The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas (Penguin Audiobooks)

The concept is simple: Travel by train from Boston USA to Argentina and write about what you experience. The execution is something else, and it makes every page quite interesting.

Those who have experienced Paul Theroux's travel writing don't have to be convinced of the pleasant experience to expect from this book. For those unfamiliar with his work, this is a very good place to start.


Like the final days before returning home...   August 1, 2000
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Near the end of a two week trip to a far off land (for me at least), those uncomfortable things that at first seemed new and exciting start to become annoying and old.

It seems like Paul Theroux started feeling this way after his first two weeks... actually maybe even before. He manages to leave his personal stamp of disaproval on every Central and South American country in his wake... er... track.

The good thing is that his negative attitude is so obvious that you become desensitized to it, and it starts to feel like the grumpy narrative to a beautiful slideshow presentation by your Great Uncle Horrace.

Theroux's descriptions of people and places are so vivid, that his journey becomes less of a personal trip, and more of a documentary film of the beautiful landscape and interesting people that he meets. He is but a character in the film that you can choose to ignore.

Sidenote: Before I bought this book I had really wanted to go to the Patagonian area of Chile and Argentina. Since that was the only place that Theroux didn't seem to have a problem with, I instead went to Peru (he both hated it and got altitude sickness there, so I figured it must be a great place... and of course it was).


An obnoxious but fun book.   June 2, 2000
 21 out of 24 found this review helpful

As a venezuelan I thank god that there is no train to my country and that Paul Theroux didn't stop in Venezuela because almost everywhere that he went , including part of the U.S.A, he had the ability, the gift to find only the negative things. So you should ask me, then why did I give this book 4 stars, because its fun to read. Paul Theroux, a young writer in the seventies, one day decides to leave his wife and kids in their home in London, go back to his parents house in Massachussets and from there take a train to the Patagonia: the farthest south that he could go. Sounds fun for an adventurous man, but all the time, all the places he keeps bitching about everything: The people on the trains, the people in the cities, how he misses his family, what is he doing there, about the food, about the hotels. Well you name it, but in the middle of all this bitching you can almost find yourself in the forest, in the middle of a civil war, in the top of the mountain, meeting Borges, every day completely different from the other.Paul Theroux can be real obnoxious, but he sure can write.