Fresh-air Fiend: Travel Writings, 1985-2000 - Softcover

In Fresh Air Fiend, Theroux's pen serves him well with astute, lively pieces that stray far beyond simple "travel essays" and reveal his self-inflicted lifestyle of compulsive travel, writing and alienation. In this collection--containing mostly previously published magazine pieces written over the past 15 years--there is a strong autobiographical streak, as well as historical perspectives and a sardonic view on ageing. "One of the more bewildering aspects of growing older", he writes in "Memory and Creation", "is that people constantly remind you of things that never happened".

Now nearly 60, Theroux has lived a rich, varied life: the book jumps from post-Mao China and years spent as an Africa-based Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s to turtle watching in Hawaii and kayaking on Cape Cod; the jumbled collection even includes pieces on other travel writers (Bruce Chatwin, Graham Greene and William Least Heat-Moon) and the film adaptation of his novel The Mosquito Coast. A chronic sense of aloneness permeates all these pieces--be it the lost traveller paddling through fog, the lone writer living without a phone, or the hermetic trekker who can't speak the native language. Most touching: a short sketch of a road trip when he's lost, his wife is anxious and the children are fighting; Theroux doesn't want the moment to end and soon enough he returns to his self-imposed alienation. It's that perpetual sense of loneliness and not fitting in that seems to motivate Theroux in many of these essays. Theroux may be getting older, even nostalgic, but as these vibrant essays show, he sure isn't getting stale. --Melissa Rossi, Amazon.com

'Vintage stuff, funny, shrewd and deliciously perceptive. Theroux needs no more than three or four strokes of his pen to complete the most vivid of pictures' The Times

Whether visiting the King of the Lozis at a bend in the Zambezi river or crossing the United States in a railway car of unsurpassable luxury, relating his experiments with biblical dieting, or detailing the illneses and diseases suffered in half a lifetime of travel, Paul Theroux, the fresh-air fiend himself, is always an entertaining and honest guide.

Full of startling encounters and memorable scenes, fascinating and sometimes bizarre locations, and enlightening musings on themes as various as sexual attraction and the point of travel writing itself, this extensive collection of his shorter pieces is a rich and remarkable book from a superb writer.

'An enthralling, stimulating, provocative collection' Daily Telegraph

'Frank and funny. Theroux may be one of our most prolific travel writers, but he is also one of our best' New Statesman

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