To the Edge of Patagonia

The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas By Paul Theroux Houghton Mifflin, 404 pp., $11.95 Paul Theroux is a writer of great talent. He is a hunter with a heart. His eye is very very good. He also knows—very important for a hunter—what to look for. That kind of eye, that kind of talent is not something merely inborn, the gift of a perfect organ. It is acquired through hard experience. A good hunter is not someone who is born with 20/ 20 vision. Theroux writes well because he knows how to read, which is a consequence of his experience, the acquired talent for knowing what to read. He is not—not yet—a great thinking writer. He is still young.

He took a risk—literary, rather than financial—with this book. He was successful—deservedly—with his book of meandering train-travel across Asia, The Great Railway Bazaar, and followed it up with The Old Patagonian Express, another train-travel book. Itisasifa novelist, whose first novel was starrily successful, had written his second novel with a theme quite like the first. Theroux carried it off. The Old Patagonian Express is both like and unlike The Great Railway Bazaar—a perfect combination.

JL

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John Lukacs

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The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas By Paul Theroux Houghton Mifflin, 404 pp., $11.95 Paul Theroux is a writer of great talent. He is a hunter with a heart. His eye is very very good. He also knows—very important for a hunter—what to look for. That kind of eye, that kind of talent is not something merely inborn, the gift of a perfect organ. It is acquired through hard experience. A good hunter is not someone who is born with 20/ 20 vision. Theroux writes well because he knows how to read, which is a consequence of his experience, the acquired talent for knowing what to read. He is not—not yet—a great thinking writer. He is still young.

He took a risk—literary, rather than financial—with this book. He was successful—deservedly—with his book of meandering train-travel across Asia, The Great Railway Bazaar, and followed it up with The Old Patagonian Express, another train-travel book. Itisasifa novelist, whose first novel was starrily successful, had written his second novel with a theme quite like the first. Theroux carried it off. The Old Patagonian Express is both like and unlike The Great Railway Bazaar—a perfect combination.