review – Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar is the most recent Paul Theroux book.
He retraces his rail journey from Europe through Asia of 30-years earlier.
Theroux has mellowed with age. Now in his mid-60s, he’s less disagreeable than ever before in this, another travel classic.
I’ve read all his travel books. He’s one of my favourite authors. Always entertaining and informative. This one is as good as any of the others. Read it.
Still, critics call Theroux: arrogant, dishonest, a narcissist, a misanthropist.
Certainly he’s envious of greater writers than himself, especially Nobel Prize in Literature winner V. S. Naipaul. Theroux thinks much about the great authors, obviously because he thinks himself just as skilled a wordsmith, unrecognized. Unawarded.
Theroux’s the son of a French-Canadian father and an Italian mother, I learned.
Amazon – Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
This book has rekindled my interest in travel. I’m ruminating future prospects right now.
Aging too, I liked the moments on this long journey where Paul Theroux found himself “content”. Even happy.
