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Capen: How has your latest book, "The Pillars of Hercules," been received?

Theroux: I would say the reviews that I've seen have been wonderful. I don't look for reviews. I don't -- I tend to avoid them. Good and bad, just because they're a distraction. My impression is that it's doing very well.

I've never had much of a problem with travel books. I write them, and people seem to take them to their bosoms. I don't know. It's a pretty harmless activity, writing travel books.

Capen: But you certainly don't write a standard travel book.

Theroux: No. I write the kind of travel book that I would want to read myself, if I were the reader. I would want one that was, um, very personal, partisan, not politically correct necessarily, and then about a corner of the world that I happen to be interested in. I mean, I do read all the time. I started out reading before I was writing, so... I can't be my own reader but -- I mean no writer can but, the idea, the old idea of travel books, which was that it was just a kind of geography book, or a travelogue, is not the thing that I was ever interested in. If I had a choice of books, of travel books, it would be a book about ordeals. You know, the most miserable time that anyone ever had, anywhere.

Capen: (Laughs.) I think you did a field survey of virtually unknown diseases for a magazine a couple of years ago.

Theroux: That's right. Well, I wrote a piece which was basically all the diseases that I had ever had, which I thought was fairly interesting. People would always say -- it's a thing I never write about in a travel book, I don't write about illnesses, I don't write about tummy upsets, or anything like that. So I thought I would simply describe all the diseases -- many of the diseases that I have had and the average reader probably hasn't had, so -- and not just malaria, but I had something called dengue fever, which is kind of interesting, and -- Then I animadverted on gonorrhea, which is useful for anyone to know about, and, uh -- and I had a really interesting one which, flies lay eggs in your clothes, you put the clothes on, the eggs hatch, and little maggots burrow into your skin. And I had that, and that was worth writing about, I felt.

Capen: Sounds inviting.

Theroux: (Laughs.) It's -- it was the stuff of like a horror story, and, in fact, I wrote a horror story based on it.

Capen: It's a -- I think it strikes a lot of people as odd -- I think it was the Times Book Review that was -- they captioned the review of the new book "Bored Amongst The Ruins," and accused you of remaining steadfastly resistant to the charms of the Mediterranean.

Theroux: Yeah. Well, actually I didn't read the review. So I can't comment on it, but I can say that I was charmed by a lot of the Mediterranean, and repelled by some of it, and moderately amused by some of it. You can't be charmed by the whole place: anyone who's charmed by a whole country, or a whole region, is a liar. You know -- some days are good, some days are bad. And I think that the idea that every place is picturesque, every place is wonderful -- you know, nothing human is alien to me, is -- I think is just a load of cod's wallop.

Capen: It was difficult for me to get through a couple of sections because of the absolute despair that some of these people seem to face, as in Albania, and Turkish Cyprus.

Theroux: Yeah, life is very hard in Albania. And Albania, as a matter of fact, is full of Roman ruins. So you can either look at the Roman amphitheater, and the delightful Roman ruins at Butrenta , the Roman amphitheater is at Durres, but Butrenta has some lovely Roman mosaics and whatnot. Or you can look at the way life is being lived today.

I mean I think that -- ruins generally are slightly misleading. First, they're thousands of years old, and most of them are pretty irrelevant, except as targets for whatever current war people are fighting. As an example, Bosnia had a wonderful bridge, in Mostar, and because it was a wonderful bridge, built by the Ottomans, ancient bridge, beautifully symmetrical, defying gravity, uh, it was blown up, by the Serbians, so...such things happen. They happen. There was a wonderful wall around Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem where the Arabs are, and the Palestinians. And because it was a lovely wall around Jerusalem, and because it was Palestinian, it was torn down by the Israelis. So, they're just -- they become symbols and it become, in some cases, symbols of symbols. I'm much more interested in the way - in the way people live their lives I guess.

Capen: Somehow you seem to travel around this world of mayhem and war and suffering, and in a recent interview you seemed to say that people are basically good and helpful and warm and humane. How does this jibe? It's fascinating that this is the overall impression that you got, after all.

Theroux: That is the overall impression that I have -- that people are not impervious to war but that they try to -- they're not degraded by it necessarily. But people generally try to rise above it. What impresses me about war situations -- I've seen them in Africa, in Northern Ireland, and now in the Middle East, and in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia -- is that people go on. They still take their kids to school. They still do their washing every day. You know, they're -- they, uh -- they dress decently, they try to behave decently toward each other. They -- life goes on!

I remember a bicycle race that I saw through Belfast, it was held one particulalrly awful weekend when several bombs had been exploded, and a number of people had died. You know, I don't even remember who exploded the bombs, whether it was the Protestants or the Catholics -- in Derry, it might have been either one. But, there they were in Derry, sometimes known as Londonderry, and this bike race was going on. People were cheering the bike races, and this is a province of Britain that had had ten years of war. And -- cause I was there at about 1980, maybe it was eleven years of war -- and what impresses me is how people are determined to go on. They still care about their children's welfare. They defend their kids. They feed them. They educate them. They're not dehumanized by -- necessarily -- in some places, of course, it happens. But what comes out more is the fundamental humanity of people, and I suppose the kind of instinct to survive and still lead some kind of coherent life.

I don't say that that applies in every situation. People are also pretty beastly and horrible to each other -- in many situations like that. But what comes through to me is how determined people are to give a sense of order even in the middle of anarchy. And I guess also that it's not people who are, you know, the people that I see, who are responsible for the war. There are a lot of really disgusting leaders out there, who have, you know, appointed themselves, put themselves in charge of people's destinies. And are misleading them.

Capen: There's a sort of a, rather an aside with one individual in your book, "Pillars of Hercules," which absolutely titillates the imagination, and I found myself wondering about this man who lives in nothing more than a single room, actually two -- two tiny rooms in two different countries, traveling between the two of them.

Theroux: Oh, right. Right, right.

Capen: He said any more than managing this would thoroughly confuse him.

Theroux: Yeah.

Capen: It's fascinating that you run into these people and make records of them.

Theroux: He was shuffling between Haifa and Brussels. He was Belgian, a Belgian Jew, right.

Capen: Do you think this man is rather symbolic of how most of the world's individuals have to live, that these constraints are put on him, that he doesn't want to manage any more than that? That he relegates himself to this world that stitches him into a beaten path with a couple of rooms on either end?

Theroux: I don't know whether he's representative. I guess he's an example of someone who found the solution to life, which is not the solution that someone would tell him at school, but if he had to work it out for himself. And I think probably that's what most people have to do. If he's, if there's one great illumination that I get in travel, it's how people work it out, work out their lives. Their marriages, their children, their household. And you see, I mean, all different, the people, all different sorts of solutions.

The people who say, oh, all people are alike, you know, people are just alike the world over -- are lying, in that sense. That's not true. People are not alike the world over. People have different problems. They solve them differently. And there isn't a handbook for living that tells you how to do it. So, I meet someone like that. The man was definitely a victim of manic depression. He said he had very bad depression. His doctor had suggested the solution, didn't give him the solution, but suggested something that he might do. And it seemed to work for him. Although it did involve his having a little room in, I think it was Tel Aviv, but he took the ship at Haifa, and then having a little room at the other end, near his mother, but not too near his mother. And then when things got too much for him, he just took a train down to Brindisi and then took a ferry across to Piraeus -- and he went onward. And he shuffled back and forth, so he knew everything about that trip.

But you meet all sorts of people. I didn't realize when I met Paul Bowles, that Paul Bowles simply lived in the back room of a house in a small district -- damp, rainy in the winter. The damp district of Tangier. I would have thought that the author of "The Sheltering Sky" and, you know, "Let It Come Down," and these wonderful stories, would be living in a spacious, airy apartment, you know, composing music, writing and so forth. I didn't realize he could just be crouched on the floor like a hermit. I mean this is Paul Bowles we're talking about! Eighty-three years old. Distinguished
composer and fiction writer and translator. It's amazing -- well there you are! There he is. And, uh, I guess it's the unexpectedness of this that makes travel writing worthwhile, because I can see this and, I guess, report on it.

The whole idea of a travel book is sort of weird -- you know, why anyone would bother to do it. We all know why we travel. Why would you write about it? But I think the answer sometimes occurs to you when you're doing it. You don't realize why you went until you go and do it and then you come back with various illuminations.

Capen: You mentioned Brindisi -- did you happen to see the monument to Mussolini on the beach?

Theroux: To tell the truth I didn't go to Brindisi, my port of departure from Italy was Bari. Bari, as you know, is -- what is it, about -- maybe it's about sixty or eighty miles north of Brindisi.
So I didn't get there. I mean I didn't leave from there. I found Bari very interesting, probably in the same way that Brindisi is.

Capen: I don't know why I was shocked by it. I guess I thought that the Italian people had rejected anything to do with Mussolini. But there it stands. It's a monument.

Theroux: He tends to be pretty popular in the South still. And I don't why -- I didn't realize there was a statue to him there. I mean, that is quite interesting. In fact, I'm sorry -- if I had known, I probably would have gone there just to see it, because I'm interested in the way, in the persistence of memory. You know, like the Dali painting. You just think: what the hell is going on here? And I looked for statues of Franco in Spain or statues of Marshall Petain in France. Most of them were torn down. Somewhere in France, there's got to be a statue of this Nazi, this French Nazi. But I find that fascinating. I mean I'm saying out of, you know, from a purely historical point of view, because that's the other thing that a travel writer can do is can supply a future historian with strange little details like this, which are interesting. I mean at some time in the future, someone may decide to tear down the Mussolini [monument] in Brindisi, and then no one will remember it and it will be forgotten and people will say, well was it really there after all?

I was in China at a time when the place was full of Maoist propaganda and Maoist statues. Now there are far fewer of them. The same thing with -- the Stalin statues that were in Mongolia have been torn down. The ones in the Soviet Union, or what used to be the Soviet Union, have been torn down. But I saw them, so
it is pretty interesting. Even in a purely local way -- I lived through the McCarthy era. I remember seeing Senator Joe McCarthy on television, and he was a complete half-wit. He was also, you know, bombastic and dictatorial, but I saw it, so no one can tell me... you know, people talk about McCarthyism. To have been a witness is kind of an interesting thing, and traveling is all about witnessing. People, events, and life as it's lived.

Capen: What state of mind is Paul Bowles in these days, is he writing, and how did you find him?

Theroux: I found him the way I found most writers. I think I mentioned in the book. Most writers are eccentric, selfish, self-indulgent, enlightened, a complete pain, egotistical, conceited, weird, living some sort of fantasy in many cases, very aesthetic in other cases. I mean, he was like all the ones I've ever known, and like myself. I'm like that too I suppose. What impressed me about Paul Bowles was his asceticism. You know people begin to develop the qualities of those they are around.

One of the qualities that Berbers have, in Morocco, and Bedouins have, in Arabia, and so on, is this tremendous simplicity of life, where they don't need a lot of stuff. They don't need a lot of things. They have, you know, they have a carpet, and a coffee-maker, and a, you know, a palette to sleep on, and a goat. They don't really need a lot of other things. It seemed to me that he had simplified life to its essentials. And that, to me, is a completely admirable thing. I'm not impressed by powers of material objects, you know the "Citizen Kane" attic full of stuff is just -- I don't know what it is, but it's a kind of nightmare of acquisition.

And Bowles is the opposite of that. What Bowles is all about is his writing, and no one will remember how he lived, but it was quite interesting to me to see him. That he's not particularly well -- I mean he's got a bad leg, he's had several operations, he had something like phlebitis. But there he is, working away. And everyday he does the same thing. That's what writers do. They wake up in the morning. They sit down. They write. And, to see a man doing that, and he's eighty-three! He's been doing it (laughs) maybe sixty-five years!. And he's still doing it. And he'll die doing it.

Capen: Wonderful.

Theroux: So that is impressive.

Capen: And Naguib Mafouz, the same?

Theroux: The same thing. Except that I would say that, like a lot of Egyptians, he's very -- he has a select coterie of friends he calls the the Vagabonds, the harafish. They just meet, complain, bitch, moan, discuss philosophy, occasionally they quarrel and they meet once a week at a certain cafe. And they had a quarrel for a while, didn't meet for a couple of weeks, and then, actually he was stabbed around that time. There was a fatwa [contract] out, and he was stabbed. And survived it. So I saw him in intensive care.

He's not an expatriot. He left Egypt once, didn't like what he saw. I don't where he went, I think he went to Europe. Hated it. And decided never to go away again. So he's kind of enviable in the sense that he's someone at home. He's like the San Francisco writer who stays in San Francisco and meets his friends, has a drink, you know. Goes and writes.

I'm not like that. I think I'm more the Bowles type. I understand ruthlessness a bit better. I've never -- when I left home, I stayed away. So, it has a lot of appeal, the idea of just living among the people that you grew up with, but that wasn't my life. But Mafouz is very admirable for that too. Lovable guy, too.

Capen: I took a train south from Zurich, an overnight train. I had a funny experience at the Italian border...

Theroux: Yeah?

Capen: ...of, oh, being searched and such. And almost being held up for a few bucks before they would let me back on the train, in fact.

Theroux: Yeah.

Capen: Um -- And then I continued on and I got to Venice at three o'clock in the morning, under a full moon. And so when I read that you thought Venice was the loveliest city in the world, at once I understood what you meant, but I think a lot of people don't understand that. As you said, the enchantment is overwhelming in that city, and the fear you feel is the fear of being bewitched and helpless. But you found this city just the loveliest city in the world as you said.

Theroux: I do think it is. I think a city is a manmade thing, so you have to judge it -- I mean, anything in nature is more beautiful than anything a man can make, so there are more beautiful places on earth than Venice -- many, many, many, many more beautiful places that are just, you know, formed from the evolution of natural things. But as a manmade thing, as an artifact, Venice could not be more beautiful, to me. I think it's also, it's a combination of beautiful architecture that hasn't been changed since it was put there. So there's no, no one ripped part of it out and put in a skyscraper. It wasn't bombed, could never have been bombed in the war, so it survived the war intact. And then that in conjunction with the fact that it's on the water, it seems to float on the surface of its own lagoons and canals. I mean there's something very appealing about that.

Of course, lots of cities are beautiful. The central part of Chicago, Manhattan, San Francisco. I mean you can name lots of lovely cities. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city. They're all lovely cities. But, Venice is surpassingly beautiful. It's called serenissima, the most serene, the most lovely. And it deserves that name. I also wanted to write about it in a paragraph to praise it, because, first time I went through I simply made a wisecrack about it. Twenty years ago when I went through on the Great Railway Bazaar, I just said it looked -- I don't know, I made some sort of remark about it having oily canals, and vandalised...

Capen: (Laughs.) That sounds like what the Futurists had to say about it at the turn of the century.

Theroux: That's right. Well, it could happen. Of course, that's the other thing about it: it is very beautiful, but it's not going to last. At some point in the next, what, fifty years, hundred years? Certainly in the near rather than the distant future, Venice is going to sink. It's going to sink and sink and sink. It's going to just be covered with -- it's going to rot, it's going to be covered with green slime, and it will exist no longer. I mean, I'm convinced of that! And it will be rescued, and bits of it will be removed to some higher ground and it will be turned into -- you know, Disney will probably buy it and turn it into a theme park.

But you can be assured it's a finite, mortal almost, thing, an ephemeral thing. It has beginning, a middle and an end. It's in its late middle-age now. Maybe it's in its senility now. But it will go. And when it goes, no one will know how beautiful it was.

There have been other cities. I mean, Kublai Khan's pleasure dome in Xanadu doesn't exist anymore. Cities that have been praised in the past, Babylon -- you could say even places like Damascus and Jerusalem, places that really exist no longer in the way that they once did. At Venice, it still looks as it once did. But the Mediterranean is full of cities that were once beautiful, but have just been vandalized and screwed up by successive waves of people raping and plundering.

Dubrovnik, in Croatia, is a lovely city because it's a walled city and it hasn't been changed. But just a year and a half ago it was shelled by the Serbs. And so, if they had had their will, if their will had been successful, there wouldn't be any more Dubrovnik. In fact, it's the same seven hundred artillery shells, so it's possible that even a city like that, which has survived the test of time, you know, since about the 13th century, is going to be completely destroyed by modern artillery. And that's kind of sad.

Capen: Well... what are you waking-up-sitting-down-and-writing these days?

Theroux: What am I writing these days? I'm working on a screenplay for Merchant Ivory company, and when I finish that, I don't know...you see, in between doing things -- like a screenplay is not a test of writing ability, it's a test of some visual sense I guess. But I write fiction all the time, so I'm working on a kind of companion volume to "My Secret History," which will come out I suppose in the next twelve to eighteen months.

Capen: Have you seen Isabel Fonseca's book "Bury Me Standing"? It centers on that part of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe that you've been involved with, specifically in relation to the gitano, the gypsies.

Theroux: I have glanced at the book but I haven't read it and I'm interested in it, of course, and eventually I'll read it.

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