the old patagonian express by paul theroux

Like any travel writer, Iyer emphasizes 'circumstance,' 'serendipity,' and 'caprice.' Arizona Quarterly Volume 46 Number 2, Summer 1990 Copyright © 1990 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004- 1 6 10 Terry Caesar His sanction is the sanction of expetience-his experience the knowledge afforded by the travel text is not abstract and its improvisatory claim is inseparable from the frustrated, dogged, skeptical, ignorant, and necessarily individual knower. That is, he would have nevet had the time for the experience which has to be the basis for any paragraph he could write. Pico Iyer, in his recent collection ofAsian travels, Video Night in Kathmandu, is quite explicit about this: 'Entire books have been written on even the smallest of my themes, and if I had even tried to keep up with all the literature that comes out every week on China or the Philippines or Japan, I would never have found the time to write a patagraph myself' (24). Ideally, in fact, it appears bettet for the traveler not to resort to books at all, and certainly not books about present destinations.

Even if the purpose of the travel is to produce a book, the very project of ttaveling is unsettled if it gets submerged in reading. Othetwise, there would be no point in going anywhere in the first place. Such reading, of course, must be perfectly occasional, incidental, and happenstance. Reading provides pace, lends diversion, affords relaxation. Paul Fussell hat is the status of the book in the travel book? Most writers of travel books, especially if they ttavel in order to write a book, take books with them. Abroad, you raise your eyes from your book and look around.

TERRY CAESAR The Book in the Travel: Paul Theroux's The Old Patagordan Express In the United States, if you want to sense the ironic relation between past and present, you read The Waste Land or Ulysses. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The old patagonian express by paul theroux