Traveller's Return

Paul Theroux – The Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (2008)
Travel – 480 pages – my copy (paperback; 2009) bought from Waterstones in September 2009 for £8.99
- 4 nods out of 5 -

The Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux’s revisit on the journey he completed when in his early thirties, as described in The Great Railway Bazaar. The book made his name famous and earned him a fortune: but why the return for a man in his mid sixties? The motivation, it seems, is to see if the world he once knew was still out there.

Theroux journeys from London through Europe to Turkey, across the ‘Stans’ to India, around South East Asia, up and down Japan, ending by cutting across Russia on the Trans-Siberian railway. As in the Great Railway Bazaar, the majority of this travelling is done onboard a train, the time spent amassed to not days or weeks, but rather months.

Throughout all, Theroux employs the techniques and skills he possesses as a novelist to bring the countries he visits and the people he meets to life. As he writes:

‘Travel means living among strangers, their characteristic stinks and sour perfumes, eating their food, listening to their dramas, enduring their opinions, often with no language in common, being always on the move towards an uncertain destination, creating an itinerary that is continually shifting…’ (p.89).

This descriptive style is aided by Theroux’s ever inquisitive, forever eager nature. No, he wasn’t ‘a hawk’ in his travels, but ‘more a butterfly’ (p.60).

Theroux notes the poor of India, the snow peaks of northern Japan, the scarred memories of Cambodia, the crazed dictator of Turkmenistan who renamed the days of the week, as well as bread after his mother; as well as the Jains in India who do not eat living things, not even bacteria or mould, going with the philosophy – ‘Why should they be killed because of me?’ (p.183). Every page is full of revelation and wonder: one particular highlight is the visit to Arthur C. Clarke’s home in Sri Lanka, in which the famous writer ‘appeared in a wheelchair, the familiar, smiling, bespectacled, man; upright, balding, but rather frail, even in this heat with a blanket over his skinny legs. He looked like the sort of alien he had described in his prose fantasies’ (p.239).

The continuing theme of the book is that of return: this trip is Theroux’s return to the railways of Asia, of a revisit to his former ways and his former self. He meets former acquaintances from the Great Railway Bazaar, such as the family who run the hotel in Myanmar; the greetings and their stories making this truly heart-warming encounters. Yet there is also the feeling of Theroux’s loneliness and sadness, the realisation that his time on this planet is passing – in stark contrast to the younger man who wrote the earlier volume in the 1970s. This is expressed nowhere more clearly than in the meeting of Oo Nawng, the cyclist driver in Burma whom Theroux befriends and gives as a present money in which to pay for his rent and buy a new rickshaw (p.277). As Theroux notes, ‘Like me, he too was a ghost – invisible, ageing, just looking on, a kind of helpless haunter’ (p.276).

The Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, like The Great Railway Bazaar, is a fantastic travel book. Both describe the same journey, but are, ultimately, written by two different people. This recent edition to the Theroux catalogue is of a man in his twilight years: reflective and introspective, yet still with a thirst for knowledge. Although the world he once knew no longer exist, he is a traveller ever ready for the journey and its mysteries.

We, the Survival Machines

Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene (1976)
Popular Science – 330 pages – my copy (2006 edition paperback) borrowed from the Dawkins loving Jamie
- 4 nods out of 5 -

Ever since its first print run in the mid 1970s, The Selfish Gene has proved to be a popular, influential book: it set Dawkins up on a stellar career that he has enjoyed over three decades, whilst bringing the ideas of evolution to a mass audience. Some of this attention has been, admits Dawkins, quite controversial. The scientist has been keen to dispel the notion of endorsing a selfish ‘Me-Me-Me’ society, even going as far as adding a new chapter – ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ in newer editions.

Dawkins’ central argument is how we, chiefly human beings, are ‘survival machines’ for our genes: as the world became more complicated, the machines have become all the more diverse to succeed in replicating for future generations. ‘Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting,’ says Dawkins, while ‘genes, like diamonds, are forever’ (p.35).

He scoffs at the notion that our genes fight for the good of the species, instead emphasising that they look out for number one: if helping out number one involves giving assistance to number two, then it is carried out – but the sole aim remains the same. This hypothesis is tested throughout the book in a wide range of chapters, extending from relationships between sexes and generations.

The book becomes most absorbing when Dawkins suggests that people have ‘the power to rebel against the dictates of the genes’ (p.59-60): our use of contraception is a particular case in point. And while the book is filled with the animal world, Dawkins admits that ‘man is a very special case’ (p.60). He takes this matter further in the chapter on Memes (a Dawkins’ coined term) which he deems ‘the new replicators’. It is a pity this idea is crammed into one sole chapter only.

Yet, if this is all good news for bookish readers, just what is the bad? A chief gripe is Dawkins’ writing style: simply put, he is a mediocre author. He babbles and repeats himself, whilst his analogies become wearying as the book continues. The oarsmen in the boat-race makes rational sense, yet his description of the plot of the 1970s film A for Andromeda is pointless and a waste of space (see p.53). At worst, Dawkins sounds patronizing, condescending his "laymen" audience: never a trait to aspire to when reaching out for the mass market.

He repeatedly takes his hypothesis to its furthest limits in each of the chapters, draining the conversational tea-bag of all its worth, thus sucking out the excitement he initially creates when introducing each topic. Meanwhile, the new chapters added for newer editions are distinctly light-weight: the second one serves the primary function as an advertisement for another book (The Extended Phenotype). Furthermore, the work of Trivers, Maynard Smith and Hamilton are constantly referred to; this heavy weight of citing is so dense that the Worm suspects the young Dawkins of pandering to his elders and his peers.

One certain Book Worm fan has grave doubts about my assessment of Dawkins; perhaps even going as far as to state that the Worm has a vendetta against him. But this, quite simply, is not true. The Selfish Gene is an intriguing book, a book which this review recommends to all of those not yet acquainted with Dawkins. He succeeds in bringing his subject – with all its complexity – to the wider world. For that, the Worm applauds his efforts; and likewise, will continue in reading the Dawkins back catalogue in search of that golden 5 nodder.

History 101

E.H. Carr - What is History? (1961)
History Theory – 160 pages – my copy (paperback; 1977) bought for £2 from the Barbican Book Cupboard in 2006 with the penned words: ‘Brian William Ferguson, Perth, Scotland, 1978’.
- 3 nods out of 5 -

A good question deserves, likewise, a good response: What is History? E.H. Carr is the man fitting for such a task: one of the eminent historians of his time, he taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, while publishing many notable modern histories upon Soviet Russia. His book, What is History?, is a collection of lectures he gave in early 1961 to young, budding students of the subject: his intention to enlighten and explain.

In these lectures, Carr deals with the historian, the facts of history, society, History’s clashes with Science (though Carr hated the use of a capital ‘h’); causation in history and also the, somewhat paradoxical, future of history. An array of matters are asked, fitting into Carr’s belief that ‘the historian…is an animal who incessantly asks the question: "Why?"’ (p.86).

The chief argument of the book is Carr’s insistence that it is impossible to fully understand the events of the past. This clashes with the late Victorian view that everything would be gathered and made clear with the progress of time, that an absolute of History could be achieved, as could absolutes in other fields, such as the Sciences. Such beliefs were torn to pieces in a vastly changed world – mid-twentieth century – to that of the nineteenth: two world wars, alongside new discoveries put paid to this previously secure mind-set. Carr argues that our viewpoint on history will change from generation to generation, that despite the use of objective methods our interpretation of the past is condemned to be subjective due to the historian being a part of history himself.

Throughout the text, Carr believes in the worthiness of history as a discipline, believing that we can get much from it:

‘To learn about the present in the light of the past means also to learn about the past in the light of the present. The function of history is to promote a profounder understanding of both past and present through the interrelation between them’ (p.68).

What is History? is a fine addition to the canon of historical theory, and remains one of the ‘must-reads’ of history students. The arguments remain clear and concise – if not spectacular – and although Carr will remain in the grip of those fond of history, his collection of lectures would benefit any reader of inquisitive disposition.

Time For Heroes

Charles Dickens – Hard Times (1954)
Novel – 310 pages – my copy (paperback; 1985) bought for 50p from Plymouth Library, October 2009
- 4 nods out of 5 -

The Oliver Twists and David Copperfields are the common heroes of the literary landscape of Dickens; always comfortable stacked upon the book shelves of shops and continually, sometimes relentlessly remade by film makers and, particularly, the BBC. Hard Times may be a lesser known quantity; but alongside its book-siblings it is never put in the shade.

One of Dickens’ more later novels, Hard Times is a story with many plots and sub-plots, characters that being strong then fade away; yet it is not the narrative that makes it such an interesting read, but rather its attack on the prevalent belief in the Victorian world that everyone and everything must be accounted for and put to good use.

‘Now, what I want is, Facts!’ exclaims Mr Gradgrind in the book’s opening (p.47). Gradgrind and his fellow fact-fiend, Bounderby (described wonderfully as ‘the bully of humility’) pursue the shaping of society in their image. Dickens, himself a former child of the workhouse, attacks and makes a mockery of what is primarily the Benthamite philosophy; unfolding the events and the characters into expressing their feelings, their desires and their fears.

This is not to say that the book does not contain more than its fair share of Dickensian qualities: there are the characters (Bounderby in particular) as well as the dismal, dreary landscape, this time in the north of England; ‘a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever’ (p.65). Furthermore, there is the return of a lost relative: the seeming hallmark of all Dickens novels!

Although the anticipated mother’s reunion is a dampener on the proceedings, even more annoying is the dialect speech of one of the workers, Stephen: ‘…Gonnows I ha’ none how that’s o’ my makin’…’ (p.174). More than two paragraphs is enough for the Worm to shout: ‘No more!’ However, the quality is so high that such a niggling critique can easily be ignored. Most of the prose confirms Dickens position as one of our greatest, most loved novelists:

‘He stood bare-headed in the road, watching her quick disappearance. As the shining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachel, in the rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life’ (p.126).

This time is, indeed, one in which a call for heroes is needed; Dickens answers this with the invention of Stephen, the run-down yet thoroughly honest work-man. Whilst the true hero here is not a person, as such, but rather the qualities of love and affection; qualities which, stresses Dickens, are needed to overcome the darkness of a modern world.