Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux, Still Indulging

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

At home in Hawaii in 2021. Michelle Mishina Kunz for The New York Times

During the first few months of this platform, when travel experiences as well as variations on biophilia and  conservation became our prevailing themes, a post mentioned one of the great travel writers of our time. 13 years passed and this is his first full reference:

Paul Theroux on Necessary Solitude, Risks and the Joy of Writing

After 60 years of writing and publishing — and almost 60 books — I feel ordering my thoughts on paper to be not a job but a process of my life. You always hear writers complain about the hellish difficulty of writing, but it’s a dishonest complaint.

So many people have it much harder — soldiers, firefighters, field workers, truckers. The writer’s profession is a life of self-indulgence. Continue reading →

Biophilia: E.O. Wilson, from Thoreau to Theroux

/ Amie Inman / 20 Comments

In December 2010 the Oxford English Dictionary (fondly called the OED) added 2,400 entries, including “biophilia“.  But E.O. Wilson published the term (as well as it’s city kin) in 1984 in the book of the same name.

My attention was on the forest; it has been there all my life.  I can work up some appreciation for the travel stories of Paul Theroux and other urbanophile authors who treat human settlements as virtually the whole world and the intervening natural habitats as troublesome barriers.  But everywhere I have gone–South America, Australia, New Guinea, Asia–I have thought exactly the opposite.  Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmlands the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past.  I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind. Continue reading →