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the complete review - travel

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

by
Paul Theroux

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : as entertaining as usual

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  Not quite a consensus: many quite favourable, but a few not liking his attitudes at all

  From the Reviews:

• "That Ghost Train fails to be quite so jolly, and not even of potential-classic status (it is standard, rather than first-class), is also because Theroux is himself 33 years older -- just as observant and often as eloquent, but without the zestful energy of his former self to lend that irresistible sense of first-time wonderment to his travels." - Michael Shmith, The Age
  
  
• "As in The Great Railway Bazaar, Theroux’s skill lies not in mere aesthetic awareness, although each impression, as his train groans into Singapore, or Turkmenistan, is writ large, in a language both florid and erudite. He is a cultural raconteur nonpareil" - Matt Shaer, Christian Science Monitor
  
  
• "India (87 pages) and Japan (56 pages) receive the most attention, but as in his best travel books (The Old Patagonian Express, for example, and the African odyssey Dark Star Safari), the brilliance lies in the author's ability to create a broad sweep of many countries -- a sequence of close-up shots that form a semi-global panorama. (...) Theroux is a fabulously good writer with an almost perfect ear for the rhythm of his prose. (...) Funny, informative and lyrical, this is a portrait of half the world in light and shade by a writer who still cannot be challenged in the field he reinvented." - Sara Wheeler, The Guardian
  
  
• "His account's one oddity is its unselectiveness, almost every kilometre recorded. (...) Yet for his spartan love, as a traveller, for the aesthetic of trains and slowness, for his inquisitiveness and fluency, for his sympathy and sadness at the world's degradation and transformation, this ranks as one of his most human books. My final reaction was to have enjoyed it as a kind of wise commonplace book." - Julian Evans, The Independent
  
  
• "What's really remarkable about Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is how much it reveals about Theroux the writer in precisely the way that self-regarding passage suggests." - Tim Rutten, The Los Angeles Times
  
  
• "Bazaar was a young man's book, zestful, questioning, importunate and light on learning. Ghost Train is an old man's book, trading on a lifetime of travel, fiction writing and reflection. It is at once less exciting and more satisfying, though probably more so if you are of Theroux's age, as I am, and have been to many of the same places, as I have." - Paul Routledge, New Statesman
  
  
• "Mr. Theroux peeks into plenty of brothels and rejoices in the enduring unspeakability of many of the world’s toilets, but on the whole the book reveals less about the naked reality of the world than the slackened curiosity of the author. (...) Mr. Theroux’s scribbling does yield some nice moments of dehumidified wit and snow-dusted nostalgic repose. But too often he displays little more than a hurried, irritable interest in the places he visits, especially if they have the nerve to have embraced "meretricious modernity." " - Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times
  
  
• "It’s the kind of project that only a man secure in his own self-esteem could undertake: an auto-pilgrimage, a grand­homme’s homage to, well, himself. But then Theroux has never been overburdened by modesty. Although he has claimed that a prerequisite of traveling responsibly is avoiding arrogance, his previous travelogues have all been pungent with self-regard. Ghost Train is no different. (...) Most of these generalizations are intellectually intolerable, some are banalities masquerading as profundities and a few just fail to make sense (.....) Such tossed-off one-liners are risible in isolation, but in sum they suggest a systemic laziness of thought. This impression is confirmed by Theroux’s repeated tendency to repetition." - Robert Macfarlane, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "Ghost Train is readable and vivid. Theroux has still got it. He's a long way from raging against the dying of the light, though he might need to go to Specsavers more often these days. There's a sense of the author in his pomp, and at the same time at ease with himself, in a chummy encounter he has in India with Prince Charles" - Stephen Smith , The Observer
  
  
• "A wicked acerbity remains one of his strengths (though now there is a woman at home who loves and misses him); this, plus his uncanny eye for the big picture, knack for description and talent for turning his experiences into stories." - Peter Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle
  
  
• "At his best, Theroux is a dazzler, giving us the highs and lows of his journey with tenderness and acerbic humour." - Lee Langley, The Spectator
  
  
• "Throughout the book, Theroux undercuts himself with rough humour and irony (.....) There is something surprisingly tender about the later sections of Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. After the stops and starts, the digressions and funny conversations, we are left with a writer leaving middle age and looking into the approaching distance. Theroux does so with a practical knowledge of the remoter countries of the world that is rare." - Patrick French, Sunday Times
  
  
• "Fans of Theroux are not likely to be disappointed by this follow-up to the original book. The pace is more meditative, but it is structured around the usual well-tested formula: a combination of evocative description, innumerable quotes and literary references, frequent contact with the sex workers of the countries he visits and meetings with the great and the good." - Jason Webster, The Telegraph
  
  
• "My paperback edition of The Great Railway Bazaar runs to 379 pages; the follow-up hardback has 485. That's a lot of space to fill when apparently greater changes have occurred in the writer than in the world (and when China has been dismissed in a page and a half). The explanation is prose that's as padded as the train seats." - Michael Kerr, The Telegraph
  
  
• "He is brashly nosy, bluntly sure, and frequently allows his personality to take precedence in his narrative. This is, of course, what makes him an excellent travel writer; but it can also grate. (...) Paul Theroux is chiefly interested in the fluidity of human life, and one gets the feeling that he could write about the same journey for a third time and not be boring. He moves about, looks around him and tells us what he sees and feels. Few do it better." - Toby Lichtig, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "At his best, Theroux is still an addictively engaging writer, endlessly curious and perceptive, hardy, chatty and sometimes very funny. (...) The trouble is that these high points are few and far between, and through much of the book there is a strong feeling that Theroux's heart is not really in it." - William Dalrymple, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Paul Theroux does not seem to begin his book -- an account of his latest continents-crossing foray -- particularly invitingly, claiming already on the first page:

     Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions, and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted with Munchausen syndrome.

     What traveler backtracked to take the great trip again ? None of the good ones that I know.

The train offers the truth of a place: horrible or savage as it may seem, the hinterland is also the present.

"The thing that bothers me is that Chatwin never traveled alone."
       "Jan does."
       "So does Jonathan."
       "But Redmond doesn't."
       "Naipaul never did."

It was strange: as Indian cities underwent name changes -- Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai -- their character seemed to change too, as though they no longer had to live up to that old genteel image and could become nightmarish in new ways.

Acting on my theory that a country's pornography offers the quickest insight into the culture and inner life of a nation, and especially the male character, I went in and assessed the goods.

Pornography is specific, particular in its rituals and images, and it can't be gratuitous or faked or cooked up for its shock value, or else it won't sell. Shelves of videocassettes and DVDs of bestiality -- women canoodling with dogs and horses, pigs and goats -- meant there was a market for it.

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Links:

• Houghton Mifflin publicity page
• Penguin publicity page
• Profile in Cape Cod Today

• The Age
• The Australian
• Barnes & Noble Review
• Boston Globe
• Everett Potter's Travel Report
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• The Japan Times
• The Los Angeles Times
• Metro
• metroactive
• New Statesman
• New Zealand Listener
• News & Observer
• The Observer
• Peace Corps Writers
• The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• PopMatters
• The Rumpus
• San Francisco Chronicle
• The Traveler's Journal
• Urbanatomy
• The Washington Post

• Official site
• Interview in The Observer
• Interview at Powells.com

• The Bad Angel Brothers
• Blinding Light
• Burma Sahib
• Dark Star Safari
• A Dead Hand
• The Elephanta Suite
• Hotel Honolulu
• The Lower River
• Mother Land
• Sir Vidia's Shadow
• The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro
• Under the Wave at Waimea

• See Index of Travel-related books

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About the Author:

       American author Paul Theroux has written almost two dozen novels and a number of excellent travel books, the most famous being The Great Railway Bazaar. He has taught in Uganda and Singapore, and he lived in England for a long time. Several of his books have been filmed (including The Mosquito Coast) and a TV series was made of his stories, The London Embassy and The Consul's Files.

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© 2008-2024 the complete review

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