Traveler extraordinary and
master of the unexpected insight, Theroux has now
brought together the travels that fell outside the
scope of his other books. In Sunrise with
Seamonsters his journeys take place not only in the
exotic, unexpected places of the world but in the
thought, reading, and emotions of the writer
himself. The author of The Great Railway Bazaar
and The Kingdom by the Sea scans Corsica,
Afghanistan, Uganda, and Burma with a wickedly sharp
eye; perceives the “seamonsters” off Cape Cod; gets
thrown out of Malawi; and takes his chances at his
high school reunion, in a leper colony, on the New
York subway, and in the world of patrons and
patronage. The people he meets along the way, either
in person or in their pages, are as wildly assorted
as Graham Greene, John McEnroe, V. S. Pritchett,
Rudyard Kipling, Henry Miller, and Richard Nixon,
but each emerges as a distinctive Theroux portrait,
in light and shade, seen suddenly anew. In
Theroux’s view, “it is a ridiculous conceit to think
that this enormous world has been exhausted of
interest. There are still scarcely visited places
and there are exhilarating ways of reaching them ...
It is every traveler’s wish to see his route as
pure, unique, and impossible for anyone else to
recover ... The going is still good." |
