Customer Reviews

Sunrise with Seamonsters

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This is a wonderful collection for fans of Theroux and writers who want to study the craft of essay writing. The range of topics is wide, covering everything from travel (of course) to politics (Nixon) to Tarzan-as-expatriate. It's also a great window into Theroux's development as a writer as it spans two and a half decades of his career.

I had the pleasure of reading these when I was in the Peace Corps myself, stationed in the Nepal highlands. Thanks for the fun and inspiration, Paul!

This 300-page-plus collection of essays is truly a treasure chest. Not a page is devoid of wondrous facts or insights by this chronicler of people, places and things. He takes you to exotic countries (in fact one of his essays is on the very nature of "exotic"). He takes you on fascinating journeys, not only in third world outposts but even in the U.S. He introduces you to irrestible people, many famous, many not. He shares with you insights and opinions in a manner that is respectful, not pedantic. I think Theroux is one of our best essayists and his eye for the potpourri that our world encompasses is unerring. Reading Theroux' essays and non-fiction work is always a pleasure. (His novels, however, are another matter, to be discussed at another time....)

I found this book in a bookstore in Vienna in 1992. The stories are so well written, I find myself going back to them time and time to re-read. Paul writes with the very best. Some of the many great passages deserve to read many times. It's that good.

Real travel is not going on a cruise, or spending a week on a resort. Real travel is experiencing a culture in its fullness, in its vagueness, and in its lost sentiment.

Paul Theroux is the best modern travel writer, and this collection of his essays is probably his best book. Ranging from his early travels in Africa, and covering the rest of the world as he reached his forties, these essays show travel and the profundity of life to come from the most unexpected and lovely of places.

'Sunrise With Seamonsters' is also good because while the subject is in general travel, he discusses such varied places and characters you get a sense of the time slipping by in the most pleasant of ways.

A great book, highly recommended.

Even without taking my copy of this down from the shelf, a mental vision of the cover conjures up brief mnemonic wisps of mental perfume: sailing on Cape Cod, his memories of Africa, the tale of the unironed shirt and the burrowing mites, the essay on extended family that has always made me wistful for the experience or at least envious to have a doctor and lawyer available for free consultations. Influential stuff from a more or less acerbic personality.

It does not surprise me that someone trying to make sense of the world, writers, the fear of getting lost in New York City's subways, and ideas about the novel, would find that Nixon had an extremely limited view of how the other parts of the world could come up with a great wall from hundreds of years ago. Nixon saw the great wall in China and realized it was a great wall, but Nixon does not get credit in this book for figuring out anything but partisan politics, when Nixon had an opportunity to make American policy perfectly clear. We have such an overwhelming number of items to be concerned about now, it is unlikely that anything in this book could become a factor that would decide an election, with political personalities being defined simplistically pretty much like the current American war on drugs and efforts to stop money laundering by criminals and the war on terror.