Deep South

The last time I left Paul Theroux in the pages of The Last Train to Zona Verde, he was defeated by his travels in Africa. He finished his trip early feeling that life was too short to put himself through the many miseries of travel in Africa. The ridiculous amount of foreign aid given to the people there created a sense of entitlement and made the people lazy-they were waiting for handouts instead of finding ways to be self-sufficient. Theroux began wondering why so much aid was being given to this continent while in America there were many people who were as poor as those he found in Africa. And it was there that he found the idea for his next book, Deep South: Four Seasons On Back Roads (2015). He clearly states his objectives-he is not in the south for the great meals or to see historic buildings in the big cities of the South. He was searching for the poor of the South, the forgotten left behind people of a region that he was unfamiliar with. He would travel by car for the first time instead of relying on public transportation and he would make multiple journeys at different times of the year to get his stories for his book. He would look closely at many aspects of the South: racism, poverty, religion, education, politics, the belief in the Second Amendment, the literary culture of the South from the writers of the South. So the bulk of the book is spent with the common folk of the South that he searches out in poor towns and at gun shows. At first he can't help bring up Bill Clinton and visits his hometowns town and birthplace. He eventually makes peace with Clinton's complexities and lets him off the hook so to speak. However, he does get to meet one of his favorite (and my favorite) living Southern writers in Charles Portis, but doesn't really get to have a substantial conversation with him. Part One: Fall:"You Gotta Be Going There To Get Here" is his first foray into the south and he ruminates on the differences and his boyhood associations with racism and the civil rights movement, the literature of the south, and the differences of the culture there with that of his Boston "Yankee" upbringing:

We tolerate difference only when we don't have to look at it or listen to it, as long as it doesn't impact our lives. Our great gift as a country is its size and its relative emptiness, its elbow room. That space allows for difference and is often mistaken for tolerance. The person who dares to violate that space is the real traveler.

This is followed by an Interlude: The Taboo Word, in which Theroux muses on that powerful n word, n******, that still has such power, despite the efforts by blacks to it back by using "n****." In Part Two: Winter: "Ones Born Today Don't Know How It Was" is a continuation of his journey. This was followed by another Interlude: The Paradox Of Faulkner, in which Theroux muses on the writings of William Faulkner, who is one of Theroux's favorite writers (as well as one of mine). He finds the author elusive and a paradox on several levels. He points out:

He gave Southerners heroes and villains and good ole boys; he added names and histories to Southern stereotypes: the Major, the Colonel, the Lawyer, the Landowner, the Preacher, the Runaway, the Alien, the Jailbird, the Meddler, the Interloper. And he differentiated among the Indians and the categories of blacks, all sorts-the mixed-race characters in Absolom, Absolom! and Light in August, upright and falsely accused Lucas Beauchamp in Intruder in the Dust, the enduring housekeeper Dilsey ('I can seed the first en de last"), the field hands, and the black laborer who helped dispose of Emmett Till's corpse, is Faulknerian right down to his name. Faulkner's most memorable characters are his villains, Popeye in Sanctuary, the Tall Convict in "The Old Man," and all the Snopes, set forth (in The Mansion) in the words of his cousin Montgomery Snopes:"All right...every Snopes will make it his private and personal aim to have the whole world recognize him as THE son of a bitch's son of a bitch.

Again, we return to the journey with Part Three: Spring: "Rebud In Bloom." The following Interlude: The Fantastications of Southern Fiction" was also of great interest to me. I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on the Southern Gothic focusing on Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Sherwood Anderson. He discusses Erskine Caldwell, O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote (his early work), Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (Of which he says: With a cast of stereotypes confirming every conventional prejudice against the Deep South, the book has sold in the millions.), Barry Hannah, Portis, Mary Ward Brown (a new revelation and a person eh met on his journey before her death at the age of 96), Eudora Welty, William March. He mentions that the black writers of the South did not remain in the South and were: "...more factual, contain more obvious self-portraiture, are often more polemic in their sentimental rage, and emphatically radical in their indignation." He hits the road again in Part Four: Summer: "The Odor of Sun-Heated Roads." The final section includes photos by Steve McCurry and a short notes by Theroux and McCurry about their relationship and the project. Since I am a Yankee from the Pacific Northwest, I am also fascinated with the South and this served as background reading as I visited the South for the first time in New Orleans. I still am eager to see more of it and Theroux has only kindled that desire with his compelling observations on the modern day South.

Comments

[cwc]

As a Theroux fan, I enjoyed this as well. It's not my favorite work of his, but it was good to read his take on somewhere in the U.S. He did a few interviews on the radio around the time of this publication; here's one I recommend: http://radioopensource.org/paul-theroux-in-zimbabwe-usa/

I missed a Theroux book signing in 2013 (to promote The Last Train to Zona Verde) because of a job interview: this still kind of haunts me as the opportunity to meet him has never come up again, and he's one of my favorite authors.

[MC]

Agreed, it's not my favorite by him either. But I really connect with his approach to travel writing and tastes in literature. Most of his travel books are excellent. I find his fiction more uneven, but occasionally impressive. I suppose I am more of an epicurean when traveling than he is though. There are still several of his travel books that I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

[cwc]

Yes, I've never really been interested in his fiction, but it seems that people who like his travel writing don't really take to his fiction. I feel like I've read him write about his lack of interest in food/drink when traveling, so he's explained that somewhere. Unfortunately, I think I've read all of his travel books (I wish there were more!). My favorites are The Great Railway Bazaar, Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, and the Happy Isles of Oceania. The one non-fiction work of his I have never read is Sir Vidia's Shadow, about his relationship with V.S. Naipaul. I just finished William Dalrymple's In Xanadu the other day, and would recommend that if you like travel writing.

[MC]

I haven't read The Happy Isles of Oceania, The Pillars of Hercules, and The Kingdom by the Sea mainly because I haven't visited many of the countries in those areas, but I expect I'll get around to them eventually. Morocco is particular is on my short list of places to visit. But I think I'll probably read The Happy Isles next.