 An affectionate look at a changing landscape, 2003-09-25
Paul Theroux's travel book soften being out strong opinions in readers- particulrly those who have visited a place he has written about. Many of the most critical seem to focus on a few details and miss the overall tenor of the piece.As Theroux makes quite clear in this book, he loves the English seacoast, and he met many warm people along the way. At the same time, he unflinchingly relates every detail of his experience, every rude comment, every unpleasant encounter. As he notes, most travel writing is boring; we went to Egypt, we saw the pyramids, et cetera. What makes for interesting reading is the minutia, the detail that makes my trip different from your trip. My England is nothing like Theroux's, but then, I wasn't there for 17 years, I didn't tour the coast, and I am not Paul Theroux. I recently re-read "Kingdom", while thinking about a bicycle tracing some of the ground covered by Theroux, and what struck me was how much there was that Theroux truely liked about his trip, the things he saw, and the people he met. The more unpleasant encounters only served to make the pleasant ones more so. "Kingdom By The Sea" is for me, at least, a thouroughly enjoyable tour, a look into the British and into Theroux, and as always, a terrific piece of writing by one of the modern masters.
 Fine writer gets trapped in bad plan, 2000-09-29
Theroux's interesting but illstarred plan was to meet the English by travelling around the coast, on foot and by train. Real English, real conversations. He was twenty years too late. About a month into this disaster it's becoming obvious that even the lower middle class have abandoned the gray, chilly English coastal towns for cheap jumbo jets to sunny climes. The old resorts have become God's Waiting Room and battlegrounds for the skinhead urban poor. Chapters go by without him seeing a child, or a real family, only potty old people who hate foreigners. These aren't "the English." Poor Theroux. Read his fine book on China instead.
A Kingdom Not Entered., 1998-08-11
I found "The Kingdom by the Sea", read by William Hootkins, snooty and offensive. Its picture of the British is projected right out of the jerkish Theroux's psyche, and does not represent the way one sees a country if one wishes to UNDERSTAND it, which is to see it as it is through the frame of mind of the inhabitants, and with transcendent human sympathy and a great deal of imagination. One goes to another country, first of all, to learn something about ONESELF. Britain is a country to love, not to hate. Having lived there a year, in 1977-8, it still has my heart, and my embarrassed admiration as an American. This is the second Theroux audiobook I have found a failure, the first being his book on Latin America. - Patrick Gunkel (Woods Hole, Massachusetts)
|
