“Ghost Train” is the first Theroux book I’ve read that took until page 101 to make me guffaw and belly-laugh at something ridiculously funny. I’m not finished with it yet, but the first 100 pages are a strange travel litany unlike anything in his other non-fiction. Personally, I think PT has finally found something like contentment and stability in his life, and the sarcasm and sardonic narrative, the pithy and barbed commentary, don’t flow so easily anymore. Stuff like “Happy Isles…” was a little like paddling around the Pacific with Mencken and Ambrose Bierce. But in “Ghost Train”, for the first time, I have to read about what he ate for dinner on the train to France and about his damned Blackberry!
Saqib Ali
August 25, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
@New Yorker one-pager on airline fees.
It would be funny if it wasn’t true
Kabauze
August 27, 2008 @ 10:00 am
“Ghost Train” is the first Theroux book I’ve read that took until page 101 to make me guffaw and belly-laugh at something ridiculously funny. I’m not finished with it yet, but the first 100 pages are a strange travel litany unlike anything in his other non-fiction. Personally, I think PT has finally found something like contentment and stability in his life, and the sarcasm and sardonic narrative, the pithy and barbed commentary, don’t flow so easily anymore. Stuff like “Happy Isles…” was a little like paddling around the Pacific with Mencken and Ambrose Bierce. But in “Ghost Train”, for the first time, I have to read about what he ate for dinner on the train to France and about his damned Blackberry!