Paul Theroux Nearly all of Paul Theroux’s fiction is about a person — usually male, often a writer — trying to solve a problem. In several of the stories from The Vanishing Point, his new collection, that problem doesn’t have a solution. He describes a vanishing point as a moment when seemingly all the lines running through one’s life converge and one can see no further, yet we must deal...
No one likes a well thought out reading list more than I do. They obsess me, it’s true. But they also serve to focus my efforts, reveal themes and dialogues that pass from author to author, and expose me to new writers I might not otherwise have read. I’m just a few books away from completing the Modern Library’s Top 100 Books of the 20th Century—a project I’ve been...
If you want to write meaningful travel literature, you’ve got to immerse yourself in everything that’s been published in the genre. In addition to reading broadly, I’ve made it a habit to read deeply of specific writers whose work truly resonates with me. I first read everything they’ve ever published. Next, I read their collected letters and journals. After that comes...