Paul Theroux in conversation with Pico Iyer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- Paul Theroux in conversation with Pico Iyer discussing his book, "Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads," at Live Talks Los Angeles on October 13, 2015.
Theroux’s novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. For the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America - the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It’s these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Theroux’s keen traveler’s eye.
Pico Iyer is the author of twelve books, on subjects as varied as Cuba, globalism, Graham Greene and the XIVth Dalai Lama, and writes up to 100 articles a year for magazines from The New York Review of Books to Harper’s, and Vanity Fair to Wired. He delivered popular TED talks in both 2013 and 2014-his most recent book is a small TED Original on the theme of stillness.
Many thanks for posting this. He is a very good man and also a very good writer. He is (still) striving diligently.
Loved Deep South. Found it addictive reading. Great back-stories all the way thro. Many very sensitively recorded. Great writing
Paul Theroux is so much alive & truthful.
Truthful? Not when he said he was prevented from getting a job in Singapore. Wasn’t he a lecturer for a while in the English Department of Singapore University under Professor DJ Enright? Who incidentally wrote Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor.
@@lucytanss4787 I have only commented on the basis of what I have read ,his articles in the newspapers such Indian Express and Asian age. And this interview which seems to portray him as truthful on what he has been asked. As for his CV I have no idea.
he claimed in this interview that he didn’t get a job in Singapore due to US security telling SG Govt he was rebellious based on whatever he did as Peace Corps in Africa. Well that’s not true as he lectured n lived in Singapore for at least a couple of years. Even one of his children was born in Singapore. Gleneagles Hospital.
@@lucytanss4787 Well, you know more than me,you may be right, thanks for informing me.
What an intriguing and wonderfully interesting writer, man, philosopher and human being. Bravo! I love Iyer's books also!
Paul Theroux sounds like a man with a lot to say but not enough time to say it. He is a modern day prophet. Read any of his books, fiction or travel, and you'll know what I mean. 'Mosquito Coast' would be a good starting point, but all his books somehow foretell the future or, at least, deconstruct the present. He manages to transcend the author as storyteller and the author as literary genius.
Well said.
Which makes a change.
He’s usually seen as a relentless and self-absorbed whinger who wrote all his best books in the early 80s.
Very well put. Exactly right. A profoundly underappreciated author and contemporary thinker, Theroux.
@@daveweil6767
Think the verdict of whiner holds.
I loved how Iyer would just stay quiet and let Theroux go on and on. It was so interesting to listen to Theroux's looping stories, wandering off on branching trails, which would come back to the main path in a fascinating and informative way. Before listening to this interview I listened to Theroux on "Travels with Rick Steves", and Steves kept interrupting Theroux so Steves could talk about his experiences. I swear, Steves must have taken up half of his brief interview with Theroux with interruptions and talk about himself.
Great to find this. Two great travelers, writers and thinkers.
What an interesting man, I could listen all day.
Always interesting to listen to Paul Theroux. Deep South is a great read.
+Troy Parfitt I would love an insight into your life, maybe stay with you and shadow you for a week.
+Troy Parfitt As a person who was always curious about the world,I always found some time to read Paul Theroux and would like to find something of his that I have not read.I maybe was bored by a couple of his books that strayed away from his usual format of travelogue mixed with great commentary and observation. His son Louis has been popular in the UK.
Funny to hear Paul Theroux being grumpy about Jonathan Raban. In the early 80s while undertaking the walk around the UK that became A Kingdom By The Sea, he bumped into Raban in Brighton and found out, to his dismay, that Raban was embarked on a similar project. They both write about it in their respective books, with little love lost. And it's silly to tick Bill Bryson off for comic travel writing - it's what he does! But Theroux's one of the greats all the same.
Whaat a writer; what a man.
Just finished reading the book. A wonderful insight into the culture of South. Much needs to be done, and charity must begin at home. However, the racial divide in America, and particularly the legacy of the Civil War and Jim Crow South is the dirty family secret that most people want to sweep under the rug, and move on. One can only hope that the change makers of the South that the book portrays get the much deserved support in their fight against the malaise.
Theroux should be the next American to win the Nobel Literature Prize.
elaine mochula
No. Don Delillo.
I love Mr. Theroux, but Mr. Cormac McCarthy is the one who deserved it the most, far above any other American (and any writer of any nationality) of his lifetime. Honorable Mention to Haruki Murakami. I don't rate the Nobel Prize for Literature (or the Academy Awards) at all anymore.
Thank you.
Theroux's accent is intriguingly mid Atlantic.
But what about the things he's saying? read the book- it's one of the most important books on the USA so far this century.
He's from Massachusetts, his accent I would argue is a mix of Boston and London from his extensive time in the UK.
and fake.
@@Originalman144 He seems to alternate. He uses British and American "O"s in the same sentence, he is selectively Rhotic: he usually pronounces r's is in the middle of a words woRk, HambuRger, unreseRvedly, but rarely at the end: Figa (figure) Cah (car). He alternates between American and British midword "T"s. It's like talking to Louis and Marcel have "Anglicised" his Massachusetts accent. He could pass for British in the UK (I'm British)
Thank you for such a high quality channel. Thus far I admit, somewhat embarrassed to having only watched Leonard Cohen...What he said about Judaism went over my head- I'd have to listen, much of what Leonard said on all subjects is over my head- he was so eloquent and probably a genius, albeit one who wouldn't be impressed by that- it's like Beautiful Women who toss their hair often in your face if you're homely like me ( my father indicated Golda M) well Leonard could be casual about being gifted because that's just how it was....Sorry, I am drugged, not a junkie, a sleeping pill and I am a bit stoned, so I will leave off- a terrific channel. I will be back, to Leonard AND some of the films, etc. My therapist is Muslim, I try to follow the Dalai Lama- Tibetan Buddhism seems a little more mystical to me than Zen but again I make an uneducated remark- and I am physically unwell, to the point of having to go get tested for Covid, nearly a year ago- negative but I am ill, I feel like those who have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome- I never doubted them, I am lazy though, not "in a suit" nope, no stuffy pantsuit- 3 piece, waistcoat and all, not even Tommy Nutter- blue jeans...Namaste from the Most Boring City in Canada ( what do you think about Leonard's opinions on Judaism? Seriously- I subscribed to My Jewish Learning, but they stopped delivery as I am dreadful when it comes to gmail- I was fortunate to be raised by a lapsed Catholic and a Sometime Anglican who wasn't well, neither parent was, when Elizabeth Taylor converted because she married Eddie Fischer, my mother, bless her drugged out housewife, battered woman, head, started reading up- the good thing about nutty parents is you look around much more intensely than other teens-)
As of May 22, 2019, captions are not available. Sadly, the absence of captions makes it hard to hear and understand everything.
July 05, 2019 still doesn't
Are you a native English speaker? I didn't have a problem understanding any of this.
Great interview... good talk.
It's amazing what 50 years abroad will do to your accent.
I've been abroad just ten years and my mom tells me my accent is weird.
drunkenkot away
I agree. You also learn how to speak slightly broken english that is closer to what non-native speakers understand. It's hard to explain but I find myself doing it occasionally to get words across when speaking with intermediate to fluent english speakers in Europe.
In this interview Paul talks about how progressive Nashville is with book signings and opera. His book is all about the small town poor South and nothing about the New South of the cities. He presented a very one-sided view of the South. I've read many of his travel books and like them though.
Deep South I found his least interesting book -and I think I've read all his travel books. Seems to have been written in a hurry and didn't really understand his repeat visits. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is I think the best written.
Ghost Train was a modern epic. I read it while living in Europe dashing in and out of cafes. A formidable work for in my mid 20s
2023 now travel writers have a good chance of being shot in America.
No intro music?
Why was he convincing so hard that his is not a travel book? 😬🙉
He sounds kinda British!
He lived there for many years. Plus, he's from Boston.
No surprise. The area of Boston, where he is from (originally called the Massachusetts Bay Colony), was settled by people very similar to "the British".
Did you sleep in that suit Paul?
Hah! Yeah, it looks comfy anyway.
Squirrel stew.
Enough Clinton bashing. Enough already. Too bad this talk was not held after Trump. Then Theroux could really talk about moral blindness and we could all applaud him.
Pico is a great man. Theroux is a tourist.
THEROUX'S MONOLOGUE. Only thing missing is leather elbow patches and a pipe. Boring!
Likes himself, doesn’t he...?
What good would it do if he didn't?
Simon Schreyer
Well, for starters...
...it would do his personality and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the audience a power of good.
@@kelman727 Haha. Hope, you get to like yourself one day, kelman. You'll have to spend the rest of forever with yourself, buddy : )
Just like his son does. Must be nice to be that rich.
Mr Theroux is way off in his estimation of Obama....despite all the clever and readable books he has written.
Thought I don't fancy Obama, his recollection of Pico's Cuba work and having read Theroux is admirable. Most modern presidents are not well read like those of old.
He's a crank.
Which one is ? Why ? Explain. Otherwise, YOU are the crank.
Like many writers, he's a poor public speaker...stuttering and stammering his way through banal observations as if he were teasing out the mathematical nuances of a physics problem. As insufferable as his son.
Ridiculous. His pauses are because this talk is UNSCRIPTED, and he is trying to be thoughtful and find the right word, phrase, aphorism, or reference to illustrate an idea. Insufferable ? Your petty, common and superficial TROLLING is just that. Crawl back into your pedantic hole, troll.
@@daveweil6767 Who hurt you?
@@daveweil6767 No need to be a fanboy. He's not that great.
Agree he is a crappy speaker but outstanding writer.