Synchroni City
Yesterday I began reading Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari. It’s a strange work, though I can’t begin to explain why here. Yet not much has changed with Theroux over the years. The first travel book of his I read was The Kingdom by the Sea, a record of a journey around the British coastline by train during the Falklands Summer of 1982. His portrait of a smug, small-minded nation rang very true, at least for the part I knew: the south coast.
Later, I read a much more mellow book by Jonathan Raban called Coasting in which he made the same journey, except by boat. Raban mentions that he bumped into Theroux as they passed through Brighton - Raban was using the newly opened Marina. (Little did I know then I’d one day live but a �1:30 bus ride from this place). Theroux, Raban reported, wasn’t best pleased to discover he had competition, and doesn’t mention the meeting in his book.
All these years later, as I start reading Theroux’s latest travel book, up pops Jonny again with an account of a drive from Seattle to Mexico with his young daughter. To pass time, he asks her: “Which American president, elected with the slimmest majority in history, immediately took the country on an imperial war against a nation rich in mineral assets?“. She gives the wrong answer.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Jonathan Raban
- Theroux vs. Naipaul Like his eminently likeable…
- Late night
- Through Burroughs
- He was blind and now he can see
