It has been more years than I can remember since I last read an analog book – an actual physical book that I held in my hands, turning pages and highlighting pithy passages in yellow. My husband recently came across a dog-eared copy of The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean that his mother had passed down to him. I never met my mother-in-law, but heard much of her love of reading and great writers. So I made an exception to my digital-only rule and decided to take on this travelogue. Paul Theroux's Mediterranean world is not the one of great cultures and civilizations, but rather one of random encounters and off-beat places. He makes no attempt to embellish what does not need embellishing. Rather, he searches beneath garbage dumps and into the soul of all he encounters. Mr. Theroux speaks to the immediacy and reality of whatever or whomever is in his path. As a traveler, Mr. Theroux eschews the obvious. He admits he does not like museums, castles or ruins, never mind that he is writing about a vortex of great civilizations. He is disparaging of virtually any cultural experience within striking range of the average tourist. In fact, he admits that he dislikes tourists, referring to himself instead as a "traveler". A man-made structure must almost be inaccessible before he will rave about it. Then again, that is probably because it would no longer, in his view be a tourist attraction, as no tourist, as opposed to a traveler like himself, could get anywhere near it. But that is who he is, and he makes no apologies for it. He ultimately delivers for the reader, tourist or otherwise, as he gives us a unique and insightful view into a world of the Mediterranean that few outsiders have, or ever will, experience. Mr. Theroux is anything but an apologist. He admits that his practices for note-gathering border on downright rude. He goads virtually everyone he meets into conversation, and is proud of it: "[T]hat was the nature of my traveling: request for detail, conversation as a form of ambush, the traveler as an agent of provocation." But the reader is well rewarded, as Mr. Theroux's encapsulation of these encounters is masterful. Mr. Theroux's erratic approach to travel inures to the reader's benefit. As he states, his "... method of travel was all about improvisation." This turns out to be an understatement, as he zigzags through the Mediterranean coast, often unsure of where he will go next or what mode of transportation he will take. He admits that he pays a price for his chaotic approach, as he describes the anxiety he experiences in the process. He tells of a recurring dream in which he has a major role in a play which he has never read, even as he struts confidently about the theater before his audience. Classic performance anxiety: it brings him just a tad closer to his reader.What is the point of writing a book such as this? For the reader, the rewards are obvious. But Mr. Theroux seems to demand a greater justification for his writing than the satisfaction of the casual reader: He writes: "Some of the best and most enjoyable travel books or studies are snap judgments. In the end, all that matters is that the facts are true, so that the historian… will be able to use your book as a source for say, the condition of Albania in 1994 (" ...stolen cars, bad roads, poor diets, lived in bunkers. . E. Hoxha graffiti still legible on some walls ..."). Historians are on firm ground with primary sources, diaries and travelers' tales". These moments of introspection add texture to Mr. Theroux's storytelling. One particularly enjoyable aspect of Mr. Theroux's writing is that he builds his narrative around travel writers who preceded him: ex-pats like Lawrence Durrell, James Joyce and Evelyn Waugh, as well as native writers like the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz and Israeli Emile Habiby. Mr. Theroux takes us into the cafes, living rooms and other haunts of writers, past and present. Mr. Theroux's views are often shockingly blunt. At times he sounds downright imperialist: "The Greeks had not taken very much interest in their past until Europeans became enthusiastic discoverers and diggers of their ruins. And why should they have cared? The Greeks were not Greek, but rather the illiterate descendants of Slavs and Albanian fisherman, who spoke a debased Greek dialect and had little interest in the broken columns and temples except as places to graze their sheep. The true phili-Hellenists were the English – of whom Byron was the epitome – and the French, who were passionate to link themselves with the Greek ideal". Mr. Theroux makes no pretense of being politically correct.How does Mr. Theroux pull all this off? Quite simply, because he is a great writer who digs deep into the soil he labors. He prefers the war-torn coast of former Yugoslavia as a stomping ground of the Mediterranean to its pristine beaches. He prefers a rusty old tub of a smoke-filled ferry to the fashionable cabin and haute cuisine of a luxury liner. And his predilection for adverse working conditions is unparalleled: "I was happy when it rained or when conditions were miserable, that being the stuff of writers." Mr. Theroux ends his Mediterranean journey in Tangiers, Morocco where he pays a visit to the ailing American writer Paul Bowles. Mr. Theroux describes Bowles as "... preoccupied, knowledgeable, worldly, remote, detached, vein, skeptical, eccentric, self-sufficient, indestructible, egomaniacal, and hospitable to praise. [Paul] was like almost every other writer I have known in my life." One may undoubtedly include Mr. Theroux in this club. Many thanks to my mother-in-law for recommending this outstanding book to her son. I don't know that it would otherwise have come into my hands. Physically or digitally.
A moving account from the master of travel writing. In "The Pillars of Hercules", Mr. Theroux carts us once again on a buoyant ride by train, bus, and ship on a great round trip from Gibraltar on the European end of the Mediterranean to Tangier on the African end, via Spain, France, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt and Morocco.Readers who are familiar with Mr. Theroux's other travel books("The Great Railway Bazaar", "The Old Patagonian Express","Riding the Iron Rooster", "The Kingdom by the Sea", "The Happy Isles of Oceania") will be treated once again to his delightful mix of keen observation, in-the-face curiosity in people, sense of irony, opinionatedness, and lots of information. His books are never simplistic travel narratives of the "there's another lovely monument" kind. More often than not, scenery is simply the backdrop to the real account:that of people, their lives, what they make of their environment, where they have been, and where they are going.Here's Mr. Theroux in Siracusa, Sicily, engaging a bookstore owner in small talk. "'This was a great city once - capital of Sicily,' he said. He named for me the famous Siracusans - Theocritus, the Greek playwright Epicharmus, Santa Lucia, Vittorini. 'So many people have come and gone. We've been Phoenician, Greek of course, from long ago. But more recently Arab, Spanish, French. You can hear it in the names. Vasqueza is a Siracusa name - Spanish. We have French ones too. Take my name, Giarratana - what do you think it is?'' Can't imagine.' But the truth was that I did not want to guess wrong and risk offending him. 'Pure Arab,' said Mr. Giarratana. 'Giarrat is an Arab word.' 'What does it mean?''I don't know. I'm not an Arab!'"With his famously mischievous eye for the unusual, Mr. Theroux captures the essence of life along the shores of the Mediterranean, so different in shape from that inland, no matter what the country. As you race through the book you get the sense that the author is telling a simple story ofa humanity that is, as always, defending its individuality and its proud local heritage while trying to find a common ground with the rest of it.Compared to his other travel books, in this one Mr. Theroux comes off more relaxed, while at the same time casting a wide net on history and mythology, seemingly out of deference to the grandeur of the Mediterranean. But history comes to life colorfully rendered with the author's characteristic candor, and an irreverent position that tilts at the windmills. I won't give too much away, but read the parts on Greece and tell me you didn't either turn red with annoyance, or double up with laughter. You can love him or hate him, but you just can't ignore him.The journey from the northern Pillar of Hercules, the Rock of Gibraltar, to the southern, Ceuta, is an hour's ferry ride across the water from Europe to Africa. Or, with Mr. Theroux, you could take the long way. When I put this book, I for one was sorry that there weren't a few hundred more pages to go.
What do You think about The Pillars Of Hercules (1996)?
A wonderful Tavel book, framed by a great premise/goal, to circle the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to Morocco. As someone tired of traditional tourism, Theroux supplies a refreshingly skeptical view that ends up feeling more honest than single note raves of overseas transcendence.The author is on literary pilgrimage as well, and visits the homes of authors living and dead in each nation, as well as the settings for novels. Not many readers will have the 18 months free or the resources to take a trip like this one, this book provides the next best thing. "The whole of Greece seemed to me a cut-price theme park of broken marble, a place where you were harangued in a high-minded way about Ancient Greek culture while some swarthy little person picked your pocket. That, and unlimited Turkophobia." (p. 314)
—Peter
I'll confess from the start that a travel memoir is just not my kind of thing and so I probably started reading this book rather resentfully. I just so desperately wanted to be proved wrong. Sadly I was not. This book delved into the dull minutiae of his trip to the extent that I was simply bored by it. The book contained sweeping generalisations about the countries, cultures and people he encountered on his travels and there were no great insights that I could glean. I suppose now is the time that I admit I only got half way through before getting so annoyed with the man that I threw the book across the room and declared I could not possibly take any more.This is just not for me.
—Michelle Warwick
Read this a bit more and its making me want to travel back to albania. I was glad to be seen as not completely one of the vampish overly made up women that you are expected to be in the man hunting years of your life. It allowed me to be removed from any potential set up. My young relatives constantly kept urging me to wear eye and lip liner like some kind of chola. Happy they then thought I was some kind of retarded dag when I didnt give in. Lots of laughs on my sister's end of things too considering her name means frills!Even though I was almost watched over by family, this book proves that it is very much a place where violence and love are quick and interchangeable. It reminds me of my uncle and his slow way of walking around the filthy neighbourhood like he was the most respectable man around. He was a great talker, read everything he could get his hands on, and did not for one minute complain about the horrible things that had happened to him. He is someone I looked up to and there to remind me to be stronger than I am. Sometimes it is disturbing to westerners when people are too real, when their layers of behaviour come down in warmth or hatred. But the feeling of interacting with people (especially people you have a connection with) in that way is like no other. It makes you want to tear walls down here and get to the real deal. Just there might not be one left anymore...
—Mira
