|
dea4a13
|
Why do things get weaker and worse? Why don't they get better? Because we accept that they fall apart! But they don't have to --- they could last forever. Why do things get more expensive? Any fool can see that they should get cheaper as technology gets more efficient. It's despair to accept the senility of obsolescence...
|
|
technology
|
Paul Theroux |
|
aefb7aa
|
it was just a version of Rimbaud in Harar: the exile, a selfish beast with modest fantasies of power, secretly enjoying a life of beer drinking and scribbling and occasional mythomania in a nice climate where there were no interruptions, such as unwelcome letters or faxes or cell phones. It was an eccentric ideal, life lived off the map.""
|
|
mythomania
travelogue
|
Paul Theroux |
|
9c4057f
|
An aimless joy is a pure joy," I said, quoting Yeats."
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
44829ff
|
The trains in any country contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Singhalese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar, with..
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
7beb50e
|
Faulkner first spoke about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the hypocrisy of boasting of our values to our enemies "after we have taught them (as we are now doing) that when we talk of freedom and liberty, we not only mean neither, we don't even mean security and justice and even not the preservation of life for people whose pigmentation is not the same as ours." He went on to say that if Americans are to survive, we will have to show the wo..
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
e5327ae
|
as Henry James had said in a letter to a do-gooding friend, "Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses--remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own."
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
a78dfde
|
Do you know Aggrey Awori?' Mushana said, 'He's an old man.' Awori was my age, regarded as a miracle of longevity in an AIDS stricken country; a Harvard graduate, Class of '63, a track star. Thirty years ago, a rising bureaucrat, friend and confidant of the pugnacious prime minister, Milton Obote, a pompous gap-toothed northerner who had placed his trust in a goofy general named Idi Amin. Awori, powerful then, had been something of a scourge..
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
6891f95
|
I had some good friends - really funny ones. My best friend was a guy called Apolo Nsibambi. We shared an office at the Extra Mural Department at Makerere, and then I got a promotion - became Acting Director - and I was his boss! I used to tease him for calling himself "Doctor" - he had a Ph. D. in political science. I mocked him for wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase and being pompous. I went to his wedding. He came to my wedding. And ..
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
f29422b
|
And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with a main street and a railway station, and people with dogs and electric lights it was near enough to the end of the earth to give me the impression that I was a solitary explorer in a strange land. That illusion (which was an illusion in the South Pole and at the headwaters of the Nile) was enough of a satisfaction to me to make me w..
|
|
travel
south-america
travel-writing
|
Paul Theroux |
|
bda4114
|
I decided that travel was flight and pursuit in equal parts,
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
5ba5c04
|
The train was sunlit and emptier.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
b25dc52
|
But, truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
0d65f83
|
What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere if you're not in a hurry.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
06e478d
|
I said I was a stranger here. "Ain't no strangers here, baby," she said, and gave me a merry smile."
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
2988dab
|
That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
ec01364
|
On the sunny day that I spent walking its streets I was reminded that Philadelphia (Mississippi) is still the headquarters of the Mississippi Klan. I easily found the headquarters and the free leaflets. "...It's a Klansman's responsibility to register to vote, campaign, and vote for conservative pro white candidates who will put America first and defend our nation's borders." --
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
421065f
|
I walked for an hour and then returned by a different route to wait out the weekend. It was one of those empty interludes in travel, an airless unrewarding delay, when nothing occurs except a rising sense of loneliness and uncertainty, a darkening of prospects, the condition of being an outsider with all of a stranger's suspicions.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
e463895
|
Raging politeness," this extreme friendliness is sometimes termed, but even if that is true, it is better than the cold stare or the averted eyes or the calculated snub I was used to in New England."
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
f049fe0
|
But that did not strike me as immoderate. It was a society that was pledged to austerity that was probably the most prone to going on binges. So, philosophically, the name didn't fit. But
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
5fbba08
|
Little had changed after independence. Jomo Kenyatta's face hung in a framed portrait in every shop where Queen Elizabeth's had been. Some schools were built, some streets renamed. But educated people are a liability in a dictatorship: all the schools were underfunded, few of them succeeded. A great deal of foreign money was given to the government and most of it ended up in the pockets of politicians, some of whom were assassinated. It is ..
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
0a30ed8
|
A little farther on, he said, "What do you think of India?" "It's a hard question," I said. I wanted to tell him about the children I had seen that morning pathetically raiding the leftovers of my breakfast, and ask him if he thought there was any truth in Mark Twain's comment on Indians: "It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life." But I added instead, "I haven't been here very long."
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
4ab4265
|
The Chinese word for yak meant 'hairy cow'. It is a lovely long-haired animal, like a cow on its way to the opera.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
ac331dc
|
The British were fatalistic; it was the origin of their cynicism, but it also made them good sharers of misfortune. 'Oh, well, mustn't grumble!
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
7877e89
|
Africa had been deliverance for me, a liberating embrace and an opportunity.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
f0a26e6
|
How nice it would be, I thought, if someone reading the narrative of my African trip felt the same, that it was the next best thing to being there
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
7e53b75
|
I have a hatred of the taming of animals, especially large ones that are so contented in the wild. I abominate circus acts that involve big befooled beasts -- cowed tigers or helplessly roaring lions pawing the air and teetering on small stools. I deplore zoos and anything to do with animal confinement or restraint.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
7c0c913
|
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
|
|
wonder
science
technology
|
Paul Theroux |
|
b4048e2
|
Telling the truth and being ethical often keeps people from political power, but doing the right thing, always, without exception, is all that matters in the long run, and is ultimately powerful. That's why the true heroes of the civil rights struggle were never politicians. They were humble folk on a mission, enduring sit-ins and organizing marches and debates. When they began to succeed, the politicians, seeing an opportunity, followed th..
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
d7d6e76
|
Mormonism was like junk food: It was American to the core and it looked all right, but it wasn't until after you had swallowed some that you felt strange. I
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
897750d
|
Believe me, England's prisons are full of splendid people.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
8c94979
|
Many travelers are essentially fantasists. Tourists are timid fantasists, the others - risk takers - are bold fantasists.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
d31d579
|
Many travelers are essentially fantasists. Tourists are timid fantasists, the others - risk takers - are bold fantasists. The tourists at Etosha conjure up a fantastic Africa after their nightly dinner by walking to the fence at the hotel-managed waterhole to stare at the rhinos and lions and eland coming to drink: a glimpse of wild nature with overhead floodlights. They have been bused to the hotel to see it, and it is very beautiful, but ..
|
|
travel
namibia
tourist
tourism
|
Paul Theroux |
|
8c64890
|
Since I will never write the autobiography I once envisioned--volume one, Who I Was; volume two, I Told You So--writing about travel has become a way of making sense of my life,
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
db9371b
|
Sometimes I miss Boston', I said. It was a timid confession. I missed it every day - its space, its familiar streets and smells. I missed the laughter, I missed the feel of American money which was like the feel of flesh. Reality for me was the past, and it was elsewhere. This - London - was like a role I had been assigned to play, and I was still yet unsure of my lines.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
4b7bd3c
|
Malmesbury, was an example, a market town in an old farming district, surrounded by wheat fields, on Hansie's route to Springbok. This town, too, had grown.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
b8b82b6
|
These chicken feet are first quality. You appreciate them?
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
bcf6c35
|
All the crockery in China had been smashed - flung over the years in all the periodic convulsions for which China was famous. All the blood-stained carpets had been tossed away. All the ancestors' portraits had been destroyed. All the bodies had been buried. It was a country of bare rooms and empty shelves, like this apartment
|
|
hongkong
|
Paul Theroux |
|
aeccf6a
|
Most people come to Africa to see large or outlandish animals in the wild, while some others -- "the new gang -- the gang of virtue" -- make the visit to tell Africans how to improve their lives. And many people do both -- animal watching in the early morning, busybodying in the afternoon."
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
77ccc55
|
The sight of bribery on the back road of any country is a clear indication that the whole place is corrupt and the regime a thieving tyranny,
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
b5280f2
|
The idea for elephant-back safaris was initially that of the photographer, socialite, and Africa hand Peter Beard, who suggested to Moore in the 1980s that riding elephants through the bush was unprecedented and would be an incomparable safari.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
78cdc8f
|
We have bestowed on Africa just enough of the disposable junk of the modern world to create in African cities a junkyard replica of the West,
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
c2d3002
|
The intrusion of outsiders in the day-to-day lives of Africans was the sort of thing I had always criticized.
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
5e9cee8
|
Colonialism oppressed and subverted Africans and remade them as scavengers, pleaders, and servants
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |
|
4c7b723
|
Travel has always been my way of defeating this sinking feeling, partly because travel is a form of escape, and travel itself--the elemental farewell--becomes the fugitive fantasy of a new life, travel inspiring a sense of hope. I
|
|
|
Paul Theroux |