This was my first book by this author – often referenced in books by Paul Theroux – and I thought it was time to see if his writing would fit my interests.
Apparently this book was one of his early writings, and it felt a little rough sometimes. It didn’t fit into what people might call a “travel book” these days, but at the time of writing (1962-1964) there really wasn’t a popularized genre like travel writing quite yet.
The writing in this book is quite good – especially the descriptions of natural scenes and scenes from urban life and poverty of India are written in a way that really brings them alive. He often writes quite harshly about individuals which seems rare these days – hopefully he has changed the names.
I liked the storytelling style here – and the writer fills the stories not only with events but his own reactions, sometimes surprisingly visceral/judgmental or raw. It seems like he felt like he needed the reader to understand his reactions to what he was seeing in India at the time, so there was no hesitation baring his soul.
I’m not sure I liked the format of this book – it wasn’t a traditional journey and there were some chapters that contained commentary on a single topic or a sort of literature review on an element of Indian/British culture – these didn’t seem to fit smoothly with the stories of his journeys around the country.
And for a world traveler the author seems to get ruffled pretty easily. I’m sure things were a lot more stressful traveling in those days, but it seems like it doesn’t take much to piss him off. Maybe his anger just seemed so sudden while he writes his calm descriptions.
I’m not sure if I’ll read more from this writer – but later on I’ll check reviews from some of his other books to see if there is a shift in tone for his later works. For some reason I’ve read a lot about India in the last year or so – maybe I need to shift to some other countries.
Next I am (re-)reading Pet Semetary by Stephen King. I haven’t read this one since I was in junior high school – it’ll be interesting to read it again after all this time and see how I like it!
