Review of The Old Patagonian Express

The Old Patagonian Express is a bit of a paradox for me. It was the first book that I read from Paul Theroux, travel writer and father of Louis Theroux. In it, Theroux sets out to reach a town in the Argentine section of Patagonia by train, and the book is entirely about the journey there, not the destination. 

When I first picked it up, I expected an adventure, where Theroux himself experiences exciting things and alters the world around him and even self-aggrandizes a bit, similar to something like Travels with Charlie by Steinbeck. However, that's not how this book goes. Theroux mostly sits and looks, sometimes talks, and occasionally walks. He is a passive observer, sharing his thoughts and very frequently his disdain concerning the environment and people around him during the journey. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, Theroux sits and observes. 

With the book being so thoroughly planted in the head of its writer, you may expect him to write himself as a pleasant character who's easy to sit with, at least for the sake of allowing as many readers as possible to finish the book with a positive picture of Theroux and, in turn, selling more copies, but this is not the case. Theroux is thoroughly a grump. He generalizes about the people he meets, dismisses many of the towns he sees, and judges the other tourists around him. He doesn't miss an opportunity to complain or impart judgement. As I read the book, I oftentimes found myself counting down the number of pages until the end. 

However, this is where my disparaging words on the book end, and all-in-all, I think I liked it. I've in fact picked up a few other books from Theroux that I plan to read in the near future. It must be stated that Theroux is an exceptional writer. While he may not do much as a character in his story, he paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the world and people around him. I would frequently Google the places he mentioned to find that his description perfectly matches the image. The selection of details immersed me in the scene, and I found myself wanting to travel back to the seventies to experience these places as he described them.

Theroux is also an excellent observer of other people. Whereas Steinbeck in the previously-mentioned Travels with Charlie clearly distorts his interactions with others to create archetypes in a story, Theroux paints portraits of living, breathing people. Whether or not he does in fact accurately describe the people he meets is almost beside the point; he creates the impression that the characters on the page are exactly as he met them.

As mentioned earlier, Theroux does not paint a pleasant picture of himself, but after overcoming the initial shock of realizing I'd be traveling with Scrooge, I think his self-characterization lends itself to the story. I did not read a man's defense of himself, and Theroux does not excuse his behavior and attitudes as some self-biographers are inclined to do. This allows Theroux to become a vivid character, warts and all, to borrow the cliche, and I felt that I had an accurate depiction of who he was at the time. 

While he might have been unpleasant to sit next to in the real-life version of this journey, it is a pleasant experience to sit on those trains through his eyes.