Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: Reprint
- Author: Paul Theroux
- Publisher: Mariner Books
- Release Date: August 2009
- ISBN-10: 0547237936
- ISBN-13: 9780547237930
- List Price: $15.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryAmazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Way back in the dark pre-Internet, limited-air-travel world of 1975, the way to get from Europe to Asia was by train. A young and ambitious writer named Paul Theroux made his literary mark by taking the 28,000-mile intercontinental journey via rail from London to Tokyo and back home again. His book, The Great Railway Bazaar, became a travel-lit classic. Thirty years later, an older, wiser, and even less sanguine Theroux decided to retrace his steps. The result is Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, a fascinating account of the places you vaguely knew existed (Tbilisi), probably won't ever go to (Bangalore), but definitely should know something about (Mandalay). Get on board Theroux's fast-moving travelogue, which features some of the most astute commentary on our distorted notions of time, space, and each other in the age of jet speed, broadband connections, and cultural extinction. --Lauren Nemroff |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Good read, heavy politics
Rating:
I'm a fan of Theroux's work. I've read The Patagonian Express and Dark Star Safari. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is also a compelling read. As with his other books, Theroux's eye for detail and characters, combined with his extensive research and book recommendations, make Ghost Train an entertaining and informative background for countries that many Americans are unfamiliar with. I found his descriptions of Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia particularly fascinating, as well as the description of India. His impressions of Eastern Europe as he travelled from London, through Turkey and the -Stans sounded similar to Robert Kaplan's descriptions from Eastward to Tatary and The Ends of the Earth.
If I have a gripe, it's with the constant reminders that the rest of the world despises George W. Bush. This might be true, but it's tedious after a while. Further, Theroux seems determined to justify his opposition to the Vietnam War by making such risible claims as the US caused the Cambodian genocide by bringing Pol Pot to power and the US almost singlehandedly kept the Khmer Rouge in power by failing to "prevent" the Chinese from arming him....though he never explains how a beaten and humiliated USA in the `70s could have "prevented" the Chinese from doing anything they felt was in their interest, even if it hadn't been in America's interest to use the Chinese to contain the Soviets.
Some reviewers have criticized Theroux for indulging in navel-gazing, but the premise of the book was to see how the places visited and the eyes that saw them changed in 30 years. I thought many of his observations about himself were insightful, in the way a good novelist can teach the reader about the reader.
Theroux is a good writer. He's irreverent, streetwise, thoughtful, observant, and entertaining. If you can ignore the 50+ pages of polemic, I'd highly recommend the book. I'd give him 5 stars had he not belabored the "US is evil" trope.
Gutsy, with More Compassion
Rating:
The Ghost Train of Paul Theroux's life has clacked down the decades from witticism to compassion. Closing the cover of "The Great Railway Bazaar" at the height of the Me Decade, I marveled at what was then a bright new talent whose flippancy, sardonicism and wonderful turn of phrase brought a whole new perspective to travel writing. Now, as an era of global angst closes, I have shut the cover on a more somber, introspective and edgier take on some once familiar terrain, transformed by time and politics. Only the people - the glorious people - remain the same. In "Ghost Train", Theroux displays a deeper appreciation for their humanity and their lot in life, keeping his vitriol in check until he comes across those special fools that he simply will not suffer gladly.
Make no mistake, "Ghost Train" was a courageous undertaking. Fond memories could easily be destroyed, the body may not hold up, the muse might not cooperate. (He hints about this last matter several times when he cautions the reader that he was about to default to a knee-jerk, idealized picture of rural life in Asia, and tries to catch himself.) These three variables alone would have been reason enough for Theroux to leave well enough alone. Yet he left the comfort of his well-earned home in Hawaii and committed himself to seven months of relative discomfort and unpredictability (as opposed to the four months he took 33 years earlier). What emerges from this bit of a crapshoot is one part vintage Theroux (beautifully skewering a patently unlikeable fellow traveler and showing disdain for a smug evangelizer); one part first-person journalism (great reportage on what strongmen have wrought on their citizenry); and one part serendipity (allowing us to eavesdrop on genuinely telling conversations with a preeminent author in Turkey and Sir Arthur Clarke in Sri Lanka; and in perhaps the single most compelling vignette, being feted by the son of an innkeeper in the solace of the Burma highlands). Our guide has some miles on him now, and he understands more keenly than ever the weight that poverty imposes on the honest and the humble. Yet he never fails to castigate those who look upon the globe as a chess board, penning some of the most damning comments of his career, and occasionally going "over the top."
This is not a book of bon mots. Duffill, Molesworth and the others have been largely replaced by simple folk attempting to make a difference, victims of political repression, and women in sexual servitude. Read the last two pages of "Railway Bazaar" and the last two of "Ghost Train" and you will see the road that Theroux has traveled.
As for the sweeping generalizations that occasionally become part of the landscape, well, we're talking Paul Theroux here. The phrase that comes to mind is "maddening charm"... with the emphasis on charm. After all, everyone loves a bad boy... especially an aging one.
Okay but some of the newer writers are more enjoyable
Rating:
Paul Theroux is supposed to have created the genre of travel writing but I arrived at Theroux after reading practically all the works of other authors like Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle and Stephen Clarke. I found that I did not warm up to Paul Theroux as I did to the other three and I think that is a problem. In travel writing, you see the world through the eyes of the writer. If the writer sees only the dark side of humanity - then that is how the readers are going to see the world. He sees every country in the context of two of the criteria that seems to appear to him as most important - the type of government the people are ruled by and the nature of prostitution in each country and of course, the views of well known writers like him that he can call upon in each country. I think this makes for a rather limited menu in understanding the culture of every country. It may be justified in countries like Singapore, Kampuchea and Turkmenstan where the politicians have "in your face" presence in people's lives - but my guess is, there is more to life in other places.
Bryson, Mayle and Clarke are fun people and through their writings the readers have fun as well. Paul Theroux is NOT a fun person - so it is not as much fun reading him. When Bill Bryson talks about the inane boredom of life in the Mid-West or Stephen Clark talks about his experience in Deep South of USA - one does not detect a tone of resentment but of amusement - whereas when Paul talks of his experiences in Singapore and talks of Lee Kuan Yew, there is tone of disgust. I lived in Singapore for 17 years and what I liked about the place is the honesty of the ordinary people like the cab drivers, the approachability of its civil servants (try reaching a CIS official in USA)
and the professionalism of its airlines Singapore Airline. Compare that with any of the American airlines. I wish he had mentioned these as well. Give me Lee Kuan Yew any day over Bush.
I think it is possible to reach the same (accurate) conclusions as he does of various places and have the whole thing narrated with a sense of amusement making it more pleasurable for the reader to be his companion on his journeys. For example there is no way Stephen Clarke could be said to like everything about France but he makes us laugh about French idiosyncracies and that makes it pleasurable reading. Reading the gory details of Pol Pot's massacres or the disgusting comic book culture in Japan is not what one picks up a travel book for. Travel, like life can be viewed as glass that is half empty or half full. It is how one chooses to look at things.
Open Letter to Paul Theroux on "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star,"
Rating:
Open Letter to Paul Theroux on his latest book "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star," on the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar, Published iu 2008
Dear Paul,
I read the first 5 sections of your new book while stuck at home during the worst rain storm that hit Istanbul , the town that you have written about and seem to like very much. It is a very interesting book like many that you have written before, including the Great Railway Bazaar which is re-created in the new book with additional comments. I had read Great Railway Bazaar in 1988 while working in Atlanta , Georgia , more then 21 years ago and will keep referring to it as I read the "Ghost Train" which may take some time.. However, I would like to point out several issues with your book now, which are quite bothersome and puts you in the same category of authors who tell only one side of the stories.
The first of thirty two chapters of "Ghost Train" is on the Eurostar and the second chapter on the Orient Express, which incidentally was in Istanbul just last week, despite the rumours that it will be discontinued. In Chapter three, the Ferry to Besiktas, you write about Orhan Pamuk and refer to his book "Istanbul" and his comments on the Armenians and the Kurds. Then on page 43, you make the following statement:
"The massacre of Armenians a century ago, the later expulsion of Greeks, and the Kurdish outrages and Turkish reprisals are lamentable facts of Turkish history; still, no city in Asia is so self-consciously reform-minded."
First, dear Paul, don't you think you should have also mentioned the Armenian rebellions and uprisings all over eastern Anatolia and the massacre of Turks by the Armenians which resulted in the death of Armenians as well when many Armenians revolted against their government with the support of the British Empire , the French the Russians and others. I would recommend you to watch a documentary called "Revolt" that will show you the other side of the Story. The Greeks invaded Anatolia in 1919 and the Greeks of Anatolia joined the Greek army in the devastation of cities and the massacre of Turks across western Anatolia which resulted in the population exchange of Greeks, not expulsions. I am sure you are aware of the thousands of killings by the Kurdish terrorists since 1984 which took the lives of 7 soldiers just two days ago.
In the following paragraph you state:
"This (Istanbul) is the most easily negotiated and hospitable cities in the world makes me a mild Turkophile". Well, why then don't you tell the truth about the Armenian, Greek and Kurdish issues.
In the next chapter 4, "Night Train to Ankara" you write about your encounter with Prof. Talat Halman, the Culture man of Turkey . I am glad you were enlightened on some aspects of Turkish issues thanks to Prof. Halman.
It is a pity that you had to take a bus from Ankara to Trabzon instead of taking a train from Ankara to Erzurum and bus on to Trabzon . This trip in train carriages made in Turkey (which you do not mention in your book) would have given you a chance to stop in Sivas where Ataturk held a conference on September 4 1919 during his incredible trip from Samsun to Ankara which lay the foundation of the Turkish Republic . A visit to Ataturk's Mosaleum in Ankara would have also helped you to really understand Turkey , which you have not mentioned in your book, a monument like no other in the world. You mention Elif Safak with affection and state that you had her book with you during the journey, which is fine. I read many of her books, including "Baba ve Pic", which I did not care for and wrote to her about it. But how about Merry Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections", a book that very traveller to Turkey should read. Also, "The Birds Without Wings" by Lous Bergier which tells the story of the Greeks and Armenians in turkey truthfully. Of course the book by Gazi Mustafa kemal Ataturk himself, "Nutuk - The Speech." If you had read these books, you would not have made the statement on page 43.
In a review of your book, "Riding the Iron Rooster", Mark Salzman wrote on June 19, 1988 that, although you saw every corner of the country ( China ), apparently didn't make any Chinese friends. Having read many of your books (27 fiction and 14 nonfiction - book of criticism on V.S. Naiapul is something else altogether), I can also state that you have made friends with the wrong people in Turkey except Prof. Emel Dogramaci of Cankaya University and Prof. Talat Halman of Bilkent University, one of my and many Turk's hero.
I hope you will consider revising the above paragraph because it does not tell the whole story and please come and stay longer in Turkey to really understand this nation of Turks better.
Regards.
Yuksel Oktay
Washington , NJ
One of his best!
Rating:
I read "The Great Railway Bazaar" about 30 years ago, and remember not being able to put it down. Since then I have read many of Theroux's novels and travel books. Some of his "middle years" travel works were so fretful and sad that I stopped with "Patagonia" and didn't pick one up again until "The Pillars of Hercules". He has mellowed, and "Hercules" and "Dark Star Safari" are very fine.
I'm happy to report that though Theroux is melancholy, and sometimes a little mean-spirited, "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" is a can't-put-it-down read. I've enjoyed it tremendously, and am going to revisit "Bazaar" with new pleasure.
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