Paul Theroux

I have really enjoyed reading his travel writings and have read The Old Patagonian Express.

Rachel Pook is currently blogging about retracing his steps.

I very much enjoyed Dark Star Safari, I should check the used bookstore around the corner for him. I do enjoy walking through a bookstore after my mind has blanked out about all of the books I want to look at, even though I took to jotting down in a notepad the titles and authors the notepad is usually in a separate rucksack or whatever you call those things. Backpack seems bigger, like just for camping...I think I settled on bookbag a while back...That largely facetious post (I don't have more than one GPS) was also about randoseru, those expensive randoseru...yikes the Japanese spend alot on bookbags and pencil cases. Like 700 or 1300 bucks.

Danny Choo is worth bookmarking.

The Rin and Her Randoseru figurine is rather, er, shall I simply say---Japanese.

Anyway I started with Theroux...

Paul Theroux

Has a new one out and in it he returns to the regions of "The Great Railway Bazaar"

It is called "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star."

Here is an NPR interview with Theroux on the new work.



I loved "Dark Star Safari."

Worse Days

Well I picked up Paul Theroux's new one. I heard him on the Bob Edwards show this morning and went looking for it unsuccessfully to the point where the project had become a Wally World psychomachia. One in which my wallet did not prevail. I sampled food at Costco and did not find it on the discount shelves and then on and on. My Borders card was pretty much empty when I, in frustration, had finally located a copy and arrived at a counter. I stopped at the tackle shop though and Todd's gift card still had a few bucks, so that was good. Thank you again Homey. Then it was on to a fine lunch with Mr. Kelly and afterwards on to a wonderful evening with the nephew, who is feeling much better thanks. Worse days have been spent.

Although it sounded like Jimmy had a fine excursion involving swarming helicopters and kayaks on exotic seas.

Just Talked with Jimmy

God bless him

What's the phrase? Give me a cadre, a platoon? Chilling:

If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral … and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling … without passion … without judgment … without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Relating him to that quote is either high Honor or confusion and insanity.

I assert the former, God Bless ya Jimmy

So much to think about in that quote---

There is Beaucoup material in the last ten years regarding the bitter sweet dynamic of the young Vietnamese internalising and striving to the Western template. Paul Theroux has a brief interlude with a woman who lived through the war and operates a war museum and her children want to move to America. How strange must that feel after the collapse of the lie of communism and the horrific hell you went through until the enormous and brilliant beast relented?

The enormous and brilliant beast, I say, is not just the U.S.A. but it's freedom. It's scary potentials.

Some say you can measure a nation or people by how they treat their prisoners or landless or whatever their happy assertion may be at the time...I think that the proof is so obvious...

If you have had a set of ideals which opposes all who would be king, (separation of powers) and thus left crevices for liberty and oportunity, you win by losing to that paradigm.

You then judge a country by the fact that you are better off losing to it...

Japan.

Germany.

Phillipines.

Vietnam.

Korea.

Mexico...Screw La Raza...We should have taken another thousand miles and we would all be better off...

The U.S.A wins, Japan wins. Korea wins.

You can measure the worth of the assailed American way by this: Are you better off losing to her?

"Wearing Kennedy"

Pepe, or second hand, clothes. Paul Theroux mentioned something on this in "Dark Star Safari" which was a very good book.

Via Hit and Run. They link also to this Reason tshirt piece.