Rating: 
Summary: Not one of Theroux's better books
Review: Theroux is a great American Author. Unfortunantly this book does not reflect that. Winston Churchill once said "A young conservative has a heart of Stone, an old liberla has a head of Stone." While the average course of personnel evolution tends to make people become more conservative as they grow older, Theroux demonstartes the opposite trends in his writing. His first book "Fong and the Indians," "Waldo" and the great "Great Railway Bizarre." show a independent almost liberterian mindset. Theroux has seemed to devolve into a pudding headed liberlaism in his later years. This book tends to be way too preachy in an annoying and naive unbecoming of an educated and experienced man like Theroux. In this book Theroux fancies himself as the moral avatar of what are proper beliefes and opinions in a country he has just arrived in. In fact he spends half of the his written words on specious peronnel affronts rather then the witty insights we are used to from him. Since he wrote this book in an admittedly bitter mood maybe we should not expect more. However I would opt for this great authors return to ephemeral diatribe on his insoucient peregrinations rather then this example or virulent polemic on social injustice.
Rating:
Summary: Great writer, nasty person.
Review: Theroux is a great travel writer--I don't hesitate to say it. When I read his books, I feel as though I'm there with him, and I want to go myself to experience the places he visits more fully. In this book he travels all over the Pacific, including some incredibly out-of-the-way places, and has some remarkable experiences. The problem with his books is that I'm there WITH HIM. Theroux is snobbish, argumentative, sometimes racist or close to it, sometimes downright mean-spirited. I want to comment especially on his four-page diatribe against poor Thor Heyerdahl, which dropped my opinion of Theroux several notches. Who really cares if many of Heyerdahl's theories have been proven wrong? The Kon-Tiki Expedition is still one of the greatest travel books ever, at least as great as anything by Theroux, and obviously written by a person who is much easier to get along with. I had the strong feeling that Theroux was jealous of Heyerdahl because he's never done anything as courageous as sailing halfway across the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft.
Rating: 
Summary: Dyspeptic travelogue
Review: Theroux's bittersweet and even dyspeptic travelogue about the faded glories of Oceania and it's current sad state (if one credits everything he says) isn't going to entertain so much as depress you, but I found it fascinating nevertheless. His description of the formerly proud and warlike Marquesas Islanders, for example, who were never conquered, was especially poignant, describing them as getting fat from sitting around watching TV all day while eating bags of imported French cheese puffs. From what Theroux says, one gets the impression that much of French Polynesia subsists on care packages of junk food sent from France, since there's not a whole lot of work sailing outrigger canoes or conquering neighboring islands to be done anymore. Well, I would like to get another perspective on this but despite its overall downer theme I still found Theroux's comments interesting, and hopefully, things aren't as bad as he described.
Rating: 
Summary: Made up travelog
Review: Theroux's book is very well written, but having gone to many of the places in the book, and indeed met the very same people within the book, I have to say that it is simply just fiction. So many people are charicatured to the point of fantasy, which I am quite sure is calculatingly done to sell more books, that it all has to be taken lightly. As a book it is a good read, but it is not a reflection of reality. In any event, I keep reading his writing
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but Superficial and Inaccurate...
Review: Theroux's work is persistent in generalizations and superficial observations, based on fleeting encounters with the many peoples of the South Pacific. He has a habit of labeling a number of the ethnic groups that he encounters, as ignorant of other cultures, which really is descriptive of his own ignorance! Unfortunately such fleeting encounters as Theroux describes, are no substitute for being a part of the region from birth. Had Theroux taken time to study the South Pacific in a space-time field that has its origins in the region, he would get to a better understanding of the local peoples, and would have done justice to the local people and provided a better return on the reader's investment. The book reads like fiction due its abundance of inaccuracies: "...Indians who never drank kava... Fijian men did little else but squat around a bowl and guzzle it". These statements are blatantly wrong! Also, "[Fijians] ... tended to prefer porky Chinese food over Indian curries."- Ch. 12. I would ask Theroux how many Fijian homes he had visited and dined within? Unfortunately, Theroux misses a fundamental truism of the South Pacific peoples - be they indigenous or a descendent of colonial implants - they are extremely reserved people. Their friendliness and amiability may be apparent at the first encounter, but to really get know their thoughts, one needs to spend extended periods of time within relatively small communities. There's almost a hint of jealousy that folks in the South Pacific can prosper and are socially, technically and academically progressive, despite the 'seemingly carefree' attitude that they exhibit. This results in expositions that are frequently punctuated by arrogance and racism on the part of the author. It does make for entertaining reading, hence the two stars. However, it is not objective, as travel journals need to be, and is far from the truth that one would encounter. Visit the South Pacific and find out for yourself !
Rating: 
Summary: Pompous English prejudice meets whining about flies.
Review: This guy isn't funny. He is a whining bore. Half way through the book, I threw it out. John Dowd writes a great book about kayaking. "Alone At Sea" by Dr. Hannes Lindemann is a great kayak adventure story. This book is about a whining, self-centered, British ex-pat, island hopping and complaining about everything, everywhere he goes.
Rating:
Summary: If you like Theroux, you'll love this
Review: This is one of his best -- typically irrascible Theroux who refuses to placate anyone. In this day and age of political correctness, it is refreshing to find an author unafraid to voice exactly what he feels. There are not twopeople on the face of the planet who have the same experiences in the same place. Theroux is entitled to his opinions as is anyone else -- he just happens to write about his experiences in the most amusing, erudite approach of any travel writer on the planet (who else could make a connection between formerly cannibalistic cultures and their preference for Spam). For those who were offended with the references to ""Nipponization"" -- this is pointing to the negative effects of globalization upon traditional cultures. So in actuality, isn't this the exact opposite of xenophobia? As for the comments about Australians being a bunch of drunks -- well, can anybody actually say this is wrong? This doesn't resonate with me like Riding the Iron Rosster did, but by the same token, Theroux seems somewhat happier paddling between the blue skies and waters of the South Pacific, than he ever did on a train.
Rating:
Summary: The happy wanderer
Review: This is one of the books I have taken, along with Lonely Planet's guide to Fiji, on a voyage, which may be one-way, from Chicago to Suva (Fiji's capital) and Fiji. I recommend this book, wholeheartedly. Paul Theroux is clearly on the right side of that well-worn distinction in travel writing, between the tourist and the traveler. Although many excellent guides (notably those from Lonely Planet) try to cater to both sides, in general, travel books are either written by tourists who've been hornswoggled by the locals, or by real travelers. One genre of tourist book is the right-wing tirade against the society visited by the writer. It is an offensive American habit to announce one's bien-pensance by traveling the world and finding fault with the sanitation and architecture of other countries. P. J. O'Rourke is an amusing fellow but ultimately rather dreary in that he blames the victim in his book Holidays in Hell. As it happens, writers on the right, who blame Third World capitals for crumbling architecture, or nonworking toilets, would do well to reflect on the simple physical properties of materials in heat and humidity, or the exorbitant trade school fees that parents in underdeveloped lands must pay, for their children to be educated in plumbing trades. Which isn't to say that Theroux fails to identify negative features of the Pacific islands, which, for him, include its anti-intellectualism and the colonialist dependence most apparent in American Samoa, where a government, in order to secure the territory, does indeed kill traditional custom and future initiative (as a conservative would predict) by a system of thoughtless handouts...made after all in self-interest. People in developed countries first romanticise the indigneous and are apt, when encountering its anti-intellectualism and suspicion of the outsider, to switch, like Mistah Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness, and Brando in Apocalypse Now, to the horrorshow view. Theroux is far more nuanced and this allowed him to deal with the sort of frightening scene he encountered both in the wilds and in American Samoa, of bullying of an adult loner by a group of local kids. Being torn apart by children is a nameless fear of intellectual loners; Robert Crumb has a panel in which a kid announces to his father, "hey, Pop, we burnt a bum at recess." Theroux is exceptional, in facing this fear as did brother Adorno, in Adorno's essay "Fascism is the nightmare of childhood". However, Theroux does not regard indigneous people as Fascists and instead accounts for their dislike of the outsider as a rational need for family and clan cohesion, the most important fact of their lives. To maintain a generally positive outlook on people with a healthy critical spirit is a rare accomplishment. It is easier to adopt the pose of Shakespeare's Jaques and to conclude the worst from one's travels. Americans, at least before Sep 11, were friendly travelers who liked everybody. Far rarer is the traveler who judges but based on observation. One type of South Pacific denizen Theroux does not like was manufactured by the triumphalism of Reagan and the elder Bush, and Bob Hawke of Australia, he of the cockatoo's pompadour. This is the Aussie, Kiwi, Brit or American prone to make generalizations about other groups and nature itself, the bore of the saloon bar. The most attractive features of the matey Australasian personality of the 1960s, who voted instinictively for liberals as long as they promised swagmen a fair shake was erased by CIA disruption in the 1970s (this is fact, not paranoia) and replaced by a property-owning swagman democracy. Property-owning swagmen democracies are better than most political arrangements. We Yanks invented the idea of expropriating the toffee-noses and becoming utter swine in our turn: but expropriation results in insecurity which often emerges in boozy conversations in countless pubs and distraction from distraction by distraction, as the antics of powerless Royals, and Governor-Generals in pantaloons, conceals the sort of raw work one has seen in the US CIA's Australian monkeyshines, the silencing of British Labor on the war, the French nuclear nonsense, and the elimination of New Zealand's David Lange, who Theroux met in the Marquesas. Of course, the above paragraph might be read as complementary to and effectively the same as the worst kind of saloon bar rhodomontade and ordinary people may well ask, where does Theroux get off, or a fortiori, where do I (the answer at this writing is Suva Bay.) People who don't as a rule read books, including many sun gods and goddesses of the South Pacific, are apt to call such writing "generalization" and to remark, with passion, that it might hurt someone's feelings, one of the writer's occupational hazards, along with late checks and the bottle, being the bearer of bad news that hurts strangers and their Mum. But if the charge sticks, then any kind of writing outside of sailing manuals would have to disappear. There are curious parallels between Theroux's situation, and my current situation. He wrote at the time of the first Gulf War, I write this review after the end of the second. He was recently divorced (a strike against him in the traditional cultures of the South Pacific, where I've already been asked my marital status) and I started reading Theroux at the time of my own divorce. Today, far more so than in 1981, the culture makes no provision for the divorced man who is expected to do Protestant penance, or else wander the isles gibbering and capering in the tropic moonlight. No provision, today, is made for the partially shriven, and partially lost, soul. Instead, the Americans would convert him to Yankee salvation and go-ahead schemes. The sturdy sons of England, Canada, and Australia would buy the old lad of the castle strong drink. Distant drummers are after all unheard by one's mates, who can't figure out what makes yer go. In consequence, your old lad of the castle becomes set apart in thought.
Rating:
Summary: Smug
Review: Well having grown up in Oceania, I was quite interested to read the review to see what an outsider's perspective of the region was like. Unfortunately I found the good things about the book (his description of the places, and people he encountered), rather spoiled by the views presented by Mr Theroux. He seems to believe that having spent a short amount of time in a number of different countries gives him some great insight into the peoples that live there. I find Mr Theroux to be racist (particularly about the Japanese), smug, and extremely condescending. His book is full of little inaccuracies which those who read the book and don't know the region well are probably not aware of. It's easy I think to generalise about people based on a few examples that you encounter, but is it really useful or worthwhile? So read the book if you don't come from the region, but just don't believe everything he says...
Rating:
Summary: "A host of truly strange encounters and adventures"
Review: Well-known travel writer Theroux (The Great Railway Bazaar, The Mosquito Coast) sets out on a journey after his marriage fails, and there is a dour mood to this travelogue's beginning, partly because Theroux thinks he may have cancer. But over the course of his travels across the Pacific in a collapsible kayak- from New Zealand to Samoa, Tahiti to Easter Island-the journey begins to change him, and the tone improves dramatically. Theroux manages an audience with the King of Tonga, a look at cannibalism first hand, Mormons missionaries in the wilderness and a host of truly strange encounters and adventures. It's one of the best of Theroux's books.
| 
