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Hot under the epaulets
A defense correspondent, interviewing bestselling author Tom Clancy and retired Gen. Fred Franks about their new book on the Gulf War, steps into a minefield.
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paul theroux
BY DWIGHT GARNER Paul Theroux likes to claim in interviews that, during his decades as a travel writer, he's contracted nearly every nasty illness in the book -- malaria, dengue fever, hepatitis, you name it. The kind of suffering that most permeates Theroux's books, however, doesn't arrive from disease but from a deep sense of what can only be called dis-ease. In both his fiction and nonfiction Theroux is a pitiless observer, as well as an acidly acute stylist. Like most people who see the world without illusion, he is a wary man -- as are many of his characters. Bad things happen to them. They are uncomfortable in their own skins. They have a strong, healthy measure of moral queasiness. Theroux is as prolific as he is talented. Words pour from him. Here are two new books that arrive directly on the heels of "My Other Life," a powerful (and lengthy) novel released in the U.S. last fall. The first, "Kowloon Tong," is a fictional meditation on the forthcoming hand-over of Hong Kong from Britain to China, and it shows signs of haste -- of prose written to meet July's historic deadline. No such problems mar the second, a devastatingly fine collection of Theroux's short fiction that should establish him among the contemporary masters of the form. It's no surprise that both books place dis-ease among their central themes. "Kowloon Tong" is an abrupt, nasty book that's peopled with abrupt, nasty characters. There's no obvious problem with this fact. As Muriel Spark put it in Slate recently, who wants to read only novels of "boring virtue"? The problem with "Kowloon Tong" is that you're given nothing to hang onto; the characters are mere pawns, and they're greasy to the touch. You don't care about them, and thus their plights seem trivial. The book's protagonist is Neville "Bunt" Mullard, a middle-aged Brit who owns a Hong Kong company called Imperial Stitching. Bunt is a hopeless twit -- he's weak and balding, a whore-monger and racist who admits to "demented rapist's fantasies." Bunt lives with his bullying, widowed mother in a cultural cocoon. The two of them scorn Chinese food and Chinese customs and prefer to eat steak at clubby U.K. restaurants. To imperialist Bunt, "Hong Kong was just an anthill with a Union Jack flying over it." These two live with a sense of looming dread about the coming hand-over, but they seem determined to stick it out. Their plans change when a Chinese businessman offers to buy Imperial Stitching. At first Bunt refuses to sell. But it quickly becomes apparent that this sinister and well-connected man will not take no for an answer. Theroux has an essayist's eye for detail, and "Kowloon Tong" is full of sharp observations on subjects ranging from politics to food to sex to servitude. The book is never a chore to read. Yet it feels forced. Theroux's metaphors could not be less subtle: Bunt's visits to whorehouses evoke what the Brits have been doing to the Chinese for all these years, Bunt's overbearing mother seems like a transparent stand-in for the queen, and so on. "Kowloon Tong" ends on a poignant note, with Bunt and his mother forced from their comfortable lives and with Bunt finally able to declare his doomed love for one of his Chinese employees. By this point, however, most readers will feel brow-beaten and unable to care. Theroux's "The Collected Stories" is another matter. Written over three decades, these stories offer a stunning overview of his gifts as a writer. Set in locations ranging from Paris to Asia and Boston to Africa, the characters in them are just as diverse: diplomats, would-be writers, émigrés, children. Nearly all of them find themselves in difficult situations, either physically or morally. Their sense of dis-ease marks each story with Theroux's distinctive stamp. Many of these stories hit with the force of perfectly spun parables. In "White Lies," Theroux digs into the "double life that most white people live in Africa," showing us what happens when a black woman exacts revenge on a white lover who has scorned her. Other stories ("Zombies," "Biographical Notes on Four American Poets") wickedly satirize the writing life. Still others, like the breathtaking "World's End," depict marriages on the brink of disaster. The second half of "The Collected Stories" is a series of linked stories about a minor American diplomat who is posted for several years to Malaysia before being transferred to London. Writing about such a character makes sense for Theroux, because, like a travel writer, a diplomat finds himself constantly thrust into foreign places and awkward circumstances. These stories blend slashing humor ("She had fat legs and a bottom only a Chinese upholsterer could have admired," he writes of an English teacher in Malaysia) with a profound sense of alienation and loss.
Like so many of Theroux's characters, this diplomat is single and very much alone in the world. Bad news for him. Good news for us.
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