Customer Reviews

The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro and Other Stories

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Paul Theroux's collection of two novellas and two stories centers thematically on forbidden desire and the eroticism it evokes: between the old and the young, the employer and the employee, the priest and the boy, the wife and the milkman. Like much of Theroux's work, the corruption of innocence plays an important role in the unfolding of these tales.

The title novella is a story within a story: a sixty year old American painter who arrives in Sicily to mark the period when he was twenty-one and entered into a bizarre relationship with an older and wealthy German woman. The reader is thrown into the lengthy flashback of how the painter came to know this woman, the Grafin, and her traveling companion. The Grafin turns out to be a sadist by day, a masochist by night, and the graphic encounters between the young man and the older woman contrast sharply with the civility and aloofness they maintain in public. The secret that was revealed to the young painter haunts him even years later, on his sixtieth birthday, when he encounters a nubile seventeen year old not far from where he first saw the wealthy woman. This frame is Theroux's weakness here, as the end turns on a gimmick instead of true emotion. Beautifully written but mannered, the novella does not achieve anything more than a fleeting pleasure.

The other novella, A Judas Memoir, is told in four parts, and follows Andy, a boy with the first stirrings of desire. His first encounters with sex are painful, humiliating, and violent: a nun twists his ear as he sees the girl he is infatuated with, he witnessed the nudity of the milkman sleeping with his friend's mother, and he and his friends nearly kill a pedophile who happens to be the priest of their parish. Of the remaining two stories, "An African Story" is the stronger, and perhaps the best piece in the book. Like the title novella, it is an older man's reminiscence of an past desire, but here, in the shorter form, it has more urgency. "Disheveled Nymphs," the final piece, reads as more of an anecdote than a true short story, and is a dismal choice to end on.

The collection lacks passion despite the desire it sets out to describe. Theroux's writing is adept, but it fails to take the reader beyond the petty moments of lust. I recommend this book only to fans of Theroux who want to keep up on his writing.

I've always been a Paul Theroux fan so I found his latest fiction, THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO, interesting for a couple of reasons:

The first is that we're reading about a 60-year-old man dealing with desire through his own life and the lives of others. Whether it's an aging countess from his own past or the ridiculous or tragic friends dealing with their own much-younger lovers, it was fascinating for me to read about people still grappling with lust, love and loss at a point in their lives when they should've figured that all out by now.
Perhaps that was Theroux's point: our own hearts will always remain a mystery no matter far we go or how much we see.

How much of this book reflects Theroux's own life?
That was the other reason I found this book so enjoyable: the first two novellas felt full of details from his own youth and I caught glimpses of incidents that would turn up in his earlier novels.
The countess in the first novella reminded me of the "patroness" from MY SECRET HISTORY. The boys plotting their revenge in the second novella reminded me of the comically-absurd caper of MURDER IN MOUNT HOLLY. The girl relieving herself outside of the boy's tent flashed me back to the "mutant" girl in the bathtub in O-ZONE.

Ultimately, I felt like I was listening to not only a great storyteller but also an elder trying to pass something on.
And it might be a warning.

At the heart of the four stories in this exceptional collection is the exploration of power relationships in which the master becomes the slave, sometimes by choice, sometimes by manipulation or deceit, and sometimes as a matter of circumstance. Theroux is intrigued by what happens when a rich, aristocratic woman allows herself to be sexually dominated by a young, poor recent college graduate, or when a white South African writer, consumed by passion for a poor black woman, finds himself losing everything he has as a result of his pursuing her. In two other stories, he skillfully examines a group of young boys as they seek revenge against their priest, and a retired lawyer who finds himself at the mercy of his hired help after he follows them on their Las Vegas vacation. Each story is a classic case of role reversal. In each, the typical lines of authority are turned upside down, resulting in some fascinating discoveries about the essence of relationships and human character.

The first and title story is by far the best; both the story and the prose attain a height of mastery that aren't quite achieved in the following three stories. The writing has an ease and a grace that are hard to find, that only come from the most gifted of writers. And this is indeed writing with purpose. The `grafin', or countess, in this story, is an exquisitely drawn character, a perfect balance of royal aloofness and pretension with human vulnerability and insecurity.

The other three stories are treasures as well, though on a second tier. Of them, the best is "An African Story," in which Theroux first summarizes a half-dozen novellas written by a fictitious South African writer, then tells of the tragic downfall of the writer. The writer's stories, in many ways, foreshadow his own life's events in a way that underscores the intrinsic ties between life and literature.

I enjoyed some of the stories and some I didn't. But that's the way it is with collections of short stories. I was not disturbed by any of the stories, although I should have read the Amazon reviews before picking up the book as I was not at all prepared for what was coming. But the stories and the feelings of lust and loss were very intersting. I just didn't feel that any of the characters were developed fully. The first story, The Strangers at the Palazzo D'Oro was the best in my opinion. I always enjoy stories that are told from the perspective of the main character looking back on their life. I just wish there would've been a little more to it. Sex gets old when there's not more dialogue and plot.

Paul Theroux's characters -- men and boys mostly -- don't evolve much beyond coming to terms with their their sexual desires, but these are compelling yarns that illustrate how everyday life can sometimes take a hard right into the Twilight Zone. The lengthy title story is your basic young-man-comes-of-age-with-older-woman, but its Italian venue and sexual slavery angle make it offbeat enough to hold the reader's attention through 108 pages. "An African Story," about a massive power shift in the relationship between a white landowner and his black mistress, also sucks in the reader with its twists and oddities. The foreign locations play to Theroux's strengths as a master travel writer. There is a novella about growing up in the U.S. that has its moments, but it's pretty basic boys-at-large material. The final tale about a retired lawyer obsessed with his Hawaiian maids recalls the African tale and has a curious charm. Theroux writes beautifully at times and these are fine stories for the most part, but there are better recent story collections working the same turf -- Richard Ford's "A Multitude of Sins" comes to mind. And the title story of Elmore Leonard's "When the Women Come Out to Dance" seems to capture what Theroux is in search of here in far fewer pages.

One thing you can say about Paul Theroux is that he appears to have no secrets, if you believe the quote in my review title from 'A Judas Memoir', one of the four stories in this collection. My title is actually an excerpt from a longer quote: 'naked people are strong, weak people make jokes, say nothing and you have secrets'.

All four stories are about youth and age. About the foolish confidence of youth before social constraints come into play, and about the frail vulnerability of the aged - yes, they too can - and do - make mistakes. For me, the title story of this book was far too ugly for me to really enjoy. For a while I liked 'An African Story' best. But there appear to be jokes - things that made me laugh - does that make Mr Theroux weak? - or was he trying to make the lead character appear weak? The sad thing about the mistakes of the aged - shown several times in these stories - is that often they do not have the time to throw their arms in the air and say 'How Fascinating!' as Benjamin Zander would recommend (the fascination being the opportunity to learn).

These stories are exotic and often erotic - although I would certainly avoid making any recommendation based on the erotic aspect of the stories. Repeatedly I found the sadness of the uncertainty of youth - the desires and dreams that probably will never be fulfilled, the acceptance of constraints - and the sadness of aging which occurs with such regret - why can the adventures of youth not continue?

Here's another quote - this time from 'An African Story' - 'People who read are not happy or else why would they be alone in a room with a book in their hands?'

Other recommendations:

Milroy the Magician - Paul Theroux
any of Mr Theroux's travel books (such as 'Riding the Iron Rooster')
The Art of Possibility - Benjamin Zander

I often don't like to read short stories. For me, they are not - in general you understand - as satisfying as a novel. Too hasty and short if they are good, too unfulfilling and short if they are not. This is a slightly different case for me.

The theme of the title story is sort of retold in a different framework in a second one. Neither to me are satisfying. With the Palazzo story I get the feeling that it SHOULD HAVE BEEN a novel but that there really was only a limited story to tell. Sex without conversation gets dull even for an author. The "readalike" seemed to be another way to try and draw out the same story. Neither worked for me.

The stories that are grouped together under the "Judas" theme posed an even more difficult issue for me. They seemed like doodles. By that I mean - Theroux wanted the characters in them to do something but couldn't settle on one thing. So he tried in different ways, and lacking the ability to develop them (they really aren't interesting people) gave us all the attempts in this short story collection. To me they were barebones, or sketches if you will, of an idea.

Recently I saw a drawing show of Parmagianino's work at the Frick Museum in NYC. There were many sheets of what my friend calls "doodles" which is how he defines sketches and studies for "real" drawings or paintings. I asked myself why I loved looking at the art studies but resented reading what I thought were literary studies. I think the reason is that an artist's thought process is interesting for comparison to what he finally achieves. A writer's studies are not interesting in the same way unless there is a final definitive version.

Also, the artist - Parmagianino for example - never expected his studies (doodles) to be seen. In contrast, Theroux has assembled his and published them as a final product.

This is not satisfying to me. But I'm sure I am in the minority. Moral: I should stick to novels.

This was my first time reading Paul Theroux and I must say I'm not impressed. The writing seemed gratuitously pretentious and the woman characters were (in my opinion) poorly sculpted. I must admit, I had to put the book down after the author described the main character watching an older woman pee gleefully "like a little girl" and become turned on by being flecked with her piss remnants, so my review may be half-baked. From what I took from the book, the writing was mostly fluff with little story. In "The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro" The author focuses heavily on the main character's thoughts and seems to describe them over and over again throughout the course of the narrative. I honestly felt like I was reading the author's strange, convoluted sex fantasies rather than about characters with any substance. Perhaps I'm just not the right kind of audience for this kind of writing.

This is a strange collection by Paul Theroux: two stories of novella length and two shorter ones. The cover would have you believe that the common thread is Theroux' sense of locale, and indeed all four tales fit perfectly into their settings. But only the title story, a true novella, at all reflects the author's other métier as a travel writer; the setting is Taormina in Sicily, and the main characters are tourists. The second, "A Judas Memoir," is really a set of four linked stories, set in Boston in the fifties. The first standalone piece, "An African Story," is totally rooted in pre-Apartheid South Africa, but it is the mindset that matters rather than the physical setting. And while the final tale, "Disheveled Nymphs," is split between Hawaii and Las Vegas, it is the Strip that drops the jaw of this habitual traveler, not the Pacific islands where in fact Theroux has a home.

No, the deeper connections are power and sex -- sex as the expression of power. "An African Story," arguably the strongest in the volume, might almost have been written by the JM Coetzee of DISGRACE, with a touch of the later postmodernist thrown in. After years of writing bizarre short stories dealing symbolically with race, writer Lourens Prinzloo decides to live one of his stories in the flesh, and embarks on a relationship with an African woman. The bondage games that become part of their sexual play reflect the racial bondage in the real world -- but, as in the real world, the tables are soon turned. "Disheveled Nymphs," about a bored millionaire's lust for his mother-and-daughter housekeepers, tells a similar tale of sex and power, but from the perspective of wry comedy.

Power is very much the subtext of the title novella, and its sex scenes are as explicit as they come. This story of an American art student who is taken up by German Countess in a Sicilian luxury hotel reads a bit like an Italian movie of the fifties, but elements may be familiar to any of us who hitch-hiked round Europe in those years. And it also resonates as a Faustian fable of the parasitic nature of art, that can degrade as well as ennoble those involved in it.

"A Judas Memoir" is in many respects the odd man out, since its protagonist is a middle-school boy, its sex the awkward discoveries of those years, and its power that wielded by an authoritarian Catholic Church, whether through a priest's threats of hellfire, or a clip on the ear from a whiskered nun. But in the last of its stories, "Scouting for Boys," the various forces come together. What starts as the crude talk of pubescent boys making up with their mouths what they lack in experience turns into an encounter with a sexual predator who is unfortunately very real.

I highly recommend this book, along with My Secret History and My Other Life. Let other people write multi paragraph reviews, I'll just say that these three books are Theroux's best fiction. Add a star for each of the following circumstances that apply:
1. if you grew up Catholic,
2. if you are a male,
3. if you grew up in the northeastern U.S.