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The journey starts in a crowded, stinky rail station. Theroux seems to carry a dark, heavy burden as he passes by these cold places.Do yourself a favor and read this book. Imagine the typical city-to-city train trip. It rolls through the nasty bits of the city (since wealthy people don't live near the tracks) and eventually emerges into the verdant pastures and farms of the country.
It is telling that, even though he is happily married now, he took the Ghost Train trip alone.As he travels, he covets solitude and quiet. He wanders the red light districts (only as an observer) and eats from the street vendors.There are a couple of especially poignant moment in the book for me. The palm reader proceeded to reveal a number of private and humorous things about Theroux, while the entire railcar looked on with interest. As an avid reader, Theroux channels the writers that have gone before him. We learn, for example, that the first trip thirty years earlier cost him his first marriage.
He says, "I seldom feel uplifted in a city; on the contrary, I feel oppressed and confined." Trains are the perfect way to explore this particular vantage point. Luxury spoils you and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world." For the most part, he is true to his creed. He lament the sprawling, squalid cities of India in particular. Ghost Train is the story of Paul Theroux's year-long train journey from London through Europe, across the "stans", India, Burma, South Asia, Japan and back again via the Trans-Siberian Express.
He says, "[.]. He travels second class. A few pages later, Theroux celebrates his birthday alone in Sri Lanka.Another poignant moment occurs on the last leg of the journey, as Theroux makes his way across Siberia. luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. This modern-day Heroditus will open your eyes to a new world of travel and writing.
At the age of sixty-something, he retraces his steps recorded in The Great Railway Bazaar when he was thirty-something.The Ghost Train is an odessy that conjures up many demons for Theroux. He doesn't dwell on on this painful reality in the book, but the memories clearly hang with him as he retraces his path. The confidence of the palm reader and the skill of Theroux's pen make this one of my favorite encounters in the book. Many writers died in Perm for nothing more than thinking freely and dreaming of liberty. He stays in second rate hotels.
Filth and congestion take over the scene until you've stepped once again into another stinky, crowded station.Theroux touches on this notion that the wealthy don't live by the tracks. Most of these writers gave their lives for being far less provocative than Theroux has been. Theroux also stopped in Perm to visit one of the most notorious prisons of the gulag system. Then, as the train rolls into the destination city, gray buildings disrupt the landscape.
On this leg of the journey, he passes Omsk, where Dostoyevsky spent four years in prison. I couldn't help but wonder if the later trip was an attempt for him to exercise that demon. On the slow train to Kandy, Sri Lanka, Theroux met a palm reader on the crowded train. In fact, it seems to be a key part of his mantra of the observant traveller.
By contrast, he loves the serenity and simplicity of Northern Japan. The views from the window have gone from foul and harsh to serene and refreshing.
This guidebook was designed for anyone wanting to explore a Latin approach to working, dating and travel.Buy the book at http://www.lulu.com/content/523478 Paul Theroux is not afraid to tell us about his wife. In the same genre is a book called Single Abroad: Tales of the Boyish Man which covers the cheapest and most social hostels in Europe, the life of a Club Med host in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, the three features that make Mexico City unlike any other city in the world, how I managed not to get thrown out of Chico State University, the impact of the Russian Mafia in Southern Spain, the linguistic impact of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, the last 20 days of the Incan dynasty, how to live in Latin America for $25 a year, how to make the most out of a Euro Rail Pass, mastering a second language and how someone who can't even properly slice a tomato can get a job overseas in a Portuguese restaurant.
(like Iran) but he can also include places (like the gulag camp in Perm) that were closed to him on the first trip. Nothing like this had ever happened to me among my own family." Of course, not all moments in "Ghost Train" are like this; Theroux's disdain for missionaries, liars, self-promoters, tyrants, and missionaries is as sharp as ever, and he seems, if anything, even less tolerant of the delusions and cruelty of dictators in places like Turkmenistan and Singapore. Read this first before you pick up "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star," in which he retraces this journey.
As Theroux sits drinking tea with the children of Mr. Still, there is a valedictory feeling to "Ghost Train"; Theroux knows he'll never be back, and, as if in confirmation of this, Sir Arthur Clarke dies not long after Theroux visits him in Sri Lanka. Bernard, the now deceased manager who had welcomed him on the earlier trip, it is "a homecoming I had not expected, like a visit to generous grateful relatives I had not seen in decades.
"The Great Railway Bazaar," published in 1975, is Paul Theroux`s wonderful account of his train journey across Asia, a trip he took when he was thirty-three years old. It makes scenes like his return to the guesthouse called Candacraig, in Upper Burma, so poignant. "Older people are perceived as cynics and misanthropes," he comments at the beginning of the book, "--but no, they are simply people who have at last heard the still, sad music of humanity played by an inferior rock band howling for fame." That still, sad music was always there, but on this second and undoubtedly final trip he hears it more clearly.
"Ghost Train" cannot exactly follow the same route, since this time Theroux must skip places that have become more hostile to the U.S. Reading the two books in the order in which they were written is not only pleasurable but will allow you to appreciate how the world has changed and how Theroux--the (as he himself says) "glib.shallower, younger, impressionable writer" of three decades ago has changed.
I would like to see him repeat some of his other train trips and give us his amazing insight into how things have changed and/or remained the same. A great read that I was sorry to finish. I have enjoyed all of Paul Theroux's books but I really liked "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" best of all. He is a much happier and relaxed traveler and this book does a lot to explain some of the darkness in his earlier travel books.
Give it a pass. Awful, truly awful. His fans apparently need this stuff, this patronizing "education", because we just don't understand history until Uncle Paul explains it to us.
I thought it was awful, a tired old man using the same tired old formula that he's used many times before. Your prose is that wonderful. Frankly I don't understand the fawning reviews of this book.
You're not biased, are you.When he feels the need to educate us about the horror of 1970's Cambodia I wanted to scream. And Paul, it's time to retire. Three-quarters of the way through, when he suggested that his readers were oh-so-intellectual for getting this far in the book, I almost puked.
Really, Paul.
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