Travel writer finds many directions still to go

After 15 years in the making, it`s here: a portable Paul Theroux. That`s what you can call Theroux`s just-published book, "Fresh Air Fiend," with its assortment of his travel essays published in books and magazines from 1985 to this year.

This compendium is all over the map: maddening yet revelatory journeys to far-off places; excursions through the mind on what it means to be a stranger in a strange land; and explorations of those who have come before, including Graham Greene, novelist Daniel Defoe ("Robinson Crusoe"), and the intense, somewhat-fellow traveler, Bruce Chatwin. A sizable portion of the book focuses on China, in three essays that reveal the profound changes this nation has undergone in 20 years.

But at age 59, has Theroux himself become less portable? Is he burdened with too much baggage since bursting forth on the travel-writing scene in 1975 with his saga by train from London through Asia, "The Great Railway Bazaar?"

And what about the notion of his own mortality? Can a writer who has traipsed over five continents during the last 30 years have suddenly grown concerned about his own demise?

"Indeed, some of my friends have died in recent years," he said introspectively over lunch in San Diego recently on a tour to promote "Fresh Air Fiend" (Houghton Mifflin, $27).

"But I feel great," said the author of 35 books, all still in print. "And I don`t want to retire."

That must be a relief to thousands of readers waiting for his next journey to an end of the earth. (But first, a novel, "Honolulu Hotel," comes next).

Age, though, does carry an anchor.

"As you get older, you accumulate possessions, you have a house, you begin to refine the idea of what home is. You have a favorite chair, and the light is right. Your books are there. The temptation to stay home is very strong," he told the online publication Salon in an interview.

His mortality? It`s there before you wade into his new book, in a prologue from the author Jorge Luis Borges: "A man sets out to draw the world. ... A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."

How strange, for Theroux already has looked at death head on, staring down gun barrels, steering clear of exotic vipers and braving roiling seas on solo explorations by kayak that he equates to modern-day voyages of discovery.

And what about success? The devil`s temptation for Theroux, the world-class travel writer, must be the Egyptian cotton sheets and the cranberry juice on the rocks waiting at the corner Ritz-Carlton. At this point in life, doesn`t that beckon more seductively than, say, sitting on a hard-class seat aboard a train somewhere in China, wondering if tonight`s dinner will be a reprise of last night`s fried chicken`s feet?

The answer is a definite no, Theroux says.

"That`s not what I do."

The confusion arises between the word "travel" and the word "vacation," he explains. "Travel is arduous, annoying, aggravating."

Yet travel, Theroux style, is also rewarding, laced with rich vignettes of everyday people, whether they be spitting on the floor or fearing the next purge. This contact is the essence of self-discovery, an intensely personal experience, he believes.

"My trip can never be your trip," he said of his journeys, among them trips across Asia, through India and from his Massachusetts home to Patagonia.

A vacation, to Theroux, is something to contemplate after completing one of his odysseys.

"You read about vacations in the travel pages," he dismisses.

The life of a traveler, he acknowledges, forces many concessions as one stumbles from the rituals of one culture to another. "A traveler is vulnerable."

But the reason for going on is that today`s world most definitely will not be tomorrow`s. He points to the virtual extinction of the rhinoceros in its own environment and the passing of other species. A sacrilege, yes. And Africa, where he is perhaps on most familiar ground, is a much different place today. Life expectancies on the AIDs-afflicted continent and literacy rates, he says, are lower than when he was in Malawi in the `60s. He views these events with a certain fatalism, and with a sense of futility.

"It`s not gloom," he says, "it`s reality" that he tries to capture. These things are happening, and rapidly, so better go now before it`s too late. And yesterday`s trip is tomorrow`s impossibility. He notes that it would be impossible to repeat his epic rail journey in "The Great Railway Bazaar." Countries have disappeared, as have many of the trains (such as the "Direct Orient-Express").

"The hinterlands of the world still exist," Theroux writes, "neglected if not inviolate, and thank God for them. But it is only a matter of time before they are violated, with predictable results."

And what of our global village? The world is a smaller place in an electronic age, right? We`re all connected. Lusaka, the Zambian capital, in some respects is more tied to London than it is to the provinces.

But this is all suspect, Theroux says.

"We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few)," he writes.

Theroux has been traveling since 1963, when he left America as an idealistic young man to join the newly created Peace Corps - and to avoid the prospect of being sent to Vietnam.

Sent to Africa, he stayed for five years - until the political situation in Uganda put him and his family in jeopardy. He moved to a rather dubious and insecure job teaching English literature in Singapore and then shifted to a self-imposed exile for 17 years in rural Britain, eventually venturing to a literary life in London and the breakup of his first marriage.

Today, remarried, he divides his time between Cape Cod, Mass., near where he grew up, and the north coast of Oahu, Hawaii, where he finds the organizational behavior of bees to his liking as an apiarist. As far as literature, in Hawaii he`s among the philistines, he reports.

Beekeeping is an unlikely avocation, Theroux acknowledges, much opposed to the uncertainties and vagaries of sitting on a railway station bench waiting for the ever-late Overnight Mail to Madras, India.

The honey, he says, is pure, and so far is not threatened by the spread of the varroa mite - one of the greatest pests to bees.

While making honey - the lugubriously named Oceania Ranch Pure Hawaiian Honey (somehow, Sue Bee rings truer) - may carry a certain romance ("The Bible is full of references to honey," he writes), spiritual sustenance is provided by Theroux`s kayak, which he uses to explore the Hawaiian coast.

Accused by many reviewers of being an elitist, conceited and arrogant in his observations and narratives, he responds with a sense of shock.

"What do you think of my work?" he asks. "Do you sense that?"

Perhaps egotism and conceit are part of the turf.

"The profoundest satisfaction in travel is a sense of discovery," Theroux writes in the essay "Trespassing in Florida, "the private thrill of seeing something new or seeing it in a new way. This is unquestionably egotistical, but such discoveries do not come easy. ... The payoff is a conceited feeling of having gone to a distant place and unlocked a secret. As far as I`m concerned, everything else in travel is a vacation, the view from a chaise lounge - horizontal."

Traveler Encounters Unwelcome Visitors:

"I am glad," Paul Theroux writes, "that in six lengthy travel books I have never recorded a single instance of having diarrhea. This in not delicacy on my part, and my stomach is as susceptible as anyone`s else`s, but who wants to read about it?"

Still, there is a certain fascination in reading about other maladies Theroux has contracted during his extensive travels. And they have, although he is reluctant to admit it, taken a certain toll.

Over the years, he has tapped into an unconventional assortment of medical-care providers, including various tribesmen, a herbalist in Hong Kong and a vocal pharmacist in Singapore, who blurted out to him at the counter, "Grab lice or bhodhee lice?" Customers nearby turned to stare.

In an essay called "Parasites I Have Known" that is included in his new book, Theroux chronicles afflictions that include:

- Dengue fever in Singapore (symptoms: hair falls out, joints ache, the mind hallucinates and depression sets in, all while the body fights a 103-degree fever.)

- Myasis (maggot infestation), encountered along the Zambezi when the eggs of a putzi fly were deposited on a newly washed shirt hung out to dry. The result: hideous boils on shoulders and back. The maggots inside each of 40 boils succumbed to the heat of a match.

- Gonorrhea in Malawi (the result of "sheer stupidity").

- Suspected malaria in Malawi. ("The trouble with most equatorial fevers is that they are almost impossible to diagnose or name. Many people have flu and think it is malaria - the initial symptoms are often similar.")

And perhaps most disturbing:

- An attack of gout brought on in 1997 by severe dehydration during a long trip down the Zambezi River.

- Severe cataracts, diagnosed last year, the result of exposure to ultraviolet rays "in the tropical sunshine that I have encountered as a fresh-air fiend."

But supposedly exotic diseases, Theroux notes, are not confined to lesser-developed countries and the tropics. He cites the case of a Seattle youngster who died after eating "nothing more exotic than a hamburger."

"It is impossible to travel without facing illness of one sort or another, but no one should stay home for that reason," he writes.

Indeed, he started perhaps his most famous journey, recorded in "The Great Railway Bazaar" with a severe cold.

(c)Visit Copley News Service

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Author: Carl Larsen