by Paul Theroux
For various reasons (off the subject, repetitious, insubstantial, being saved for later), I decided to exclude a number of pieces from this collection. In the interest of bibliographical completeness, I list them here. Anyone who wishes to read further may find these pieces on the shelves of a good library.
"Beijing in 2040," Omni; "Big Sur," Bon Appétit; "Carnival in Brazil," Bon Appétit; "Christopher Okigbo," Introduction, Collected Poems; "Crossing Nantucket Sound," Sea Kayaker; "D. J. Enright," portrait of a poet, Life by All Means; "Doctor Sacks," a profile of Dr. Oliver Sacks, Prospect; "Hawaiian Cruise," San Francisco Examiner; "Hong Kong: The Persistence of Memory," New York Times; "It's About Time: The Work of Daniel Brush," Gold Without Boundaries; "James Lewton Brain, Anthropologist," The Independent; "Nurse Wolf," portrait of a dominatrix, The New Yorker; "Return to Malawi," National Geographic; Waldo—Introduction. "What About Salman Rushdie?" New York Times; "Why I Write," Nouvelle Observateur.
Many of the subjects in these pieces are or were friends of mine. Okigbo, a Nigerian poet, was killed in the Biafran war; Enright rescued me by giving me a job in Singapore; Oliver Sacks is a source of continuous enlightenment; Daniel Brush works magic as a goldsmith; Jim Brain taught me Chichewa and Swahili and gave me access to Africa; Salman's life and work are incomparable—and he was part of a little band of writer friends (Jonathan Raban among them) who worked and thrived in London and helped me feel at home in the years I lived there. As for "Nurse Wolf"—who must remain anonymous—she just laughed when I told her that, after my profile of her appeared, a record number of New Yorker subscriptions were angrily canceled.
OTHER BOOKS BY PAUL THEROUX
SIR VIDIA'S SHADOW
"Exhilarating ...a complex fabric, a tapestry ...depicting the rich companionship of two difficult men." — Los Angeles Times Book Review
A heartfelt and revealing account of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with the legendary V. S. Naipaul, Sir Vidia's Shadow is an intimate record of a literary mentorship that traces the growth of both writers' careers and explores the unique effect each had on the other. ISBN 0-618-00199-9
SUNRISE WITH SEAMONSTERS
"A steamer trunk full of delights." — Chicago Sun-Times
This collection of decidedly opinionated articles, essays, and ruminations transports the reader to exotic, unexpected places in the world and also into the thoughts and emotions of the writer himself. ISBN 0-395-41501-2
KOWLOON TONG
"A cleverly, tightly constructed, fast-paced book."— New York Times Book Review
In this novel set in Hong Kong, Neville "Bunt" Mullard and his mother are one of many caught up in the hand-over of the British colony to China. Bunt is forced for the first time to make decisions that matter and even begins, maybe, to discover love in the process. ISBN 0-395-90141-3
MY OTHER LIFE
"Theroux's best and most entertaining book to date... a seriously funny novel." — Time
From his early education at the knee of his eccentric uncle, to his years as a fledging novelist, the fictional "Paul Theroux" moves through young bachelorhood in Africa and between continents. ISBN 0-395-87752-0
THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS
By Train Through the Americas
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Starting with a rush-hour subway ride to South Station in Boston to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, Theroux winds up on the poky, wandering Old Patagonian Express steam engine, which comes to a halt in a desolate land. ISBN 0-395-52105-x
Visit our Web site at www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.
AVAILABLE FROM MARINER BOOKS
Footnotes
* "Blindness is a confinement, but it is also a liberation, a solitude propitious to invention, a key and an algebra" (Prologue to "The Unending Rose," in Borges's Collected Poems).
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* A hubristic and, it turns out, inaccurate assertion. Since these words were written, severe dehydration on a long trip down the Zambezi River in 1997 traumatized my kidneys and brought on my first attack of gout. In 1999, squinting miserably, I was diagnosed as suffering prematurely from severe cataracts, because of exposure to the ultraviolet rays in the tropical sunshine that I have encountered as a fresh air fiend.
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