This is the book that began a sub-genre of travel writing, or so it seems. While there are many varieties of travel narratives, Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar takes the reader in a somewhat different direction, for this author's travel books are in many ways more self-reflective than they are descriptive of the places he is passing through. And with Theroux, there is always much more detail about the process of travel & about the passage through a country by train than about arrival or specific destinations. It seems that it began something like this: I thought it would be unlucky to lie: a whiff of paranoia had made me superstitious. I told the man where I had been, naming countries; I said that I had been taking notes & that when I got back to England, I would write a book about the trip and call it The Great Railway Bazaar. And I went further, saying that as soon as he was out of sight, I would write down what he said, and that the people are real nice & the weather was real bad & I would describe his moustache. Having ridden on quite a few of the same trains as Theroux & traveled by rail within many countries on six continents, I never seem to meet people who are anything but pleasant & interesting while en route, while Theroux seems so very often to be at odds with his fellow travelers. This tendency to seem misanthropic to the casual reader is indeed unfortunate but the author is a gifted commentator, at least for those who have the ability not to be distracted. It may be that Theroux's hesitation to be more inclusive reflects some insecurity on his part but most of us who read his travel stories are not licensed to offer therapy. Instead, it is important that we merely attempt to envision the passing landscapes & the world within the dining cars & sleeping compartments as the author records them, not to pass judgment on the narrator. The fact is that there are many reasons why these very personal travel works have sold so well over 40 years. For one thing, the names of the trains in this & other books are so evocative, including "The Frontier Mail", "The Mandalay Express", "The Khyber Pass Local", "The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur" "The Hikari Super Express to Kyoto", names as suggestive of exotic destinations as the tags from steamships and grand hotels that once were placed on steamer trunks & heavy-duty luggage to be handled by liveried porters. And speaking of tags, one of the more memorable characters in any of Theroux's travel books is R. Duffill, with a listed address at the Splendid Palas Hotel, Istanbul, someone whose surname becomes a verb when he is left behind at a station en route during one of the rail links within The Great Railway Bazaar. In some ways, Theroux is not a classic rail buff, someone who would journey half way around the globe to view & hopefully to ride a train headed by an old Garratt's steam engine. Rather, his vantage point is always that the journey is the goal, not the destination, not the specific conveyance (other than by train of course) & not necessarily the intersections with memorable folks met along the way, unless of course they are famous authors or people who just happen to be reading one of his books. What I seem to enjoy most is the author's compilation of impressions that come with just being slowly transported from place to place, including the occasional frustrations, privations & miscues that occur when traveling in a 3rd world country. Travel memories often involve a compression of experiences, with the wondrous & the unfortunate moments usually remaining far more clearly in focus than any of the routine happenings experienced. The very idea of leaving Victoria Station in London and engaging every possible connecting train to form a travel chain by rail across countless countries seems a worthwhile pursuit for least a few of us. How many flights do we take that hold special memories long after we disembark, perhaps because being lost in the clouds does not provide a similar sense of passage from place to place as does a journey by train. Here is just a hint of Theroux's rationale: I was glad to be moving. It was the feeling that I had on the "Frontier Mail" & the "Direct Orient Express": the size, the great length of the train was a comfort. The longer the journey, the happier I was. The progress of the train did not interest me very much, as I preferred reading, eating in the dining car, sleeping after lunch & bringing my journal up to date in early evening & deciding where we were on the map. Train travel animated my imagination & usually gave me the solitude to order & write my thoughts: I traveled easily in 2 directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window and at the interior rim of a private world of memory & language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination.If nothing else, Theroux takes us on board vicariously and the mention of books he is reading on various journeys, the names of some of the classic express trains & even the grungy locals stimulate us to follow in his path, even if we ultimately have very different experiences while en route and even if we never leave the comfort of our favorite lounge chair.
When, some thirty years later, Paul Theroux repeated the journey that he had described in The Great Railway Bazaar, he declared travel writing to be ‘the lowest form of literary self-indulgence.’ His original journey in the early 1970s was a deliberate act, a ruse upon which to hang a book. The travel featured was nothing less than an occupation, whose sole product was to be collected and recorded experience. We, the readers, must thank him for his single-minded devotion to selfishness, for The Great Railway Bazaar takes us all the way there without having to leave the armchair.The journey began and finished in London. In between Paul Theroux took the orient Express to Istanbul and then crossed Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan before doing the length of India. He even went to Sri Lanka by train. Then there was Burma and a meander through South-East Asia. His account of smoking cigarettes in Vientiane will stick in the mind. Malaysia and Singapore were taken in, the latter clearly not being to the writer’s taste. Japan was clearly a curious experience, but the Trans Siberia from near Vladivostok to Moscow seemed strangely predictable, its length being its major characteristic. Eventually, the final leg across Europe hardly counted, a mere step along a much bigger way.Any such journey can only offer mere impressions of the places en route, but such first impressions are always interesting in themselves, if not always accurate or justified. Thirty years on, some of them may even have historical significance. It would be a challenging task these days to cross the current Iran and Afghanistan by rail. And a contemporary journey would surely cross China, a route barred to the 1970s independent traveller.But it’s the people met along the way that give the book its prime characters. We never get to know these people and we encounter them largely as caricatures, but it is the experience of travel that is described, and this experience inevitably involves a multitude of these ephemeral encounters. They are always engaging. We expect to be confronted with the surprising, the unknown and the little understood. We expect the experience to be recorded, whilst the mundane is edited out of the account. And furthermore, we do try to make sense of our often confused responses to the unexpected. This is why we travel: at its base it is a challenge.Paul Theroux does litter the trip with indulgence, however. There is a fairly constant search for alcoholic beverages, for instance. Furthermore, in several places there are encounters with and deliberate attempts to seek out the local low life. Offers of girls, boys, older women, wives, transvestites and every imaginable service are received. Sometimes, the services in question require some imagination. It is easy, of course, to sensationalise experience when it is sought at the margins of what a society dares to admit. In the case of Japan, where much of this material is located, it has to be admitted that the margins are rather wide.Balancing this crudity is Paul Theroux’s constant desire to reflect upon his love of literature. Some of the material he recollects produces some wonderful insights, surprising juxtapositions and apposite comment.Travel writing might be pure self-indulgence, but this particular example of the vice transcends the purely personal. It feels like being taken along for the ride. Thus, like all good travel writing, The Great railway Bazaar is not merely an account of another’s observations, it is nothing less than a journey to be experienced.
What do You think about The Great Railway Bazaar (2006)?
The book is an account of a journey through Europe and Asia by train. The concept is good, and the author made a great journey, and has the gift of story telling. But the author himself comes across as a stupid, rude and horrible person who abuses random people, makes snide remarks, plays practical jokes on helpful locals, and in general appears quite slap-worthy. He mostly behaves himself in the first half of the book, but on reaching Japan, he becomes a perfect pest. Giving away gifts that would not work, calling people 'monkeys' is NOT a way to endear himself to the readers. He asks very rude questions with the aim of making the other person uncomfortable. For example, there is this account of how he ridicules a doctor who sold blood to pay for his medical school. Was that supposed to be funny?And then the racist / imperialist tendencies show quite clearly. I might overlook it in a novel of the 20s, not one of the 70s. American excuses for the Vietnam war, obvious disgust with hippies, anti-Russian sentiment, implying that Japanese politicians strive to be like Churchill but would never achieve it, are more examples of the author's stupidity. Why should a Japanese politician aspire to be like Churchill anyway?The author's ridiculous behaviour spoilt what could have been a great novel. At the very least, he could have made some effort to keep his disgusting behaviour out of the book. And we certainly don't need to know how much drunk he got every single day. I had intended to buy the sequel to this book originally, but I somehow don't think I will now.
—Kavita
This probably should have five stars. It is gritty, meaty and pure Theroux. Apart from a hopeful start, there is nothing of the romance of travel except for one passage where, in Vietnam, the exquisite beauty of mountains, sky and ocean move the author to lyrical description. Rather, it is a chronicle of torrid conditions on overcrowded third-class carriages crammed with desperate humanity eating unspeakable food, alternated with, less frequently, weird fellow travellers sharing luxurious old colonial sleeping compartments. At times one wonders why he puts himself through it; but, of course, it is very much about the people he meets: conversations, sharp observations and startling anecdotes that stay on in the reader's mind. From Victoria Station, London, to Tokyo Central and back through the Soviet Union, Theroux's power to describe what he sees and experiences, from the chaotic atmosphere of Asian rail travel, fading to bleak madness on the interminable stretch through sub-zero steppe country, never falters. One of my favourite authors. I loved it.
—Judy
I love Paul Theroux and this, one his first is the one which set me off. I wanted to re-read it before reading his new book about taking the same trip across Europe and Asia some thirty years later.In the early 70s which he writes about in this book there were no railways in Afghanistan and I'm pretty sure railways aren't a priority to this day but I'm looking forward to seeing how he crosses the country in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s.Theroux is an author one either loves or hates. My attraction to him is based on a similarity in our ages and his skills of perception of those he meets on his travels and his endearing (and enduring) crankiness.Fortunately, although I've read several of his books, I still have several left to savor.
—Tom
