Conversations with Paul Theroux*

*Interview with Paul Theroux by K.Srilata (The Hindu Sunday magazine - 24/2/2008)

Excerpt from The Old Patagonian Express (London: Penguin, 1979)
One of us on the sliding subway train was clearly not heading for work. You would have known it immediately by the size of his bag. And you can always tell a fugitive by his vagrant expression of smugness; he seems to have a secret in his mouth – he looks as if he is about to blow a bubble. But why be coy? I had woken in my old bedroom, in the house where I had spent the best part of my life…

Paul Theroux, American travel writer and novelist, whose best known works are The Old Patagonian Express and The Great Railway Bazaar, walks into one of the business rooms of the Taj Connemara where I am waiting. He gives me the impression of being a restless man, the sort who might well be a difficult interview customer. But then, the restlessness perhaps is an extension of his wanderlust.
In introducing myself to him, I tell him helpfully that my name rhymes with Srilanka. For the first ten minutes before we ease ourselves into the interview, he is asking me half a dozen questions about the civil war in that country and what people make of it…


Srilata: In The Old Patagonian Express, you have this line about travel being a vanishing act, while a travel book is the opposite, “the loner bouncing back bigger than life itself to tell the story of his experiment with space”. What makes you bounce back and tell that story of your travels? Don’t you ever find it burdensome – to have to come back and tell it all, the way one sometimes finds the camera a burden – or is it the eventual telling that drives you to travel in the first place?
Paul Theroux: When I am traveling, I am going with the motive of bringing as much back as possible. For instance, two years ago when I was in Chennai, I did a continuous trip – Uzbekistan to Jodhpur, Jaipur, Delhi, Amritsar, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and then Trichi and Colombo. Every day I woke up and wrote my notes intending to find out something about where I am. That is different from what I am doing on this trip. I am doing a lot of talking, very little listening. If I am planning to write a travel book, it is a mission. The travel writing is deliberate. So is the information gathering. I am offering myself as a sacrifice to experience…
Srilata: How do you approach fiction writing? For instance, in The Old Patagonian Express, you speak disapprovingly of the convention in some travel writing to start in the middle of things, landing the reader in a place you haven’t guided him to. You write of how travel really begins the second you wake up – for you are already headed for that foreign place…
Paul Theroux: It is a deliberate thing. Fiction again is deliberate. But with fiction, you are groping towards a conclusion of which you are unaware. So you have character, situation, story but you are never quite sure where you are going. That is the pleasure and also the anxiety of fiction. That you wake up in the morning and instead of going somewhere you are thinking -now what?
Srilata: What happens to the notion of plotting in your travel writing?
Paul Theroux: The plot of the travel book is its itinerary. It is a straight narrative of starting here and ending there. Travel writing is also a form of autobiography. I am writing about everything that happened to me, leaving very little out.
Srilata: The “I” in travel writing – doesn’t it become a character too?
Paul Theroux: Yes and you can pretend that you have a personality which you really don’t. But you can’t carry that off book after book. After a while, the truth comes out. In fiction, you can disappear…
Srilata: After all, both fiction and travel literature offer you ways of leaving the familiar behind or of seeing the familiar in fresh ways.
Paul Theroux: The Ice house in Chennai for instance… The ice came all the way from Maine, New England… It is a great connection between Chennai and the United States…
Srilata: How much do you read up about a place before you set off?
Paul Theroux: Quite a lot. But I don’t read travel books. I do factual reading, study maps. I like reading novels by people who live in a place and know all about it.
Srilata: It becomes apparent quickly enough that for you travel writing is not about pretty landscapes but about people. These people become vivid to us, vivid and sharp-edged. But you leave them behind, the way one doesn’t in fiction. There is not perhaps the same burden of pulling all the threads together, of relating what eventually becomes of these characters.
Paul Theroux: The English writer Pritchett – he wrote about Spain – he said that he was not really interested in churches and museums but in human architecture, the complexity of the people he met in Spain. I would say the same thing. The idea, as a travel writer, is to be an anonymous person. I talk to you, we talk about where you have been, what you have done, your family, your hopes, your experiences, your disappointments, your education, books you like… and then I go back and write it down or I write it down at the time. That is the stuff of writing. What I am doing now is the opposite. I am the focus of attention. That is a very bad thing for a traveler.
Srilata: Do you find that travel writing – more than fiction - frees you up to say what you wish, allows you a birds’ eye view of things?
Paul Theroux: Probably less. With travel writing, you have to stick to facts and you have to stick to chronology. You are a slave to the framework. There is much more freedom in fiction, much more invention. The writer can pretend to be anyone. You just need to be persuasive. But unless you are unusual, you can’t write fiction your whole career. George Simenon was an exception. He wrote 75 detective novels and 200 plus psychological novels. He was a serious novelist.
Srilata: You are a fairly prolific writer yourself… with 15 non-fiction and 31 fiction titles to your credit. Is that correct?
Paul Theroux: I have 43 books in all. But then I published my first book in 1967, have been at it forty years. I don’t have a full-time job. So I wake up in the morning and sit down to it…
Srilata: You did teach, didn’t you?
Paul Theroux: Yes, very early on. Since 1967, I have published a book every year. Some are longer than the others. Some more ambitious. Yes, if you google me, you will come up with a long list. But then, also, I am an old man!
Srilata: What does it all boil down to in terms of writing discipline? Hours a day, word counts, number of chapters…
Paul Theroux: I work every day when I am at home. Even when I am not at home. It involves having breakfast, reading the newspaper, doing the crossword and then working till lunch time. And then afternoons – I work too. I like working outside. I live in Hawaii and so I can
Srilata: Where you do some bee-keeping…
Paul Theroux: I am a bee-keeper and I raise geese.. Just in a friendly way! Not to be killed and eaten. Yes, my day is disciplined. No one is telling me to work but there is really nothing else to do. I have realized that if I don’t work, I am not making any money, not really emptying my mind. I feel I must be creative… Not just creative but busy. I grew up in a family where if my mother saw me not doing anything, she would prod me to work. There was a serious work ethic in my family. That is not always a great thing. It is a nuisance sometimes.
Srilata: You have done some work on Naipaul and he is one of your inspirations…
Paul Theroux: Yes, I would urge you to read my book Sir Vidia’s Shadow. Let me ask you something. You have done some work on Indian writers, Indian women writers… Naipaul in his book A Writer’s People has been fairly critical of Indian writers, Indian women writers. He attacks their novels which are mostly published in the U.A. He says they are about Indian women who go to the U.S and write about their families. They are writing these family novels. Who are they writing for? Who is going to read their books? It is attack, attack, attack…
Srilata: Well, Naipaul is not one of my favourites! And I feel, like others, that Naipaul has not really looked at Indian writers who write in the regional languages. Some of these writers cannot be globalised easily, marketed all over the world. But it doesn’t make their work less significant.
Paul Theroux: Yes, writing is a mirror that a person is holding up to his society. So he has a readership right here. But in criticism, you have got to read the most savage and Naipaul is provocative. But I agree with you totally.
Srilata: The sheer range of your writing is impressive from The Mosquito Coast which is an adventure story of a family that rejects its homeland and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of Central America to The Elephanta Suite. There is a lot of “India” in your books. Is there a unifying thread somewhere?
Paul Theroux: India is big, complex.. .Like the states with its West, East and empty spaces and complexities. America was created. It was a deliberate construction. It is based on the constitution, not on religion. India is an ancient place but in terms of largeness and complexity the two are similar. About the unifying thread, I am very fascinated by the idea of an isolated person. I was fascinated by the idea of a little American in Africa. But I haven’t analysed it too much. If you get too conversant with your work, you begin writing to prove that that is your theme. I don’t re-read my books. I try not to take in interest in the thematic or in motifs… I like to think that everything I write is new.
Srilata: What is it like to live in Hawaii, knowing that it is set up to cater to tourists? What do you feel about that, as a travel writer?
Paul Theroux: If you drive 40 miles north of Honolulu, you are in the countryside. Honolulu is a busy place. I live on a farm, six acres. I don’t see my neighbours. More than 7 million tourists come to Honolulu. You don’t see them. We have an efficient society that processes 7 million tourists and most local people don’t notice.
Srilata: One last question. A standard one: What would you tell aspiring writers? You are doing a workshop tomorrow on travel writing…
Paul Theroux: I would say: Go away from home. College doesn’t matter. But read. If you come from Chennai, go to Assam... The first thing is to go away. You need to be independent... Don’t stay home and take lessons on writing. Every night, you mother will say to you: “You are a great writer!” or “Get yourself a real job.”… Writers associated with colleges and universities tend to have a very different career. I am not saying that it is better or worse. But it helps to go away. More precarious, but in the long run, more satisfying.