Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On
the Tracks of the Great Railway
Bazaar by Paul Theroux
Great Vacation Read
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Way back in the dark pre-
Internet, limited-air-travel world of 1975, the way to get from Europe to
Asia was by train. A young and ambitious writer named Paul Theroux
made his literary mark by taking the 28,000-mile intercontinental journey
via rail from London to Tokyo and back home again. His book, The Great
Railway Bazaar, became a travel-lit classic. Thirty years later, an older,
wiser, and even less sanguine Theroux decided to retrace his steps. The
result is Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, a fascinating account of the
places you vaguely knew existed (Tbilisi), probably wont ever go to
(Bangalore), but definitely should know something about (Mandalay). Get
on board Therouxs fast-moving travelogue, which features some of the
most astute commentary on our distorted notions of time, space, and each

other in the age of jet speed, broadband connections, and cultural
extinction. --Lauren Nemroff
Personal Review: Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the
Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
I received this book from the same great friend who gave me Ten
Thousand Miles Without a Cloud, a traveling book that I enjoyed greatly.
Unfortunately, I can't quite say the same about this. While I should, in
theory, enjoy a book about traveling by train (which I love), Theroux is too
crotchety and unreliable narrater to really enjoy. To illustrate the point, I
offer a quotation: "`Perm is a modern industrial city that most travelers
could bear to miss,' the guidebook said. But surely that was just as
inaccurate as this same guidebook's rubbishing my Great Railway Bazaar
as `caustic,' with travel guide solemnity and philistinism." Well, whether the
guidebook was right about the city of Perm or not, Paul Theroux IS caustic.
He's also self-centered, brusque and tends to skip a great many details.
There's no doubt that his trip was a heroic undertaking and would not have
been very comfortable most of the time, and that he's entitled to a bit of
whingeing among his sould searching, but I thought he was a bit hard on
the Hungarians. I drove all over Hungary and it was a wonderful
experience.
The book is one of at least four Theroux has written about train travel, and
covers Hungary, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijian, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia,
Vietnam, Japan and Russia (seems like he skipped China). As much as
possible, Theroux tries to go overland by train, although he does some
journeys by bus or plain where train connections are too difficult - or
impossible. Of the countries he visits, I have lived in two, Japan and
Singapore. Theroux himself lived in Singapore for "three years in the
1960s" and had a difficult relationship with it. This is probably the best
chapter in the book and is generally well-written, although he does still
come out with doozies about Singaporeans like "No one was fat. No one
was poor. No one was badly dressed." His description of the country is half
political criticism, half titillation as he takes the reader on a tour of the
"hidden" Singapore of legal prostitution. How hidden can something that is
legal be?
His 60-page write-up of Japan was a big let-down, as he allowed himself
an exceedingly shallow understanding of the country by dwelling
unnecessarily long on the grotesqueries of Japanese pornography. Yes,
there is plenty of deviant stuff in Japan, but everybody's got something that
winds their clock and there are plenty of Japanese who never go near the
really weird stuff. He also takes the time to seek out two writers, Pico Iyer
and Murakami Haruki, whose work I don't particularly care for (although
I've read a lot of the latter). Ultimately, Theroux's facile portrayal of Japan
makes me wonder if his take on the other countries he visits is equally
flawed.

One of the interesting things that Theroux does is that he reproduces
whole sections of dialogue in his books, and these can at times be quite
amusing, such as how he and Iyer try to outdo each other in quoting
influential writers, or hop from topic to topic. It makes me wonder if
Theroux makes use of a recorder for these conversations that he
transcribes, if he has an iron-clad memory, or if he just wings it.
One of the conversations struck me as particularly interesting:
"Wabi-sabi," I said, tapping my toe on the wood.
"That's a really ambiguous expression. Almost meaningless."
"I thought it meant `weathered and imperfect.'"
"Shall we walk down here..."
The passage shows Theroux's pretentiousness in using the term Wabi-
sabi, which is a term that seems to be favoured by non-Japanese over
Japanese. It also shows Iyer has come to understand the term better. One
of his books, the twee and self-centered The Lady and the Monk, is
practically ABOUT Wabi-sabi. If Theroux's quote of Iyer saying that is
accurate it makes me now wonder what he thinks about if he ever re-reads
it.
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