The acclaimed author explores the greatest travel writing by literary adventurers from Freya Stark and James Baldwin to Nabokov and Hemmingway. Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe with this meditative journey through the books that shaped him as a reader and traveler. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel enumerates “The Contents of Some Travelers’ Bags” and exposes “Writers Who Wrote about Places They Never Visited”; tracks extreme journeys in “Travel as an Ordeal” and highlights some of “Travelers’ Favorite Places.” Excerpts from the best of Theroux’s own work are interspersed with selections from travelers both familiar and unexpected, including J.R.R. Tolkien, Samuel Johnson, Eudora Welty, Evelyn Waugh, Isak Dinesen, Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, Pico Iyer, Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov, Bruce Chatwin, John McPhee, Peter Matthiessen, Graham Greene, Paul Bowles, and many more.
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I enjoy Paul Theroux's writing a lot - particularly his travel non-fiction. This book, I wasn't enthused with, and that is largely due to its format and content.
What is it? Basically, it is a book curated by Theroux, in which he has carefully selected quotations from the travel books of notable travellers - literary figures, novelists, well known travellers. Divided into chapters the quotations are arranged into logical sequence, and typically introduced by Theroux, some with narrative, some left as quotes. It varies a little. Sometime Paul provides excerpts from his own writing, sometimes he dedicates a chapter to the Travel Wisdom of a particular person - Robert Louis Stevenson, Freya Stark & Evelyn Waugh are examples of this.
He draws his quotations from many - some well read authors in fact - Wilfred Thesiger (not enough from him), Charles Doughty, Shackleton, Sir Richard Burton, Peter Mathiessen, Hemingway, Gustave Flaubert, Bruce Chatwin, Graeme Greene, Geoffrey Moorhouse, Rebecca West, Somerset Maugham, Richard Halliburton, and so many more.
So why didn't I love it? I guess I am not one to like the chop and change that quotations from multiple authors provides. I enjoy the build-up of narrative, the highs and lows. I am distracted by bitsy quotations. I don't consider they were not selected well, and in context - they were clustered together with relevance, but they don't hold my interest. Selecting quotations is fun - I enjoy picking out the gem as I read a narrative, and reflecting on that before moving on. Sometimes I remember the page number for my review, most often I don't!
Others will love this format, and I don't doubt will also love the content. For me the best parts were Theroux's introduction for each chapter, and where he added commentary to each quotation. This is possibly a book I will dip back into from time to time (providing it isn't buried on my selves, which is more likely).
A solid 3 stars from me.
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