Award-winning travel writer Paul Theroux invites you aboard The Old Patagonian Express by Train through the Americas; packed with powerful descriptions and portraits of the many colours of humanity, The Old Patagonian Express is an unforgettable read.
A witty sharply observed journey down the length of North and South America
Beginning his journey in Boston, where he boarded the subway commuter train, and catching trains of all kinds on the way, Paul Theroux tells of his voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts and Illinois to the arid plateau of Argentina''s most southerly tip. Sweating and shivering by turns as the temperature and altitude shoot up and down, thrown in with the appalling Mr Thornberry in Limon and reading nightly to the blind writer, Borges, in Buenos Aires, Theroux vividly evokes the contrasts of a journey ''to the end of the line''.
''Fascinating, beautifully written. . . a vivid travelogue described with the sensitive, richly observant pen of a born writer'' Sunday Express
''This is travel writing at its most accomplished. . . even the bored are funny and human, and the description of homeless children is painfully unforgettable'' Sunday Telegraph
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his other non-fiction titles, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Happy Isles of Oceania, Sunrise with Seamonsters, The Kingdom by the Sea, The Tao of Travel, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, The Great Railway Bazaar, Dark Star Safari, Fresh-air Fiend, Sir Vidia''s Shadow, The Pillars of Hercules, and his novels and collections of short stories, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner The Mosquito Coast are available from Penguin.
Industry Reviews
Rail travel is not about to boom South of the Border. It's even doubtful if Amtrak - under whose aegis Theroux begins this new, mostly dispiriting journey - will pick up an extra fare. But, unforeseeably, the point is otherwise. The opening sings: Theroux wakes up in the Medford, Mass., bedroom of his childhood and catches the train - the workaday commuter train - for Patagonia! But on the Lake Shore Limited he encounters only a raw-food freak and a fiftyish ingenue worth mentioning; and heading South, only the "suffocating" towns of Oklahoma and Texas. Crossing from Laredo to Nueva Laredo is merely to swap banal order for tatty squalor - and board the first of the world's most run-down, slow-moving, altogether hopeless trains. No Latin American who has a choice, Theroux discovers, travels by train; his companions are the noisy, uncommunicative poor - and, memorably, a garrulous, forlorn American out for a good time. He reads, or tries to. The local to Tapachula, so long stalled at one point that it "had become a part of the town," becomes the place, too, that he dreads finishing Pudd'nhead Wilson; in a San Salvador hotel he begins - until visited by a rat - Poe's terrifying Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Later he'll take up Boswell, and interleave excerpts. And somewhere along in this futile, quixotic quest, the traveler takes precedence over the travel. True, Theroux's distress at the desolate landscapes, the decrepit hamlets and urban sinkholes, the vacant, brutalized people is occasionally relieved; parts of Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina have, for him, their qualified charms. But it is he who compels interest: passing an idle afternoon flossing his teeth; parlaying a wounded hand into fast service and bargain prices; free-associating to the clack of the wheels. Train travel, he maintains, exposes "the social miseries and scenic splendors of the continent"; but these are familiar views-in-passing. What we realize, from his remark that few trains cross borders, is how fragmented the continent is; and the paucity of long-distance travelers reminds us that it's also a cul-de-sac. So it's fitting that Theroux, after lingering in Buenos Aires to play Boswell to Borges (a lambent episode), ultimately finds himself alone at a Patagonian railway junction at 2 A.M. menaced by a pack of rabid (?) dogs; in his mind, facing death. Boredom, loneliness, sickness, fear - these, met and faced down, are Theroux' trophies. With almost none of the popular appeal (including the erotica) of The Great Railway Bazaar, this does have the staying power of a slow bleed. (Kirkus Reviews)
