Escalante, Utah

The Los Angeles Central Library is a shrine among the lines of tents, sleeping bags and garbage cans of downtown Los Angeles. A grand structure of depth and long gray walls, stories of books. Books, stone, and readers among the homeless, the jewelry hawkers, the law firms. The eloquence of the library - steep, narrow, dark. Like a canyon, the way the light bounces down the walls.

Paul Theroux is speaking on the history of fiction and non-fiction in Honolulu. Theroux has been attributed for injecting the vacuous genre of travel writing with a sense of truth. Decline had said goodbye to Twain, Borges, Conrad, Maugham, Stephenson. It had become 'The Best Ten Hotels in Las Vegas!', and bumbling English gentlemen on Safari.

Attracted by his travel non-fictions and fictions since eleven (he winced in partial-insult when I told him this), I have come here to observe his audience, which I suspected would be a rare cross-section of young travelers, mischief-makers and aspiring writers. What I find is aging peace-corps renegades, literary snobs and wrinkled bookworms.

"Are you a traveler?" a lady in a hat asked me. Another said, "the Book Faire is the real thing. I met Salman Rushdie."

Another asked Theroux, "How are you able to write both fiction and non-fiction?"

"Travel writing is easy. You have a beginning, a middle and a destination already prepared for you. The end is already written."

Next

1234567891011