msLaura presents: My beef with Paul Theroux

I have been reading Paul Theroux lately. He's a very prolific writer, probably most famous for his travel writing, and for writing "The Mosquito Coast", which was later made into a movie with Harrison Ford.

I read "The Happy Isles of Oceania", which was wonderful. PT travels to 51 islands in the South Pacific, starting in Australia and making his way to Hawaii. He takes along a collapsible kayak and camping equipment, and travels as much of the way as he can under his own power. He stays in a lot of remote villages, but really he goes everywhere and comments on what he sees along the way. Sometimes things are rough, and he gets crabby and acerbic about trash on beaches and polluted lagoons and fast-food loving islanders living on the dole, but it's all very entertaining and thought-provoking.

Now I'm reading "The Pillars of Hercules", which is about his trip around the Mediterranean. He starts at Gibraltar and, over the course of 18 months, he travels all the way around Spain, France, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, North Africa, and finally ends up in Ceuta, which is a rock of an island very close to Gibraltar, at the mouth of the Mediterranean where it meets the Atlantic. (Gibraltar and Ceuta are the two "Pillars of Hercules")

I literally couldn't put either of these books down. He's a really great writer, plus it's a trip that's interesting. You want to see what's around the next corner, what happens next.

My big beef with him is not a direct beef. It's just that *I* could never make the kinds of solo voyages and explorations that he does, because he's a man, and I'm a woman. He travels all over, and asks people all kinds of questions about their culture, politics, everything. In a lot of the more traditional places you don't even *see* the women out and about. He meets several women traveling alone who are being harassed by locals, soldiers, police, etc., and he has to step in and speak up for them to drive the a-holes away.

I didn't know anything about the guy, except that I had heard his name fairly often ("the travel writer Paul Theroux") and he was on my list of authors to read. Today I Googled him to get some biography, and I found an interview with him where he says this:

Theroux is obviously immensely proud of his sons. Raising them, he says, was the most rewarding thing he's ever done, and he talks of their childhood years as if they were the happiest of his own life. For the 18 years he lived in London, he spent most of his time at home, writing, while his wife, Ann, worked as a producer at the BBC World Service.

'It made me very intolerant of the wife and mother who complains because her husband's off at work. It's great being at home with the kids! I never saw them as an irritation. I never knew bad years. I never knew strife with them. I loved it.

'But also I was happily married. It was a nice household. We had moments of great happiness which are peculiarly English - we used to play games a lot, word games, silly games - Squeak, Piggy Squeak.' He laughs.

'Can you be happier than when you're with your children and a bunch of people, you've had a couple of drinks and you're playing Squeak, Piggy Squeak?'

He was lucky, he says; family life accommodated his urge to travel. He would go off for weeks, sometimes months at a time, 'and no one ever said, Oh God you're going away. They'd say, it's exciting; tell us about it. And I would get very sentimental when I was away. I'd see domesticity being acted out in another place - people with their kids, going to a school play, going on a picnic, and I always found that difficult. I missed it.'

Theroux pauses and thinks about this. 'I'm talking as if I want it back. But it's a period of life that you have, and if you've done it well it's wonderful, and then you move on from it.'

So I also have a slight beef with him personally, because he scoffs at women who get sick of being at home with the kids, but then again, he can just pack up and take off for months at a time whenever he likes! NOT exactly the situation of the typical mother.

It's his job, OK, but STILL. Who is taking care of the kids while he's gone? If I were taking off on solo trips on a regular basis, I'm sure I'd be a lot more patient too. Not that I want to go on solo trips right now, but you know what I mean. Anything is easy if you *choose* to do it and can take off whenever you want to. I think his memories are based on his sons as *older* children too, not as fussy toddlers.

It's a minor beef, but I had to bring it up. I did love this part though:

'Can you be happier than when you're with your children and a bunch of people, you've had a couple of drinks and you're playing Squeak, Piggy Squeak?'

Because really, it's so true. There is nothing more fun than playing with your child when everyone's relaxed and happy and there are friends around. I've never been to a hip party that was more fun than a good backyard BBQ can be with good food, good wine, good friends, and kids running around having a blast.

Dan and I have a grand old time playing with Julian before dinner, eating cheese and quaffing a nice glass of wine, tickling, kicking the ball, laughing, wrestling. Bugs always has to jump in and provide some comedy too. Domestic life with kids is a drag sometimes, but when it's good it's the happiest, most pleasurable experience there is.

I can't wait for the word games. And I definitely need to find out more about this Squeak, Piggy Squeak!

Comments

Hey - what do you use for your blog format - Movable Type? Your own set-up?

I haven't read any Theroux so I can't comment on this entry. :)

You've only scratched the surface in your Paul Theroux readings. I'd recommend "Riding the Iron Rooster" or "Dark Star Safari" and of course there's "Patagonian Express" and "The Great Railway Bazaar" just to name a few of his better books.
You'll find several more if you search your local bookstore.
I disagree that a woman could not do these same trips. Why not? There are plenty of places in the world where men are going to feel just as unsafe as women, but I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of places that women have travelled alone to that most of us would feel nervous about.
I found your site with Theroux as the search word as I was curious if this great author has anything new out there for me to read, but my chuckle of the day was the photo of your son freeballing. Pretty darn funny!
You'll get 100 million more hits if you include the word "nakid" on your site. Tom

Tom:
You're SO obviously a dude writing this. "Oh, women can go anywhere and do anything, hey, sometimes I feel unsafe too!" Bah humbug!

First of all, Theroux not only travels TO places, but he gets in people's faces and asks them questions that are sometimes quite uncomfortable.

Since you are not a woman, let me explain...in most places in the world, if I struck up a conversation with a strange man and started asking him questions, his response would be, "She wants to fuck me! Well, let's get right to it then! Should we fuck right here, or should I drag you off to my place? How about we just use this bush?"

And dude, I KNOW this will happen, because it HAS happened in the past. A woman traveling alone (or with another woman) cannot strike up conversations with strange men and have them be interpreted as platonic intellectual curiosity. Anything I say or do is interpreted as "Hi there, let's fuck! No means yes!"

Paul Theroux was a beetle-browed fifty-something man when he made the journeys in the two books I read (and yes, I know he wrote a million more books that are good. I know the titles of his other books. SO FAR I've only read two. I plan on reading more, OK?)

I am a tall, blonde, thirty-something woman who wears lipstick. TOTALLY fucking different than a beetle-browed fifty-something man.

Now MAYBE I could travel around and interview WOMEN. That's something that Paul Theroux couldn't do.

But in a lot of these places the women are always inside, never out and about on the streets. Theroux meets most of his acquaintances while out and about. So I would need to A) Be dodging sketchy would-be Lotharios while...
B) Getting introductions to meet and interview strange women who don't know me.

And THAT'S just assuming that these men are merely pests who will hit on me relentlessly. I'm not even considering the possibility of being raped, abducted, harrassed, murdered, imprisoned, etc.

Like, how am I going to travel around in the Middle East, jauntily asking strangers questions about the government, or human rights? I couldn't even go OUTSIDE without a head-to-toe garment and a male escort in some places without having the crap beaten out of me. I'm sorry, but you'll never have to deal with that level of crap as a man.

Or parts of Africa? Hello?

Yes, some women *are* truly badass and have traveled the world by themselves. But the risk is much, much higher that you will encounter some seriously nasty shit along the way, and it's practically 100% guaranteed that you will be pestered constantly in most parts of the world, ESPECIALLY the parts ot the world that Theroux likes to frequent.

Theroux *himself* meets women traveling alone in sketchy places who are being harrassed for no good reason other than that...THEY'RE WOMEN! They get circled by hairy, underpaid, soldiers who taunt and physically harrass them, and worse. Not even pretty women. The example I remember was a short, fat, Japanese woman. Theroux has to step in and tell them to back off, then escort her back to town.

Why didn't they circle *him* instead? Why do they listen to him when he tells them to back off? Because he's a MAN and she's a WOMAN, and in plenty of places in this world, nothing else matters.

And finally, yeah...that's all I need are 100 million misplaced perverts on my site. I already have all the fr**balling fanatics I can handle. Yeeesh.

Anni:
Yes, I do use Moveable Type. It's OK. Whole sections of the Help area are still blank (WTF?), so I don't even know what some of the functions are supposed to do. But it's free...the catch is that you need to be able to figure out how to install it pretty much on your own. I was using Blogger before and it went kaput all of a sudden. Blogger SUCKS.

Laura:

Hi, not sure if you remember me. I bought a ergo backpack from you a while back when you demoed it at my house then my white dog ran away....

Anway, just let you know the ergo went on a 16 days Asia trip with us. (HongKong, Phuket and Singapore). Singapore and Phuket are a lot of fun for kids. I took my son in the ergo and went on a Siam Safari in Phuket and elephant trekking. One thing I want to mention is that people in those countries adore kids so much and they are always willing to do extra to help the mothers so it is very good experience. On top of that, you can always get a certified babysitter for about 4-5 dollars per hour, sweet deal.

I hope to see a new version of the ergo in the future for hot weather, like the new baby bjorn carrier air, kind of mesh fabric, that is one thing I would say the ergo gets pretty uncomfortable in the hot weather ( we are talking about 90-100 degree with 90% of humidity!)

I used a MT and it skewed everything and left lots of space unused and unavailable...when will the internets be perfect? Now I use a LiveJournal template.

Anyhoo, post more! Thanks for the Dooce introduce, she's fun to read.

My beef with Paul Theroux

Comments

Post a comment