Fresh Air Fiend Travel Writings Author:Paul Theroux Paul Theroux's first collection of essays and articles devoted entirely to travel writing, FRESH AIR FIEND touches down on five continents and floats through most seas in between to deliver a literary adventure of the first order, with the incomparable Paul Theroux as a guide. — From the crisp quiet of a solitary week spent in the snowbound M... more »aine woods to the expectant chaos of Hong Kong on the eve of the Hand-over, Theroux demonstrates how the traveling life and the writing life are intimately connected. His journeys in remote hinterlands and crowded foreign capitals provide the necessary perspective to "become a stranger" in order to discover the self.
A companion volume to SUNRISE WITH SEAMONSTERS, FRESH AIR FIEND is the ultimate good read for anyone fascinated by travel in the wider world or curious about the life of one of our most passionate travelers.
Introduction: Being a Stranger --
1. Time Travel --
Memory and Creation: The View from Fifty --
The Object of Desire --
At the Sharp End: Being in the Peace Corps --
Five Travel Epiphanies --
Travel Writing: The Point of It --
2. Fresh Air Fiend --
Fresh Air Fiend --
The Awkward Question --
The Moving Target --
Dead Reckoning to Nantucket --
Paddling to Plymouth --
Fever Chart: Parasites I Have Known --
3. A Sense of Place --
Diaries of Two Cities: Amsterdam and London --
Farewell to Britain: Look Thy Last on All Things Lovely --
Gravy Train: A Private Railway Car --
The Maine Woods: Camping in the Snow --
Trespassing in Florida --
Down the Zambezi --
The True Size of Cape Cod --
German Humor --
4. China --
Down the Yangtze --
Chinese Miracles --
Ghost Stories: A Letter from Hong Kong on the Eve of the Hand-over --
5. The Pacific --
Hawaii --
The Other Oahu --
On Molokai --
Connected in Palau --
Tasting the Pacific --
Palawan: Up and Down the Creek --
Christmas Island: Bombs and Birds --
6. Books of Travel --
My Own --
The Edge of the Great Rift: Three African Novels --
I read the part about China (about 25% of the book, the rest is of widely dispersed places and themes), he was there in 1979, when you might be able to call it Communist. You can't accuse Theroux of sugar coating a place.