible in a lot of the world. They're not accessible here. The hardest book to write - and I've written a book about China, I've written a book about the Pacific, about Africa, about going around England.
The hardest one to write would be about the States. How do you write it? How do you meet these people? How do you get to know people?
Tavis: And yet, the thing that we celebrate so much, at least on paper, although not in reality, as we should, but I think that we think we celebrate our diversity, this mosaic that is America. We like the fact that we are not as homogenous as other cultures are. And I'm trying to understand how it is that we celebrate that diversity, we celebrate that inclusion.
We don't like homogeneity, and yet you're telling me that that's what makes it difficult to get to know us.
Theroux: Of course, because that's the contradiction. This is a multicultural society, but the melting pot doesn't melt that much. There are a lot of Americas. There's poor America, there's Black America, there's White America. Sometimes they don't intermingle, they don't interact.
That's the unfortunate case. As I say, it makes it harder to write about because we don't have accessible people. And I would say one other thing, which is we have a government which for eight years has been teaching us fear - fear. I was at the airport the other day in San Francisco and they said, "We are at threat level one. We are at threat level one. If you see anyone suspicious, do report them."
Okay, that's like a science fiction film of the 1950s - "We are at threat level one." People walking around, smiling, doing things, but hearing this, it gets you're your head. "We are at threat level. If you see anyone suspicious." It sounds like some "Star Trek" thing. But actually, that kind of fear does creep into your soul.
Tavis: When you took this trip that this book chronicles 30-plus years ago, I would assume - well, not assume; you say so in the text - but 30-plus years ago, you took this trip. You - how might I put this kindly? - you had less means at the time.
Theroux: Oh yeah, and I was a punk. I was a punk. I was poor and I was a punk. I can put it for you.
Tavis: Okay, thank you - I'm glad you said that.
Theroux: Okay, yeah.
Tavis: You were a poor punk 30-plus years ago.
Theroux: I was a punk, and I was poor, yeah. That is 1973.
Tavis: Exactly. I want to ask two - let me just ask one now. The question I want to get to most importantly, I think, is how does traveling without means differ from traveling with means? And I don't mean to be naïve in asking that question. I'm trying to get at what one gets - does one get something different? Does one see something different? Does one have a different kind of experience beyond the trappings when you're doing it without means versus doing it with means?
Theroux: Big difference. Big difference. If you're Bill Clinton going to Uganda, you meet Yoweri Museveni, you have Bono on one side, you have the president or the prime minister on the other, and they show you, they say, "This is what's happening in the hospitals." If you're a backpacker, you're on a bus, you get off the bus, people will probably be friendly to you, but you see the way the country works. And I'm not an official visitor - I have never been an official visitor.
If you're an official visitor, you have very little to say other than what you've been told. When you're poor, when you have nothing, when you have very little or you travel on the ground - not flying - I went by land form Cairo to Capetown. In this book, I went by land from London to India and then onward - Vietnam, Japan, and through Russia on the train.
When you travel on the ground, not in Air Force One, not in a private plane, and you meet people, you have much more to say, you have seen much more. It's an advantage to have very limited means.
Tavis: Let me ask a simple question. What's the argument you give to people - I assume you would give this argument; I could be wrong - assuming that you would give this argument, what's the best argument you give to people for traveling, for seeing the world, particularly when they don't have means? Making the sacrifice to do that?
Theroux: It doesn't take a lot of money to travel; what it takes is time. But you can go anywhere if you have time. I met a man in Australia once who was building a raft, and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm building a raft and I'm going to float it, with my dog, around the top of Australia, New Guinea."
I said, "How are you going to do that?" He said, "It might take me three years - I've got the time." If you have the time, you can do it. Travel - if you have a time constraint, you have a two-week vacation or a one-week vacation, you can't see very much. If you have time - when you're young and you have time, or if you join the Peace Corps, you want to see the world, that's what I did, and that was actually the making of me.
To someone - not having money isn't really the excuse. You can go to another country and work. You can work. You get a job - that's what people do here. You can teach.
Tavis: My mother, who watches this - hi, Mom - my mom, who watches this program every night, has two things in common with you. One, she loves to travel, and number two, she is particularly partial to the train. She loves getting on trains. What is it about you and trains?
Theroux: You can do anything on a train, as your mother will tell you. You can sit, you can walk around, you can talk to people, you can eat, you can write, you can sleep. You make your bed, you lie down and sleep. You can go to bed in one part of India and wake up in another part of India. You can get off the train. You can - you meet people on a train. You can make love on a train. I'm casting no aspersions. But you can get on a train in London, go to Paris, go to Istanbul, to go Ankara, and end up in Georgia on the train - Georgia. You can go from London to the edge of Afghanistan on the train. You could go from Boston, Massachusetts to Mexico City on the train.
So what is the advantage? No stress. You don't have to take off your shoes before you get on, you don't have to go through a metal detector. You show up 15 minutes before it leaves, and as your mother will tell you, you sit down, look out the window, and off you go.
Tavis: I want to close our conversation with a place I could have chosen to begin the conversation, which is this title, "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star." Ghost train suggests what?
Theroux: I'm a ghost. When you look at me, I want you to think of Dick Cheney. I'm class of '59; I'm the same age as Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney's a ghost; I'm a ghost.
Tavis: I almost made a bad Dick Cheney joke when you asked me to see you as Dick Cheney, but I'm not going to go there - go ahead.
Theroux: No, no, but I'm telling you - he stayed home, he didn't join the Peace Corps. He got four deferments. He didn't join the - he didn't go anywhere; he stayed in Washington. I left, and a lot of other people left. But I'm an older man, and the older you get, the more ghostly, more spectral you get. It's like you're - and going back to these places in my youth when I took the Great Railway Bazaar, it was as though I was a ghost looking through the window, seeing how things panned out.
Ask older people how they feel - no one looks at them. They're looking. They see things; they've seen things. They've seen the stock market go down. Not news to them. So that's how I felt - somewhat ghostly. It's a privilege to grow older; it's a gift to be ghostly.
Tavis: I like that, and I'll take that.
Theroux: Thanks very much, Tavis.
Tavis: Very nicely said, thank you. The new book from Paul Theroux is called "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star." He goes back to where he went 30-plus years ago; fascinating read. Paul, nice to have you on the program.
Theroux: It's a pleasure.
Tavis: Pleasure's all mine.
Back to October 21, 2008