Just a little watercress to distribute around Stefan's post about Tunku Varadarajan's piece on Paul Theroux. I am happy to admit that there are no flies on Theroux as a travel writer. But he comes from a long line of illustrious, pen-wieldling sojourners. Stefan is right to mention Patrick Leigh Fermor. But how about Waugh (Alec as well as Evelyn), Robert Byron (The Road to Oxiana), Peter Fleming (Brazilian Adventure), Norman Douglas (too many to note), and of course Eric Newby, also too many to note but whose book A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is one of the funniest travel books ever written. (You'll never again be able to regard The Hound of the Baskervilles with equanimity.) This, of course, is a cursory, radically incomplete list, but I wanted to do something to plump up the negative force of "practially," which means here not "nearly" or "almost" but "not really" or "closeish, but no cigarillo."
add a comment