Paul Theroux

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Transcript

Ramona Koval: Let's look at some of these lists first, and I wanted to go to your very own essential tale of travel which you have at the back after travelling through the book. Can we go through some of these, because I think they are hard-won and long thought about in your travelling life? A surprising one, your first one; leave home. Do you mean to leave all the things that are familiar?

Paul Theroux: Yes, leave everything that is familiar, leave mum and dad, that's the important one, don't feel that there's anyone breathing over your shoulder. I think in most aspects of my life that have worked I've left home. I became a writer because I left home and if I had stayed home, if I was writing in the attic or the basement or my bedroom with my parents downstairs I would never have become a writer. Some people do stay home and try to write and often have no choice, they have no other place to live, but even the worst place is better than staying home and enduring someone asking you what you are writing, who's going to read it, where you are going to publish it, asking all the questions that you can't answer. So yes, it means leaving everything behind. And a trusting parent will allow the child to go, or the young adult or whoever.

 Ramona Koval: But does it also mean leave the familiar and go in search of something that will utterly shock you or that will utterly make you feel like this is another planet?

 Paul Theroux: Yes, but not necessarily shock you. It's really looking for the place that will remind you who you are and show you who you are. You're a different person in different places, and perhaps the person that you want to be or the person who you really are is that person that you encounter in Africa or in India or in the United States or wherever, in that different place. It's your real self. And the mask that you have at home...whoever you are at home may not be the person that you are. So it's in search of the self. A lot of travel is just either looking for yourself or discovering who you are or what you want. That is the selfish aspect of travel, but there is also making a friend, which is also on that list, that's number 10 on the list, making a friend.

Ramona Koval: But do you ever really leave yourself though? Don't you always find you've taken yourself, your worries, your psychological problems, your you-ness, wherever you are?

 Paul Theroux: Yes, you do. The American poet Delmore Schwartz said the heavy bear who goes with me, a heavy, hairy bear. And Emerson spoke about the same thing, he said you carry ruins to ruins, you go to a foreign place and you are looking at a ruin, there you are, you're carrying yourself. That goes without saying. But the self that you are bringing may not be the self that you recognise. It is not the essential self, it's not the one that other people recognise or that you recognise. This all sounds rather mystical and self-discovery, it's also the pleasure of travel, it is the pleasure of discovery.

You mentioned earlier shock, I think of travel as something that's enlightening and something that is joyful too. Because when you make a discovery in travel, in writing, in life, in anything, it's very uplifting, you think this is something that I've done myself, I've just found something that I didn't know before. And this sense of discovery...I had it in Australia. I remember I was in Cooktown and I was camping on the coast of northern Cooktown, I bumped into a beachcomber there and I made some friends in Cooktown. There is an Aboriginal reserve up there and I made some friends there and I thought this is an Australia that I didn't know existed. I would never have known it had I not gone there, and it was quite an effort to get there but it was really wonderful.

Ramona Koval: Your second essential note is; go alone. And a lot of people want to take someone with them when they travel so they can say, 'Look at that,' but for a writer especially you say go alone.

 Paul Theroux: What you just said, the first one, the 'look at that' companion, that's a burden, that's the burden of travel, 'Look at that, Paul,' or 'Where are we going to sleep tonight,' or 'Where are we going,' and you don't know. It's the question that you can't answer. You want to make these discoveries yourself. I think there's a lot of pleasure in travelling with another person, sharing the burden and sharing the fun of the road.

Ramona Koval: So, 'You watch the bags and I'll go and find out why we can't do this and that,' or 'I'll see if my French works here.'

 Paul Theroux: Yes, 'You do the carrying today and I'll do it tomorrow.' Just sharing, that's fine, that's pleasurable. But if you are writing about something, you have to be completely in the moment every day and concentrating. I find I'm travelin and working 12 or 15 hours a day just to figure things out and write things down. When you're with someone you don't really have that privacy to do it. And going alone, even if it is a short period of time, can be very enlightening, very, very helpful. And when you write you are there and you can really do anything, and you don't have the person saying hurry up or what are you doing or let's go or look at that. It makes me sound selfish but I started life as a writer and you can only write in solitude and you can only travel, I think, usefully to write about it, in solitude.

Ramona Koval: What about those lonely dinners each night by yourself?

 Paul Theroux: That's true, but the lonely dinners are relieved by the fact that if you've been busy all day and you're sitting there, you are making notes. I often write at dinner; scribble, scribble, eat, scribble, scribble, and you've got that done, then you go to bed. It's an enterprise, it is a very deliberate enterprise, travelling and writing. But the lonely dinner goes without saying, that is true, and it's a part of the day...that period that the French call between the dog and the wolf, between, say, six o'clock in the evening and eight o'clock at night, it's difficult to get to. But there's also drink! It's a good time of the day to get drunk. But I often use that time of the day to write when my impressions of the day are still fresh.

Ramona Koval: What about number three; travelling light. I always think this is a fine thing, and I'm never more annoyed than when I realise that I'm not going to wear that thing that I've been schlepping around the world.

 Paul Theroux: Yes, travel light. I carry a bag that would fit on any aeroplane and a small briefcase, that's my travelling gear.

Ramona Koval: What's in it?

 Paul Theroux: A couple of shirts, things that can be easily laundered, nothing fancy. One of the difficulties of travel sometimes for me is that I am asked to give a talk, someone does me a favour and they give me some information and they say, 'When you come will you give a talk to our group?' So you arrive in a place, Calcutta let's say, and so you have to look presentable, that's a problem. The great thing is travelling in a country where people do laundry, then you can really pack light. So you asked what's in my bag; really the minimum, the absolute minimum.

Ramona Koval: So just a few little things to keep...like toothpaste and pens and notebooks and...

 Paul Theroux: That's in my briefcase, my briefcase is my office with a book or two to read, notebooks, maps, writing stuff, all of that. And in the bag, yes, toothbrush, change of clothes.

Ramona Koval: What about a Swiss Army knife?

 Paul Theroux: That used to be, that was a very useful thing.

Ramona Koval: But you can't do that any more.

 Paul Theroux: No, you can't carry it on a plane, you could if you checked your bag.

Ramona Koval: You can put it in the hold but you're not going to do that.

 Paul Theroux: But then you're stuck at a roadblock somewhere in Africa or somewhere, Burma, and they look in your bag and they say, 'Aha, you've got a knife.' No, I don't carry a Swiss Army knife, no sharp objects is my advice to people. I think the difficulty is...if you have to dress up. If you want to look anonymous, just like a vagabond or just like an ordinary person, it's very easy to travel light. Businessmen don't travel light, and I think a lot of women need more clothes too I'd imagine, I don't know.

Ramona Koval: What about the surprising number for 'bring a map'? I mean, isn't that obvious?

 Paul Theroux: No, it's not obvious, I met very few people who have a map, and when I say a map I mean a detailed topographical map that gives you a highly detailed impression of the place that you're in. It can sometimes save you a lot of trouble by allowing you to make shortcuts.

Ramona Koval: What trouble has a map saved you?

 Paul Theroux: One recent example, I was in France...

Ramona Koval: Not deepest darkest France!

 Paul Theroux: Deepest darkest France, I was in a car and I was travelling down the wrong road, I was with my wife and I had a map and I had taken the wrong road, and she said, 'We'll have to go back to Bordeaux,' and I said, 'No, look at that little wiggly line.' And I saw a very, very small line and I took it and the little wiggly line turned out to be a delightful country road that saved me about 150 miles of travelling back to a big city and it went through the countryside and we made it.

In other places, in northern Kenya I remember I had a map and I was actually hitchhiking because the truck that I was in had broken down, I was looking for a place to stay and I had a detailed map and I found a town that wasn't shown on the other bigger maps and that was helpful. I realised that I had a place to go that night. For someone travelling in Europe or in Britain, for example, maps tell you where there is a phone box, you might have a cellphone, but they tell you where there is a public house, where there is a hotel, there are little Xs. A really good topographical map tells you everything.

Ramona Koval: So you've mentioned you were driving, and your number five essential note is to go by land, and elsewhere in the book you say that trains are the best mode of travel for a travel writer. Why is land so important and travel by train?

 Paul Theroux: Travel by train is obvious, you can walk around on a train, you can read, you can write, you can make a friend on a train, you can get off any time you like. It's a very humane, very civilised form of travel. And you see the country unrolling out the window. An aeroplane is obviously very efficient but it's also pretty obvious that nothing happens on a plane, only bad things can happen on a plane, like they crash or they're delayed or they circle the airport. But you are basically in a rocket ship, you're strapped in, so you go 1,000 miles...you just fly over the land.

 Travelling by land is just the most revealing, obviously the most revealing thing. We're talking about travel, we're not talking about taking a vacation here. If you have a vacation you are under a time constraint, so you have a week or two and you have to make it count. The kind of travel I'm talking about is the kind that requires a sort of open-ended space and time that allows you to travel in the slowest way possible. The old laborious way is the best way, the best way for the mind, for the soul and for writing. I realise an Australian going to Europe would end up flying. There was a time when Australians travelling to Britain took the hippie trail and took the long slow route, went from Australia to Singapore, then up and over land...

Ramona Koval: Through Afghanistan?

 Paul Theroux: Yes, through Pakistan, through Afghanistan, through Iran, through Turkey. I know lots of Australians who have gone west and lots of English and Americans who have gone east on that road. To me, that was the great thing. And into the 1970s it was still possible to do. The Australians sold their camper vans, they used to park in London in their camper vans which were on sale. They'd sell them when they arrived. They were on the south bank of the Thames where they parked. So Afghanistan is closed for business, Iran isn't much fun these days, but the overland route to Europe was the chosen way and the best way.

Ramona Koval: Yes, you've written recently about travelling in all the places that you used to be able to travel, like Libya for example.

 Paul Theroux: I have never been to Libya, I tried to go to Libya. When I wrote my book about the Mediterranean, it was called The Pillars of Hercules, I tried and failed to get a visa. I'm very ambivalent about the Libyans because when I lived in London...you know I am an American but I lived in London for quite a long time, and the Libyans...there was a demonstration from the Libyan Embassy and someone in the Libyan embassy raised a gun and shot out the window and killed a woman, Yvonne Fletcher, and I resented it ever since because, because of diplomatic privilege, the Libyan embassy was closed and the murderer of that woman was allowed to go free, and I felt after that the Libyans were pariahs and cowards, and I wrote about it, and maybe that was the reason they wouldn't give me a visa. But some countries, they were closed too, they weren't ready for prime time, let's say.

Ramona Koval: Would you go if Gadaffi is evicted finally?

 Paul Theroux: I would go anywhere. You can dislike a place and still go. Back in the '60s when I was a teacher in Africa, we were told don't go to South Africa, they're racists and apartheid is a wicked system, which it was, but I don't think that that should prevent anyone from going and looking, and I told people that at the time. But they said no, no, it's a wicked place, don't go. I think the wicked places can be very revealing and you need to see them first hand. A traveller is an eyewitness, so I would go anywhere. I've been to Burma or Myanmar as it's sometimes called, and people say don't go to Burma, it's run by wicked generals. That's true, but I think when you go there and you talk to people and find out just how wicked it is, you can report home, tell people what you've seen.

Ramona Koval: Yes, you say, 'For the free market inspired, somewhat democratic unregulated country can make for a bumpy trip and a preponderance of rapacious locals.' You say that 'the current Russia torments visitors with every scam available to rampant capitalism, but unless you're in delicate health and desire a serious rest, none of this is a reason to stay home.'

 Paul Theroux: That's true. That's not in the book, funnily enough, that's in The New York Times or maybe it was...

Ramona Koval: Yes, or in The Guardian or something...anyway, I read it.

Paul Theroux: Yes, that's true, the Soviet Union was a place that regulated tourists and put up a lot of barriers, and then when Russia emerged tourists were encouraged to go and then subjected to all sorts of rapacity and people and a shake-down, you know, the shake-down of 'we want your money'. Russia is a wonderful place to go, it's huge, there are railways that go everywhere, and it has a lot of amenities, there are hotels that weren't there before. But they're also interested in your money, 'please give us your money'.

The Marxist system did create a class system, and the class system...they're a different sort of class system, but it never really...it didn't change much in Russia, so you feel as though you're at the bottom of the heap always, travelling in Russia. But still, you have to see it. That's another way of going overland, you could go from Australia to Japan, you could take a ship from Japan to Vladivostok, you take a train from Vladivostok and end up in London, England, without leaving the ground.

Ramona Koval: Just working my way down, 'walking across a national frontier' is important. What's that for, so that you can be hassled by the guys at the border?

 Paul Theroux: Yes, you often are hassled by the guys at the border. But to me, one of the most dramatic experiences that you can have in travel is walking across a national frontier, and usually in a Third World country you have to walk, or you might get shuttled on a train. But the experience of getting to the edge of a country and then seeing the landscape slightly altered, because a lot of national frontiers are mountain ranges or they are rivers or they are dry riverbeds, it's usually a natural feature in the landscape, and it is a visible change in circumstances.

 And then it stops and you go through passport control and then they say, okay, and they point over there, and you leave the passport office, the immigration office, and you see all around you people coming in, people going out or people delayed. The edge of the country is filled with people trying to leave or people trying to get in, and you don't see that in the capital.

 Also at the edge of it, the country is itself...when you arrive at a national airport it's bright, it's clean, it's beautiful, you know, 'Welcome to Ruritania, try a national dish.' But at edge of the country, it's itself, there's no big welcome...

Ramona Koval: So it's the back door.

 Paul Theroux: It's the back door, but it's the reality of the place, because I think the back door is what the place really is. And if they treat you badly, that's how they are. The smiles at the national airport are false. So then the passport man or the immigration officer points and you see no-man's-land and a fence. You walk through the fence carrying your bag, and then you walk, it might be a quarter of a mile, and in the distance you see a little shed or something, and that's where you're going and that's your new country.

Ramona Koval: That's the new back door.

 Paul Theroux: That's the new back door and you see people there trying to get in, trying to get out. The landscape is slightly different, language different, and passport check and so forth, and usually there's an old bus or there's a battered taxi or there might be a train waiting at the station, or maybe nothing, maybe you're just there waiting. But you've had this experience of going across that line on the map rather than flying over it, and it happens in a lot of countries, from the Sudan into Egypt, from Ethiopia into Kenya, from Bolivia into Argentina, that's the way it is. And I've had lots of experiences like that. It's one not to be missed.

Ramona Koval: Yes, except that obviously you don't want to be mucking around on a plane by having your bags in the hold and having to wait, although there's a lot of waiting in these back doors and then going across and waiting again. So where is the patience coming from? What do you do with those times? Is that when you keep your journal, or is it unwise to write things down in such back doors?

 Paul Theroux: A person who doesn't want to wait has no business or really shouldn't hit the road. Waiting, nuisance and delay are the absolute very, very...they're facts of travel. Travel is all about waiting, it's all about being hassled, it's being trifled with. If you have a week in a luxury resort, no, there's no waiting, but in travel there's a lot of waiting and a lot of delay.

So what do you do? Well, read a book, write your notes or whatever. It is a fact of life or travel that most of travel isn't fun, it's grubby. But look at air travel; you go in, you're frisked, you're patted down, you go through a metal detector, you wait, they say your plane is delayed, you wait another hour. Back in the day you could smoke, and you'd say, well, okay, the plane's delayed, I think I'll light a cigar or light a cigarette and read a book. Now you pace.

But that is a fact, it is an experience of delay often. It's only when you're resident somewhere...I was a teacher in Africa for six years and then I was a teacher in Singapore for three years and I was resident in these places and I wasn't subjected to...I was actually living in them. But whenever I set off, and even these days whenever I set off, I realise that I'm tapping my foot or drumming my fingers most of the time.

Ramona Koval: You mentioned reading a book and that's number eight, you say 'read a novel that has no relation to the place you're in'. This will require a bit of explanation because some people look for the novel that is set in the place that they're in especially to read in the place that they're in. Why do you want to be distracted by the novel set somewhere else?

Paul Theroux: Oh you're not distracted if you're reading a novel, your mind is at rest, it's really a way of calming yourself and of retreating I think to this other place. We're never more sure of the people we're with than when we're reading a novel, with the characters in a novel. We know the characters in the novel more intimately in some cases than our friends, than our family, than other people.

So the character in a novel...I'm talking about a novel that you really enjoy, that you really love, it can be any novel, set anywhere. But it is leaving the road and entering the lives of the people in that novel. I think if the novel is set in the country that you're in, there's a greater distraction because you're looking for comparisons, you're saying this person is eating that or doing that or saying that, and you look for correspondences in the country. Let's say you're in India and you're reading A Passage to India by EM Forster, you are constantly reminded that the year of the book is 1922 and you are in 2011, and there is a cognitive dissonance, I suppose you could say, about the two, the India of the novel and the India that you're in. But if you're reading Madame Bovary when you are in India then you're going back to the world of Madame Bovary, she is committing adultery, she owes money, she is lying to her husband, she is meeting her lover, and it is that you're involved in the life of Madame Bovary, or it could be anyone, Harry Potter for that matter...

Ramona Koval: But do you want to take a book that you have read already so you know that you would enjoy it? Because what happens if you take a great big fat book and you hate it and that's the only one you've got?

Paul Theroux: You ask someone like me what should I read, I'm going to India, I'm going to Australia, what should I read? Name 10 books that would unfailingly please a traveller or someone...

Ramona Koval: Well, you'll have to tell us now what they are.

Paul Theroux: As I just said, Madame Bovary would be very high on my list, Diary of a Nobody, a Green Greene novel, could be The Heart of the Matter or Brighton Rock, if you've never read Huckleberry Finn I would say that, if it was someone travelling in California I would say Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves, a wonderful book, or Riders in the Chariot, if you're going to Alaska you should read Riders in the Chariot. You get the picture, none of those books would disappoint a reader.

Ramona Koval: You say if you must bring a cellphone, avoid using it. And Pico Iyer who is a great travel writer, he spends more time on what he doesn't want to take. He says; assumptions, iPods, cameras, plans, friends, laptops, headphones, suntan lotion (well, it's all right for him, some of us are very fair, I don't think that's very fair to say keep your suntan lotion at home), resumes and expectations. But surely a cell phone these days is a good way to get yourself out of somewhere quickly if you have to do.

Paul Theroux: Yes, I see your point but I don't really agree. Why do you want to get yourself out of there quickly?

Ramona Koval: Because you say one of the important things sometimes is to know how to leave.

Paul Theroux: But you could find that out without a cellphone. You ought to be able to find it out without a cellphone. I agree, you take the cellphone and use it, but the idea of this over-reliance on a cellphone is a very new thing, and it makes people feeble and weak; where's my cellphone, oh my goodness, I don't have my cellphone, what am I going to do? Well, until very recently no one had a cellphone. I lived for six years in Africa, never made a phone call, didn't have a telephone. I used to write letters. You sound like a fogey if you say that, you know, in my day...

Ramona Koval: And the postal service was probably better then.

Paul Theroux: No, it is the same, it's always been terrible, but it didn't matter if it takes a long time for a letter...getting out of a place...it's helpful when you arrive in a place...there is a description in the book that when you arrive in a place, try to figure out how to leave so that when you need to leave, you can. Often that's the case with me, I arrive in a place and I say, 'How often do buses stop here, when does the train leave, how often does it go, is there a lorry that lives on a Friday,' or whatever it is, so that you are not stuck, so that you know...you're not going to say, 'I think I'll leave today,' and they say, 'The bus left yesterday, you've got another week.' You need to know how to leave, but I don't think you need a cellphone for that. Local knowledge helps. The cellphone is mainly so that mum and dad can think that you're okay, 'Bruce, are you all right?' 'Yes Mum, I think I'll be okay.' 'Did you remember to take your medicine?' You don't need that, you've left home. Why did you leave if you're still connected to mummy and daddy?

Ramona Koval: Why do you say that unwelcoming places are a gift to the travelling writer? And I'm asking because it reminds me of a book that I read by Jonathan Raban, the one that was all about Montana, Bad Land, and I always thought that he's basically badmouthing the people he found in the Bad Land, but then I actually interviewed him once and he was so grumpy and difficult that I wondered whether he was the best person to take me along to the Bad Land, because you're seeing things through that particular person's eyes, and if they are having a bad time it can actually colour the whole experience for the reader. So I'm wondering who you trust to read.

Paul Theroux: I disagree with you about Raban. He is actually a hardy traveller and he's a good traveller. And Bad Land, which is about eastern Montana, is an excellent book. He may have been grumpy on your program, but he's a good guy, I can tell you, he is a good guy and a good writer. And I chose Bad Land as one of the books where there is a strong sense of place.

 If you are grumpy traveller though, and I have sometimes been accused of being grumpy, curmudgeonly, 'you're so critical, why do you say such negative things about Australia', and that kind of thing, I'm really not. You can't be grumpy and travel, you have to be good-tempered. Raban may have been grumpy on your program, but you can't be...if he was grumpy in Montana, they'd slap him, and they'd say go away. Also, he's English, they'd say, 'You limey, what are you doing here?' So you have to negotiate, you have to be pleasant, and if you are grumpy, no one will have anything to do with you.

Ramona Koval: So you say the travellers’ book that recounts an ordeal is the sort that interests you most.

Paul Theroux: That's true because I think an ordeal is what we fear the most. An ordeal shows us how to get through life, through that trip, through the darkness, through the cold, through the disappointment, hunger, thirst, whatever it is. I mean, there are lots of books, Arabian Sands, The Worst Journey in the World, books about shipwreck and so forth, those are the books that I love to read because it sort of reassures you of what a human being is capable of in terms of survival. And survival is what we are all doing, it is what you're doing in Melbourne, it's what I'm doing in my life, we are surviving. And the travel book which is about survival, about the ordeal, teaches us a lot about our strengths I think.

Ramona Koval: I was pleased that you have a section in the book about how long a particular traveller spends travelling and spends doing their particular book. Sometimes it seems there's only a few weeks that the person has spent travelling, and then they write a book and that experience of only a few weeks stays forever in the minds of readers, like the place is in aspic in a sense. It's not really fair, is it.

Paul Theroux: No, it's definitely not fair. What you just said is so true, the place is defined by a week or two of travel, and it might be a week or two in a season that is not characteristic of the place. I live in Hawaii half the year, and when people come in the winter, say, in January, and they say, 'Gosh, it's rainy, gee, there's big surf,' and they go away saying it's huge surf and rain and dark clouds. Actually for a couple of months Hawaii is like that, the rest of the time it's paradise, and I'm sure this is true of many places.

DH Lawrence was in Sardinia for one week and wrote Sea and Sardinia. For many people Sardinia has been defined by DH Lawrence. But just in the 1920s he happens to be there, and with his wife by the way. Graham Greene was in Liberia for 18 days, he wrote Journey without Maps. For many people Greene's Liberia is Liberia, but it's really not, it's less than three weeks in the bush, and he went with his cousin. I have numerous examples in the book, they range from 28 years of Ibn Battuta, or 26 years in the case of Marco Polo, down to a few weeks or a month. Melville was in the Marquesas for a month, but he said it was four months. A lot of travellers or travel writers disguise the amount of time that they were in place, and they usually exaggerate it and say that it was longer. Bruce Chatwin was in Australia, he wrote The Songlines and he said it was partly fiction, but he was only there a matter of weeks in the outback...

Ramona Koval: And the people in the outback, I can tell you, do remember that he was only there for a matter of weeks, and they find the book rather amusing. In fact somebody told me once that they didn't think he ever got out of the car.

Paul Theroux: You know, he was in a car for a while, because he celebrates walking and he was in the Land Rover driving around, it was in the 1980s...I read the book long ago and then I reread it for this book, The Tao of Travel, and I was surprised by how much driving he did in Australia. Yes, he may not have got out of the car, or if you did it might just have been for one or two encounters. It's a strange book, but he was a strange man. A person in the outback can be properly indignant that an English person comes, prances around little bit and writes a book about it. You could say 'I've lived here my whole life, that's not the way it is.'

But my list of how long travellers were in place is something that I've always had in my mind to write, and this book, The Tao of Travel, they are all subjects about food or who the traveller took with him, what he took with them, how long he was there, or she, whatever it is, they are subjects that are never addressed by...the books are usually deconstructed, and what does this book mean, but I think, you know, what did he bring? And also how crazy travellers are. There's a chapter about our neuroses. A lot of travellers are nutcases, they're neurotic, they're unhappy. Captain Scott used to cry, Vancouver stayed in his cabin...

Ramona Koval: Captain Scott probably didn't have enough socks.

Paul Theroux: He had plenty of socks, but he had a very, very weak disposition and he was a very bad leader and very indecisive, and he died, by the way, in a tent, of starvation, only a short walk from where he had left some supplies, so that's an unfortunate story.

Ramona Koval: He was forgetful too.

Paul Theroux: He was very badly organised actually.

Ramona Koval: You say a traveller needs optimism and heart, and I think you've exhibited all of those, or both of those in our conversation, and also in the book which is called The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road by Paul Theroux, it is published by Hamish Hamilton, which is an imprint of Penguin Books. Paul Theroux, it's been a great pleasure speaking with you on The Book Show.

Paul Theroux: It's my pleasure Ramona.

The Tao of Travel

Paul Theroux

Hamish Hamilton