Hop the Rails and See the World, that is what Paul Theroux Did...

“Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.” Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

 The Great Railway Bazaar

A Review by James Romano

Hello 1000 Bookies, this next book I just completed was a treat for me.  Our next stop on the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux.  In 1973, Mr. Theroux embarked on a trip from England to the continent and proceeded to travel by train through Europe to Istanbul in Turkey.  From IIstanbul, Mr. Theroux travelled via train throughout Asia.  According to James Mustich, Theroux traveled “[O]n some of the world’s greatest trains: The Orient Express, the Night Mail to Meshed, the Khyber Pass Local, the Golden Arrow, the Trans-Siberian Express.”  Paul returns to his family approximately on New Years Eve.  This story was the height of adventure to me. . Paul goes throughout Asia over the months ahead to places such as Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, South Vietnam, Japan and then across the vast territory of the then Soviet Union. 

Theroux is a prolific fiction and non-fiction writer over the last 50 years.  His most famous novel, The Mosquito Coast, was made into a movie starring Harrison Ford and River Phoenix.  In pop culture, Theroux’s nephew, actor Justin Theroux was married to Jennifer Anniston at one point.  Theroux has written 20 travel novels, the first being The Great Railway Bazaar.  He would retrace his journey 30 years later and write about that trip.  These are well written travel adventures.  Along the way Paul lectured in different colleges and universities as he says to pay for the trip.  One of my favorite passages in the book was when Theroux was traveling through Japan on the Big Sky Limited Express.  Theroux met another American named Chester.  Chester wanted to know why Paul was riding a train through Japan, and this occured:

           “[H]e said he didn’t want to hurt my feelings but that he thought travel books were useless.  I asked him why.

           ‘Because everyone travels,” said Chester. “So, who wants to read about it?”

‘Everyone gets laid, too, but that doesn’t eliminate screwing as a subject—I mean, people still write about it.’

I love trains also. Some of my first memories are of trains. When I was a little boy, my grandmother would take me on the train from Norristown to 69th Street Station in Philadelphia, the Paoli Local as it was called.  She would then push my stroller and walk up a large hill (according to her recollection) and we would have lunch at Woolworths (a hotdog).  Then we would train back and stop off in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania to visit family members like my great-grandmother and my great aunts and uncles.  During this awful pandemic my 87yo grandmother still could relate the details of those trips on the train.  

Trains always represented adventure and freedom to me. When I was in high school in 1992, I dated a young lady who lived farther away from me and I was without a license.  On Friday afternoons I would take the train to Narberth, PA to see her.  I loved the adventure and the freedom.  I was seeing the world, without my parents.  In college I would travel from Union Station in Washington, DC to Philadelphia and back again.  I still remember some of the beautiful landscapes crossing the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.  I love train travel and that was my mindset as I sat down to read this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

However, this is not a happy book.  Paul sees several disturbing events.  The poverty and sex trafficking throughout India to the last days of South Vietnam are two of the uglier and sadder sides to this trip.  The Great Railway Bazaar is approximately 350 pages long.  The book would have been more enjoyable had maps been incorporated into the pages.  There are memorablel characters throughout his travels. 

Paul started his trip on the Orient Express through Europe from Paris to Istanbul.  I have always wanted to ride on the Orient Express since I watched the movie and read the book, Murder on the Orient Express.  Theroux points out the literary characters who rode this, the world’s most famous train—Lady Chatterley, Hercule Poirot, and James Bond to name a few.  On my honeymoon, my wife and I took a train, not the Orient Express, from Paris to Venice, which Theroux does.  Since it was evening that we left Paris, I really did not pay attention to the scenery and now I wish I did. 

When taking this trip, Theroux went through Iran before the fall of the Shah and the rise of the theocracy with the Ayatollahs.  Interesting, Theroux said this of Teheran, “Teheran has all the qualities of that oil-rich Texas city; the spurious glamour, the dust and heat, the taste for plastic, the evidence of cash.”  Theroux was able to go through Afghanistan, where the King had just been deposed in 1973.  This was 6 years before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the militant Islam.  The trip through the Khyber Pass sounds fascinating.  Many an army traveled through that area going back to Alexander the Great in ancient times.   Paul spends time in Peshawar.  Many years later I planned a trip for my boss, a United States Member of Congress, to the Afghani refugee camps in Peshawar and heard of the misery there. 

There are some interesting stories of his trip through Asia.  The most interesting to me was his trip through the town of Maymyo in Burma. Theroux meets the owner of a hotel on this train through Burma and agrees to stay at the hotel during his trip.  He describes the town, “it was like a sepia photograph of the Klondike, brown and noiseless, a century old and nothing moving except the blurred black horse wheeling in the foreground.”  The hotel’s name was  Candacraig, a converted old mansion where he was the only guest.  While in Burma, Theroux wanted to travel to the Gokteik Viaduct which was off limits.  He boards a train which is eventually stopped and boarded by security forces—not knowing if he was going to live or die, Theroux discusses the trip to see architectural wonder.   

Another chapter that really moved me was the train trip in South Vietnam.  When he wrote this book, the cease fire was completed and there was peace between North and South Vietnam.  However, it was a false peace and just a cover for American withdrawal and the conquering of the South.  Theroux discusses how beautiful the coasts of South Vietnam were.  He also tells poignant stories of seeing a lot of mixed-race children in South Vietnam—including one when on a train a Vietnamese woman tried to hand a baby off to Paul thinking it was his.  American failure in Vietnam was the tragedy of his travels through the country.  “The tragedy was that we had come, and, from the beginning had not planned to stay”. 

The trip through Singapore had an interesting component.  I loved the Singapore described in Crazy Rich Asians.  In 1973, during the trip through Singapore, Paul has talks with government officials and reads about the coming revolution in technology and quotes the Straits Times from November 20, 2073, “Imagine,” he said, “at your home communication center, both mail and newspapers might arrive electronically delivered by facsimile ‘print out’”.  In 1973 the idea of electronic mail was being discussed.  

The Final leg of the trip was through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express.  That part of the trip seems to have depressed the author.  It was the week before Christmas and he had been gone for 4 months.  Paul made friends with the train staff but wanted this trip to be over.  The Soviet Union of 1973 seems very depressing.  In all fairness, Paul was traveling through Siberia in the winter, how much snow can you see.  That would depress anyone. He arrives in Moscow on Christmas Day Night where the story ends.   

The Great Railway Bazaar was a fantastic adventure to me.  I look forward to reading Paul Theroux’s other books on train travel including Paul taking this adventure again 30 years later through Asia.  I strongly recommend reading this book because the book gives a glimpse into a world that has changed dramatically, and because he took this incredible journey and you can experience this too. 

Keep Reading My Friends!!!