Rating: 
Summary: An interesting, rambling journey
Review: "Paul Theroux is _so_ overrated!"It was a line I would hear over and over again during the past month I spent with 'The Great Railway Bazaar' every time I fielded the inevitable "So...what are you reading now?" question so popular amongst writers and journalists. Having finally finished the compact tome, I understand my colleagues' antipathy: Theroux makes it look so easy. Take a trip, write about it with lots of descriptive curliques and viola! money in the bank. Theroux has a sharp eye and a neutral without being self-effacing voice that makes for the best travel writing. He is a master of detail, meticulously recreating the sense of place and space. As a writer, he is superb. And yet...I also sympathize with the criticisms that he exploits a place, visiting only for the writing, dismissing the deeper truth and more complicated understanding for the lurid, the sensational, the scene and the steam. In 'Railway Bazaar' at least, Theroux at least makes no pretentions of being anything more than the passing observer. They are snapshots, vignettes viewed through a train window and filtered through half a bottle of gin. It is personal, and pretends to be nothing more. It also serves as a reaffirming paean to the joys of alcohol and travel. As a book, it has its stops and gos. Slow at the start, it picks up spead through Central Asia, finds its confident footing in South and Southeast Asia, and then flounders through Japan and Russia. At its best, it captures a time and place, such as Vietnam at the end of the war or bits of India. Perhaps I found those parts more coherent because I traveled similar roads some 30 years later, and found it interesting to compare how things have changed - and how they haven't. I suspect other readers will find similar experiences: it is a book for the already seasoned traveller, not the armchair enthusiast.
Rating: 
Summary: Train travelling by reading.
Review: "Train travel animate my imagination and usually give me solitude to order and write my thoughts: I travel easily in two directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window, and at the interior rim of a private world of memory and language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination." The words are from Paul Theroux's book The Great Railway Bazaar, where he takes us on a train journey through Asia. The book has excotic chapters, starting with The 15.30 - London to Paris, taking us via The Direct - Orient Express, The Night Mail to Meshed, The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpus, The Trans - Siberian Express and so on. Names and places I dream of, and would like to go to - one day.
Paul Theroux has been there, and he has been there with an open mind and his pen and paper to take care of this world of memory and language. This is fun reading. Some people call Theroux a rasist, but I don't agree. Theroux travels with an open mind and really see people and places where he goes. The way he shares his experiences with his readers is so rich and funny, you almost can feel the smell of the meal of old onions wrapped in a dirty piece of newspaper his travel companion is having, or you feel the dust in your eyes from the dry countryside you are passing. I bought this book at an European airport when I was out travelling, and has read it as a "travel"-book, reading on planes, railways, busses, in cars and so on. And my eyes have been opened to see the people around me - not as grey everyday fellow travellers, but as all different human beings. And from Paul Theroux I have learned that strangers are not actually strangers, but people who can show me more of a mixed world when I take the time to start sharing part of my life with them. Britt Arnhild Lindland.
Rating:
Summary: Train travelling by reading.
Review: "Train travel animate my imagination and usually give me solitude to order and write my thoughts: I travel easily in two directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window, and at the interior rim of a private world of memory and language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination." The words are from Paul Theroux's book The Great Railway Bazaar, where he takes us on a train journey through Asia. The book has excotic chapters, starting with The 15.30 - London to Paris, taking us via The Direct - Orient Express, The Night Mail to Meshed, The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpus, The Trans - Siberian Express and so on. Names and places I dream of, and would like to go to - one day.
Paul Theroux has been there, and he has been there with an open mind and his pen and paper to take care of this world of memory and language. This is fun reading. Some people call Theroux a rasist, but I don't agree. Theroux travels with an open mind and really see people and places where he goes. The way he shares his experiences with his readers is so rich and funny, you almost can feel the smell of the meal of old onions wrapped in a dirty piece of newspaper his travel companion is having, or you feel the dust in your eyes from the dry countryside you are passing. I bought this book at an European airport when I was out travelling, and has read it as a "travel"-book, reading on planes, railways, busses, in cars and so on. And my eyes have been opened to see the people around me - not as grey everyday fellow travellers, but as all different human beings. And from Paul Theroux I have learned that strangers are not actually strangers, but people who can show me more of a mixed world when I take the time to start sharing part of my life with them. Britt Arnhild Lindland.
Rating:
Summary: Great Opportunity Wasted
Review: A great opportunity wasted. This is my first Theroux. I am envious for he had the opportunity to travel all around the world that too in train. But, I am disappointed to see such a piece of work from one of the famous names in travel writing. As an Indian, I know how interesting a long train journey is. You meet people from a cross-section of society, of different background, professions, lifestyle, religions, languages, habits and hopes. The author is satisfied with watching the mannerisms of people than understanding a bit of these. I find him to be a racist. Also, why does he mention about prostitutes so much, that too in a train journey? Rather than enjoying a trip of such magnitude, depth and scope, the author slips into complaining too often and has a certain contempt for anything non-western. With such a closed mind, I don't know why one should take the pain of travelling so much. If one needs to see and hear what he wants see and hear, better write fiction than travelogues. All said, the book is a good read if you don't think too much. His descriptions of the landscape are fantastic and his writing skills are beyond argument. Don't expect to learn about people, culture or lifestyle from this book. But you come to know about the great trains that ply in different continents. The contents are out dated, but still you can keep it in your shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Less than I expected
Review: Despite it's previous bestseller status, I found this book to be quite slow and it didn't grab my concentration. Theroux traveled by train from England to Turkey, India, Singapore, Japan, several other countries, and back across the whole of Russia. The tone is rather arrogant and I was disappointed that most of his time seemed to be actually spent on the train, rather than in the places he traveled to. Reading about his many train companions and the train staff was not as interesting as hearing about the people on the street he spoke with. I found the chapter on Vietnam interesting, but his trip home across Russia found him horribly depressed, and his negative attitude clouded the details of an experience that so many others have recorded as marvelous.
Rating:
Summary: Less than I expected
Review: Despite it's previous bestseller status, I found this book to be quite slow and it didn't grab my concentration. Theroux traveled by train from England to Turkey, India, Singapore, Japan, several other countries, and back across the whole of Russia. The tone is rather arrogant and I was disappointed that most of his time seemed to be actually spent on the train, rather than in the places he traveled to. Reading about his many train companions and the train staff was not as interesting as hearing about the people on the street he spoke with. I found the chapter on Vietnam interesting, but his trip home across Russia found him horribly depressed, and his negative attitude clouded the details of an experience that so many others have recorded as marvelous.
Rating:
Summary: A series of interesting vignettes.
Review: I recently re-read Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar and immediately was awash in memories of innumerable train journeys across the length and breadth of my native India. This is an excellent read both for train lovers (whom the exotic trains Theroux rides will captivate) as well as readers who enjoy travelogues. To be fair, this is less a travelogue than a series of vignettes covering Theroux's journeys through various Asian countries. Theroux makes no attempt to develop an understanding of the cultures he travels through but is content to describe the train itself along with a handful of anecdotes about the people he meets on each leg of his journey. Fair enough, this is not after all a sociological text but a travel diary of sorts. And it is in description that Theroux's strength lies. He has the ability to make an anecdote seem so real as to make the reader a part of the scene. The pace of the book varies with the stop and start of each journey and I guess every reader will prefer some parts to others. Plus of course, it is a bit jarring when one reads this book today, since the tide of history has greatly changed many of the countries Theroux traversed. Still, culture is slower to change than politics and that keeps much of the book relevant even today.
Rating: 
Summary: It's the people that make the travelogue
Review: One of the off-putting things about traditional travelogues is the litany of thing-descriptions (buildings, markets, clothes, hills) which just don't make for compelling brain food. Theroux focusses on people, and more specifically personalities. As an Indian, I can say that he captures the essence of different ilks of Indians with an incisiveness that I have not seen in any other American writer. I wish I had gotten my red, white and blue wife to read this before we visited. Many of her questions are answered episodically. Questions such as Why are some Indians so free with information about their digestive state? Why is an ailment worn like a badge of honor by some? Why do Indian travel guides always mention how far a book store is from your hotel? Isn't it admirable that somebody of such high stature is so unassuming? The incomprehensible extremes of know-it-alls versus humility amongst those with great erudition..He makes equally astute observations about Afghans, Burmese, Ceylonese etc., but I'll leave you to read the book to enjoy these. Some may find this book insulting, as it is fairly blunt about the people's idiosyncrasies. I for one do not expect literature to be politically correct (and vice-versa).
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Classic.
Review: Reading this book is like taking a trip to the past. The first edition of the book was actually printed in 1974 & many countries have changed since. U.S.S.R is no longer a communist country, Iran is "liberated" by Khomeini, Afghanistan is ruled by the Talibans, Burma is better known as Myanmar, Vietnam is rebuilding itself from the aftermath of Vietnam War, India is jumping upon the bandwagon on Information Technology to catch up with the rest of the world, Pakistan has a nuclear capacity to match its neighbour(India)'s counterpart, & so forth. Then, there are countries which are evolving or remaining stagnant such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka) which still has a divided racial problem (thus, problem with the Tamil Tiger guerillas), Singapore is still fast-paced & skycrapers dominate the landscape, Thailand a place for misadventures, predictable Japan with almost all Japanese behave in an orderly fashion, & others. The author didn't write the book to capture the political scenes of the time but writing about the feel, the smell, the essence of the places that he came across. There's no better way to achieve the feat by getting acquainted with passengers & staff that he came across in the train, observing the state of the trains they were in, how time schedules were adhered by the train authorities, the cornucopia of people from all facets of society that gathered at the train station akin to a bazaar. To my antonishment, despite the book was almost 30 years old, characters of the people in their respective countries remain almost status quo & thus, reading this book now is as relevant as reading it 30 years ago. Paul's description of the landscape is vivid & his talent in absorbing the mannerisms & slangs of those places are uncanny. The book would be even more fun to read if he provided a glossary of explaining foreign words which he never elaborated further other than mentioning them briefly. For example, the usage of Singlish, that is the Singapore version of English which required the addition of -lah towards the end of sentences, and -lah itself doesn't have any meaning to it would only be known to people of those region & I wouldn't expect readers from Europe would be able to grasp with that. Paul seems to put a lot of effort in writing about the India continent & for readers who yearn to know more about India, William Darymple's books shouldn't be missed. Still, an enjoyable book to read & a worthy companion for travelling purpose. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Travel, With Misanthrope
Review: Theroux lives up to his bad reputation in this, one of his earlier works. In case other readers are unaware, Theroux is the sort of person who is capable of going to the effort of writing a poison-pen book about an ex-friend of 30 years -- in this case, V.S. Naipaul. This (other) book is entitled Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998), and in it Theroux went to great effort to depict his old pal's ugliness, greed, and hypocrisy.
Expect all sorts of overwrought post-modern hysteria, drunkenness, and latent sadism in this book (two examples of these: a visit to a Japanese snuff film and a scene where Theroux shoves his way through a train station calling every misfortunate he meets 'Monkeys'.) Expect too to be exposed to some well-educated portraits which stimulate the mind and draw the imaginative sense into some scenes of intense clarity. These in themselves make the book worth it, especially if you like to draw pictures in your mind.
I personally find this sort of writing to be ultimately depressing because it is literary, educated, and imaginative -- and unredeemable. Theroux uses language to keep the reader at bay just as much as he does to pull him into his world. I checked this book out of the library instead of buying it. I'm glad I can return it to its shelf for another reader to taste.
|
