Who is paul theroux

You ride it, and then the wave is gone. And you leave no trace. I mean, all the early visitors, Captain Cook saw surfers all over the Pacific. Jack London surfed himself.

Mark Twain was a very early journalist in Hawaii, and he wrote about surfing. So surfing is an old Polynesian activity. As for me, I paddle a kayak. This is not a boast. That was with Michael Caine and Sigourney Weaver, and I thought the script was weak, but I thought the acting was very good. I know how hard it is to make a movie.

It takes a long time. I think it will be very good. The hero of Saint Jack was the first of Theroux's more complicated characters, but the book explored the familiar themes. Jack Flowers, a middle-aged American expatriate in Singapore, runs a whorehouse and offers readers of Saint Jack a cynical narrator-philosopher. The book was later turned into a movie. But it was as a traveler that Theroux made his greatest mark. After the publication of The Black House he left on a four-month train trip through Asia.

It was his first best seller. In Saint Jack Theroux wrote of fiction as a tool that offers "the second chances life denied. This time one anti-hero is Valentine Hood, a disenchanted American who is dismissed from his diplomatic post after assaulting an official of the South Vietnamese government. In Picture Palace he again allowed fiction to take his characters where reality hadn't. Based on the true-life photographer Jill Krementz, Theroux's Maude Coffin Pratt explores the relationship between an artist's life and her work.

It is a series of short pieces—literary essays, travel articles, and profiles. It was followed by a long novel, O-Zone , his first America-centered work. Ever the outsider, Theroux's world is populated by people who don't seem to belong in their environment. Like the author riding a train toward the outlandish, for them the mystery is what will come next. In addition to his travel books as autobiography, including My Other Life , Theroux has done numerous interviews with journalists.

Theroux's Five Travel Epiphanies for Forbes magazine in discusses his five most interesting experiences while traveling. Topics Mentioning This Author. Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The Great Railway Bazaar 3. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Want to Read saving… Error rating book. The Mosquito Coast 3.

Riding the Iron Rooster 4. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star 4. The Pillars of Hercules 3.