Pillars of Hercules

The critique of people and nationalities often borders on racism. The greek speakers of southern Italy are an example, these people have been "yacking away in greek" for two thousand years while the others were "speaking" italian.

There are also great gaps unforgivable for someone who is a self professed culture afficionado. There is no mention in this book of the influence that the Arabs had on the region. Seven centuries of Arab ascendancy had a profound effect in the Mediterranean. This is glossed over or explained away in a way that suits the author,so he decrees, for instance, that greek food is really turkish food, when in fact they are both influenced by the Arabs.

In all the book is an often hysterical self centered description of the Mediterranean and its people which really has very little contact with reality. As the contradictions of fact in the book itself show. Greece produces nothing, says the author. A few pages earlier, interviewing an Italian fisheries expert, we read that "Greece of course has hundreds of fish farms" where presumably they produce something.

For those that know the area and its history this book will be a series of inexplicable inaccuracies. For those that do not it will be a very poor guide.


I'd rather have Redmond O'Hanlon as a travelling partner   June 6, 2001
 5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I quickly grew weary of his haughty and disdainful attitude towards nearly every person he encountered.


One man's journey...   January 25, 2001
 33 out of 41 found this review helpful

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES by Paul Theroux is a record of one man's journey around the Mediterranean. The journey took several months and included two separate phases. Theroux tells of days of hiking, traveling by train, sailing a night steamer in a storm-tossed sea, and crusing through the sunny Greek islands on a fancy yacht. He travels light with a change or two of clothes in a backpack. He washes his clothes out by hand in the B&B's and cheap hotels he frequents. He grabs meals here and there.

Along the way he notes the writers who have passed before him, Robert Groves who lived at Deya with his WHITE GODDESS, Lawrence Durrell who knew Gaul well, the ancients including Herodotus. He stops to talk with living writers and reflect on the conditions of the areas he visits.

Theroux has written about his travels in many parts of the world, and though I've read some of his other works, I enjoyed PILLARS the most--probably because I am familiar with some of the places he describes along the coast of the "sea in the midst of the land" and I maintain a connection to the area.

Beginning in Cadiz Spain, founded by the Phoenicians 4,000 years ago on the Atlantic--where the real Pillars of Hercules probably existed--Theroux follows the coast from Spain to Italy to the Dalmatian Coast onto Greece the Levant, Egypt and then across North Africa. He relates his pleasure with one of the modern pillars of Hercules--Gibralter--the huge limestone rock jutting from the coast of Spain into the Straights of Trafalgar. Hundreds of British sailors and marines from the Napoleonic Wars are buried on this little spit of land England bought with blood and Spain wishes to reclaim.

Theroux takes the train up the Spanish coast, catches a ferry past the islands of Mallorca and Corsica and onto the Italian coast. He continues by train along the Italian coast which he notes becomes progressively more sordid as one travels southward toward Naples. On the Dalmatian Coast, he travels by car (taxi) for a while and notes the thriving stolen automobile business. He passes by the pillboxes built for war and abanoned that now serve as housing for the poor Albanians. He comments on Hoxha's ruthless abuse of the Albanian people.

He passes through Thessalonika, an ancient Greek city where hundreds of Jews lived for centuries before the rise of facism in Italy and the creation of the death camps. He leaves the Mediterranean for a while at this point, and when he resumes his journey he is on a yacht to Istanbul--the fabulous port once known to the Romans as Constantinople.

Finally, he is on land again, in the Levant, traveling by bus through god-dominated and god-forsaken areas fought over since the dawn of time. On his long trek through Turkey, Lebanon, and other war-torn terrain he notes a huge Crusader fortress that still stands almost a millenium after it's constuction, Palestinian refugees, Israeli roads paved with U.S. taxpayer money, and the grinding poverty on all sides in spite of oil wealth. His journey through the Muslim dominated countries of Western Asia and Northern Africa are difficult and at times dangerous. He skirts Libya and moves onto Tunisia.

Theroux's writing is reflective, even sardonic at times. He a critical observer, but not untruthful. Most travel books are designed to advertise the countries, places, cities they describe--and therefore by nature dishonest. Theroux is not selling the places he visits. No, this is not a travel book in the strictest sense, but it is a book for the armchair traveler who wants to know the world a little bit better. Given the ancient history of this area and the relevance of this part of the world this is not a book to be missed.


A Misanthrope's Holiday   December 10, 2000
 41 out of 54 found this review helpful

Do NOT read this book if you are looking for a travel guide (unless you are looking for places NOT to go, like the entire Mediterranean region). This is essentially a book by an extremely well-read and erudite misanthrope who pours (not undeserved in many cases) scorn upon most everyone he meets and every place he visits, preferring to reflect on the dead authors and men of genius admired by him who visited or inhabited these places. (One exception: ALMOST dead in the case of Paul Bowles.) His basic approach can be summed up in a statement in Chapter 7 he makes regarding the Sardinians: "Excessive friendliness is perhaps a philistine trait; in a place where no one reads, no one values or understands contemplative solitude, and so they need each other to be friendly and talkative." It doesn't seem to occur to him that a man might be complex enough to be both extremely friendly and extremely contemplative; perhaps because Theroux himself is not, or perhaps because to recognize the possibility would staunch the outpour of his vile, which is really what this book is all about. The book does have its moments. Snide remarks have their place, and his dismissive, irreverent comments on Syrian president Assad and his contempt for the Israeli dependence on American largesse hit the mark like no other writer can. But anyone familiar with Theroux's work can not help but be reminded of his alter ego and the protagonist of his earlier novel, The Mosquito Coast, who ends up destroying himself and his family because of his disdain for non-geniuses....Well, at least Theroux knows what he's about. I can't really think of whom to recommend this book to besides intellectual snobs who are not MERE snobs but truly well-read and who get a rush out of hearing about where famous authors worked and lived, and, of course, what Theroux thinks of it all. Theroux probably gives it all away when he (supposedly) visits the ailing Paul Bowles, and the first thing he records Bowles as saying as our author enters the room is: "Yes, I know your books.".............All is vanity, saith the preacher.