Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
鈥淭he decision to return to any early scene in your life is dangerous but irresistible, not as a search for lost time but for the grotesquerie of what happened since.鈥�
So writes Paul Theroux, author of a spectacular new memoir, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. He means it not as a warning, but as an apologia: Like Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish journalist, Theroux earned his literary fame by exploring those worlds where only the reckless dare tread.
For Kapuscinski, this meant the restive climes of late 1950s and early 鈥�60s Africa rocking in a violent realignment of power.
For Theroux, in 鈥淕host Train,鈥� it now means his own past, a feeling something 鈥渓ike meeting an old lover years later and hardly recognizing the object of desire in this pinched and bruised old fruit.鈥� He is a 鈥渨itness to the wobbling of the world鈥�; he lives 鈥渨ith fantasies of transformation,鈥� and yearns to see 鈥渨ho I was, where I went, and what subsequently happened to the places I had seen.鈥�
Some three decades ago, Theroux wended his way across Europe, the Middle East, and a good chunk of Asia, clattering through by car and camel, but mostly by train 鈥� sleeper trains, and 鈥渢oy鈥� trains, and trains that crossed borders, mountain ranges, entire continents. He published an account of the dry, dusty 鈥� and often dangerous 鈥� journey in 鈥淭he Great Railway Bazaar,鈥� now generally recognized as the gold standard of adventure-travel writing.
鈥淭he train can reassure you in awful places,鈥� Theroux explained on the first page of that book.
He quoted British novelist Michael Frayn, himself paraphrasing the philosopher Marshall McLuhan: 鈥淭he journey is the goal.鈥�
But looking back at 鈥淭he Great Railway Bazaar,鈥� Theroux can see only a misguided wanderlust. He left London all those years ago in bad faith 鈥� out of ideas, out of income, intent on escaping a stifling domesticity. And while Theroux was gallivanting through Asia, his first wife became lonely and heartsick; eventually, she took a lover.
Flush from his adventures, Theroux arrived home to discover he had become a ghost to his children, forgotten by his wife. 鈥淗ow could you do this?鈥� he begged. Her answer: 鈥淚 pretended you were dead.鈥�
鈥淪ome betrayals are forgivable, but others you never quite recover from,鈥� Theroux writes in 鈥淕host Train.鈥�
Eventually, he left London, remarried, and started a new life. And now, 30 years down the line, he has started to feel that old familiar tug 鈥� an urge to escape, to pick through a foreign land, to become 鈥渢hat greediest kind of romantic voyeur.鈥� His solution is 鈥� yes, one can feel it coming, like an overloaded freight train 鈥� to travel, to push off halfway across the world.
But instead of uncharted territory, Theroux decides he will retrace his trip from the 鈥淭he Great Railway Bazaar.鈥� 鈥淕host Train,鈥� therefore, becomes as much an emotional journey as a physical pilgrimage. He is now traveling to see how far he has come, to remember those bygone places, some 鈥渟ad and spectral, others big and hectic.鈥�
He is traveling to become 鈥渢he haunting presence, the eavesdropping shadow on the ghost train.鈥�
His itinerary is founded mostly on a single compass point 鈥� east 鈥� and he hurtles out of London at a vicious clip, alighting in Paris for a moment, finding a 鈥渃ity of mellow cheese-like stone and pitted facades and boulevards.鈥�
Then it鈥檚 on to Budapest 鈥� 鈥渢he old pockmarked city of puddles, smutty under the snowmelt鈥� 鈥� and Istanbul, 鈥渁 city with the soul of a village.鈥� As in 鈥淭he Great Railway Bazaar,鈥� Theroux鈥檚 skill lies not in mere aesthetic awareness, although each impression, as his train groans into Singapore, or Turkmenistan, is writ large, in a language both florid and erudite.
He is a cultural raconteur nonpareil: He sees each city as a refracting lens of the citizenry; each lonely stone outcropping as a manifestation of the people 鈥� lonely or headstrong; pious or 鈥渂oasting and booming鈥� inside.
Here is Theroux, for instance, on the maelstrom of modern India: 鈥淵et the country still ran, in its clunky fashion, all its mends and patches showing, and what looked like chaos in India was actually a kind of order, like furious atoms spinning.鈥�
Not long after I graduated from college, I spent some time wandering around India, by train and also by the kind of public bus that always veers a little too fast across a busy street or a lonely cliff-side road, its wheels forever in danger of escaping out from under the carriage.
For company, I carried a copy of 鈥淭he Great Railway Bazaar鈥�; I read it in the early morning hours, or on the interminable overnight rail rides, when I was unsure exactly where I was going to end up. In Theroux鈥檚 first masterpiece, I found a sense of solidarity with the wandering classes 鈥� the ones who know that the journey is the goal and that the best adventures can never be planned.
鈥淕host Train to the Eastern Star,鈥� with its rattle-bang, mud-soaked grandeur, feels no less dogged. But the pressing need to escape, embodied in 鈥淭he Great Railway Bazaar,鈥� has been replaced by an urge to understand, to unpack an intimate sort of alchemy.
As Theroux suggests, the best trips move in two directions 鈥� outward across the unknown, and inward, into 鈥渢he darkness, as you lie in the train, moving through the world as travelers do, 鈥榠nside the whale.鈥� 鈥�
Matthew Shaer is a staff writer based in Brooklyn.
