I am a travelling writer: Paul Theroux

Renowned novelist Paul Theroux does not like being called a travel writer even though he has written some of the best travel narratives. Instead, he would like to describe himself as a ‘travelling writer’. “I started my career as a fiction writer and wrote about travel with my left hand, when I was stuck for a fiction idea. I think of travel writers as people who do pieces about holidays for glossy magazines,” he said in the course of an exclusive interview with DNA.

Theroux lived in Africa in the 60s as a Peace Corps volunteer and a university teacher. Now we see celebrities like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, campaigning on issues in Africa. Theroux brushes off the celebrity fascination with Africa as ‘utterly irrelevant’. He feels they are not using their star power to bring attention to the various issues in Africa. “Instead, they are using the various issues in Africa to strengthen their star power and gain greater celebrity,” he says.

Theroux recounts having visited good friend Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch, which he found was ‘empty and very spooky’. “Bad feng shui! The video games in the game room were brilliant, but the animals in the zoo were hostile — the snakes tried to bite me, the elephant was said to be half-crazed, I was warned that the orangutan would try to rip my arm off if I went too close,” he recounts.

In his latest novel A Dead Hand the protagonist Jerry Delfont suffers from a writer’s block. Theroux’s method to overcome a block is simple. “I recopy by hand the last pages I had written when the block struck, and the repetition often works by extending the writing,” he says.