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Fresh air fiend : travel writings, 1985-2000 / Paul Theroux. - Boston : Houghton
Mifflin, 2000. - IX-466 p. ; 24 cm.
ISBN 0-618-03406-4
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NOTE DE L'ÉDITEUR
: In this remarkable collection of essays and articles written
over the last fifteen years, Paul Theroux demonstrates how the
traveling life and the writing life are intimately connected. Not
simply an escape from the mundane, travel has always been a creative
act for Theroux. His journeys in remote hinterlands and crowded foreign
capitals provide the necessary perspective to « become a
stranger » in order to discover the self. Wonderfully broad
in scope, thought, and feeling, Fresh Air Fiend
touches down on all five continents and floats through most of the seas
in between. From the crisp quiet of a solitary week spent in the
snow-bound Maine woods, to the expectant chaos of Hong Kong on the eve
of the Hand-over, to a small Pacific island where atomic bombs were
detonated, Theroux is the perfect guide — casually informative,
keenly observant, wry, and entertaining. As Time has written, Theroux
« serves as both the camera and the eye, and both the
details and the illusions are developed with brilliance ». He
also reaches back into his past to tell of his earliest ventures into
Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, treats us to insightful readings of
his favorite travel books, and reveals the fascinating stories behind
some of his own. Fresh Air Fiend is a companion volume to Theroux's earlier, much beloved Sunrise with Seamonsters, but this is his first collection devoted completely to travel writing, for which the author of such classics as The Great Railway Bazaar and Riding the Iron Rooster
is justly famous. Traveling with Theroux is a literary adventure of the
first order, never a languid luxury cruise, always an insightful
journey to the heart and soul of a place and its people. Fresh Air Fiend
is the ultimate good read for anyone fascinated by travel in the wider
world or curious about the life of one of our most passionate travelers.
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PERRY GARFINKEL : To Paul Theroux, the travel writer […]
the appeal of island life is elemental. « An island
isn't just the land, » he said. « It's
also all the water that surrounds it. People who land on islands
and don't swim or boat don't appreciate islands. The Phoenicians
thought that every day spent on water was a day not subtracted
from the end of your life. »Theroux's latest book, « Fresh
Air Fiend, » […] includes an essay about paddling
his kayak across Nantucket Sound to Martha's Vineyard. « Islands
are such salubrious places, » he said. « It's
no mystery why one goes from one salubrious place to another.
It's a much bigger mystery why people go to big cities. »→ « Islands call to them, summer, winter and always », The New York Times | January 30, 2000 [en ligne] | | COMPLÉMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE | - « Les
îles heureuses d'Océanie : le Pacifique à la
pagaie », Paris : Grasset, 1993
- « Les
colonnes d'Hercule : voyage autour de la
Méditerranée », Paris : Grasset, 1997
- « Hotel Honolulu », Paris : Grasset, 2002
- « Retour au Palazzo d'Oro », Paris : Grasset, 2005
| - Daniel
Defoe, « Robinson Crusoe » with an introduction
by Paul Theroux, New York : Signet classics, 2008
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| mise-à-jour : 5 mai 2019 |
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