THE writer as cynic, as aloof observer, opportunist, outsider egoist, truth teller, reporter, restless traveller, unreliable narrator and more recently, introspective lost soul the diversely versatile American novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux fills most, if not all, of these roles. A cold, assured, remote yet insistent presence has been the dominant feature of his work even at its earthiest, almost from the beginning of a career that began with Waldo (1967). But the cool reserve which was seen to crack with My Secret History in 1989 appears to have been finally shattered with My Other Life (Hamish Hamilton, £16 in UK), as the contradictions and complications multiply.
This is an offbeat, uneven, candid, episodic ragbag. It reveals Theroux at his most exposed, most careless, and most exact. Some of his most sharply observed writing is here, along with bizarre passages that are largely repetitions from earlier books. Often compelling and relentlessly honest, this self absorbed non-novel could win new readers for Theroux. It may also prove in time to be the book he most wished he never wrote.
Theroux the novelist and author of good novels such as Jungle Lovers (1971), Picture Palace (1978), My Secret History (1989), and Chicago Loop (1990), has been overshadowed by the best of his travel writing, such as The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) and The Old Patagonian Express (1979). The Kingdom by the Sea (1983), however, hinted that Theroux would increasingly find his awareness of self an obstacle to his non-fiction. Even at its best, Theroux's fiction frequently edges towards reportage, so exact and unemotional is his prose. His lengthy sojourns in Malawi, Uganda "delicately circumventing Vietnam" Singapore and London, where he lived for 18 years, fed the restlessness which has always been central to his complex personality. He would appear to be a most un-American American writer, far closer to Graham Greene or Somerset Maugham or, at times, to Anthony Burgess, than to any of his countrymen. Most of his work has been set outside the United States, much it of busily inhabiting his inner world. At the heart of it lies his fascination with the idea of a secret life. Andre Parent, novelist and highly sexed narrator of My Secret History, so favours a dual existence that he maintains two households, one in the States and one in London and two women.
In his author's note to My Other Life?, Theroux declares "This is the story of a life I could have lived had things been different an imaginary memoir." However, the narrative which follows seems anything but imaginary. The new books opens strongly, with a lively account of horrible Uncle Hal, ever at war with mankind, "the sort of person who, if you didn't see him for a while, you might think had killed himself, or gone to Alaska, and then, when you saw him again, you realised that he would probably never die, not in the normal way, nor would he go anywhere at all". The narrator stresses that "when Uncle Hal went out the world stopped being simple ... Just being with him could make you very tired".
Very quickly the focus shifts to the narrator's life, beginning with his stay at a leper colony during his time with the Peace Corps. It's familiar territory and we are soon presented with Paul the narrator at the mercy of a predatory woman. By the next narrative sequence, Paul has acquired a wife and children, "love, marriage, children, debt", and is living on a mean salary in Singapore. The story appears set on following the facts of Theroux's own life again.
Why? And also, why does it surprise? Phillip Roth has made the story of his life and sexual angst the stuff of his fiction. Stylistically, the frenetic Roth and the cold, deliberate, often absurdist Theroux, would appear to be light years apart. Yet at their most self absorbed they are closer then one might have thought, although Theroux's sexuality is far darker than Roth's slightly crazed excursions into mid-life hysteria and beyond. A characteristic smugness of tone began creeping into Theroux's work and marred Riding the Iron Rooster (1988), a travel book about China. Theroux the writer became fascinated by his own celebrity.
In the new novel, Paul, the struggling teacher, is appointed poetry tutor to a rich man. So far, so slightly unbelievable . . Paul moves his family to the rich man's house, and is soon informed by the man's menacing wife that they will be living in the servant's quarters. The poetry tutorials begin, while Paul's relieved wife plays happily with her children. Then the rich man's bored wife attempts to seduce Paul. When he rejects her, his family's life of leisure ends. Almost as a footnote. Paul admits to having sold a valuable jade piece stolen from his patron at a London auction, buying a house on the proceeds. Fact or fiction? Does it matter?
Enter another dangerous woman devastatingly cold and utterly amoral. While the theme of handsome Paul pursued by women is irritating, once the reader adjusts to the narrator's self obsession it becomes clear that Theroux's narrative is concerned with identity. He is also preoccupied with the tension between truth and fiction "the man is fiction, but the mask is real", as he warns in his author's note. An emerging confessional quality stalks the narrative, tangling the menu of lies, adventure, despair and a loneliness which sends the now separated Paul to hunt friendship, whether with his therapist or the gang of dead beats he meets up with in a diner. He wants them to know he is a famous writer. But they are not the kind of people to remember his name, never mind applaud his literary fame.
Unable to write, he experiences an entire crisis of confidence and painfully discovers that there "seemed an enormous difference between the author of my books and the person I had become, and no one would know because the sad, inarticulate man I had become could not write a line". He seems to have become his own books. Later he realises. "There was something still wrong with me, but the thing that was wrong had made me a writer." The closing sections of this singular exercise in total recall are moving and very well written. Insecurity and ego have sustained him until now, and he says. "There was a writer, a glimmering fabulist within me that was who I was."
Rejected and depressed, he accepts a London dinner invitation, with royal guests. Although broke, he flies to England. The absurdity of his situation is brilliantly described as he leaves his filthy hotel full of warring couples, to supper with a sympathetic and motherly Queen Elizabeth and her hilariously cantankerous spouse. Fact or fiction? Excruciatingly honest, possibly opportunistic, intelligent, if bizarre it all leaves one wondering is Theroux deliberately deconstructing the novel form? Or merely his entire personality? Or is he attempting both?
So memoir or novel? Fiction or public self analysis? The only certainty at work in this long, confessional maze, is that Theroux's exact, businesslike prose and delivery have never been sharper, rendering even the more absurd episodes interesting. It may all be lies, but there is truth at the heart of it. This is an unsettling book about a hollow life, and it echoes all life only too accurately.
