The Old Patagonian Express

Soon after publication of his now-classic work of railway travel, The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux conceived the idea of a trip entirely by rail, so far as possible, from his home in Medford, Massachusetts to Esquel, Argentina -- the point farthest south the rail system could carry him. 

The result of this adventure -- and adventure it was -- was The Old Patagonian Express, published in 1979.  Criticisms of the book have been many and varied -- the trip was contrived, Theroux just wanted something to write about, he hated everything he saw, he hated everyone he talked to, it was all about him, it was all about his personal dislike of the countries and scenery. 

I understand the criticisms -- Theroux isn't to everyone's taste in travel writing -- but I think they misunderstand what Theroux was attempting. 

The book begins right at the beginning -- on a cold, February day, Theroux takes a commuter train from Medford to Boston's South Station.  He then takes the Lake Shore Limited (still running) to Chicago and the Lone Star (now defunct) to Laredo, Texas.  (He must have transferred to the (now defunct) Inter-American at San Antonio, although he does not mention that change of trains.)   He discusses people and places along the American railways with the same careful scrutiny and occasionally caustic criticism that he was to bring to his experiences south of the border.

As Theroux makes clear, he found the quality of trains -- in general -- to decline steadily from Amtrak's service, to that of the still generally acceptable Aztec Eagle (now defunct) from Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City,  to the discomforts and horrors of nameless trains whose horrors increased the farther south he rode -- with no real relief in sight until he crossed into the promised land of Argentina. 

From Mexico City he traveled to Veracruz on the Gulf coast, and then through Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, arriving at Argentina's Buenos Aires.  After a short stay in Buenos Aires, he took a final, tiring ride south into Patagonia to the end of the line at Esquel.

This book is not a travel guide for a fun-filled frolic in Latin America.  Theroux wanted to find out how possible it would be -- and what it would be like -- to extend a normal commute ride into Boston as far south as he could go.  Comfort wasn't a consideration.  "The train held only the very poor -- everyone else had taken the bus."  In a sense, it was a stunt -- not a suggestion for vacation travel.  He points out on a number of occasions that tourists were visiting some of the same areas he did, but far more enjoyably and easily.  He didn't think much of those tourists, and the superficiality of their observations and experiences, it's true, but that's beside the point. 

But beyond being a stunt, he shared the belief of many travelers -- especially student travelers of that era -- that you learned more about a country by struggling through it than by being guided from one luxury hotel to another.  Theroux didn't stay in luxury hotels.  I think it's open to argument how well he understood the overall conditions in some of the countries he visited, but that wasn't his objective.  He certainly gives us a feeling for what life was like for the great suffering majority of each country, those who did not belong to that country's elite.  I certainly understand more viscerally after reading his book the social and economic distinctions between the lives of the indigenous Indian population and those of the white population of Spanish descent.

I also have a better understanding of the differences in cultures and standards of living -- at least in the late 1970s -- among the countries through which Theroux passed.  Central America isn't a uniform banana plantation.  As Theroux remarks from relatively prosperous Costa Rica:

Outside that station there is a steam locomotive mounted on blocks for travelers to admire. In El Salvador such an engine would be puffing and blowing up the track to Santa Ana; in Guatemala it would have been melted down and made into antipersonnel bombs for the White Hand.

Theroux sounds negative in his description of many countries, as many reviewers have complained.  But those countries -- at least those portions of those countries through which his trains passed -- had (and still have) many problems.  He set out to be a careful observer, and he carefully observes the poverty and the despair of the people he saw.  Similarly, he carefully observes the geography, the weather, the flora and fauna. 

While his reactions to his surroundings were necessarily subjective and dependent on the slow progress many of his trains made through various regions, not to mention his own somewhat gloomy personality, it is difficult to describe one's surrounding in any meaningful way without telling the reader how you yourself react to it -- that a mountain appears beautiful, or threatening, or boring to an observer tells the reader more than his simply describing its height and color and vegetation.  

Theroux is introspective.  At many points of the trip, he asked himself what on earth he was doing.  He was miserable, he didn't like what he was seeing, he didn't like where he'd just been or where he was going next.  And, at times -- the untold secret of all solo travelers -- he was desperately homesick for Medford and for his family.

I'd love to visit every country described by Theroux, but not on the trains he traveled.  Which is just as well, because beyond Chicago probably not one of those trains still runs.  So Theroux's book is a last farewell to a now-dead railway system, a valediction to an experience we ourselves can never duplicate.  But it also is an intimate view of the side -- a sleazy side -- of many nations that the visitor on a group tour will never see, just as entering an American city by rail reveals aspects of that city that the local Chamber of Commerce doesn't brag about.

And -- once in Esquel, his journey completed -- Theroux admits

I had known all along that I had no intention of writing about being in a place -- that took the skill of a miniaturist.  I was more interested in the going and the getting there, in the poetry of departure.

A final note about Chapter 20.  Once he arrived in Buenos Aires, Theroux was introduced to Jorge Luis Borges, one of South America's most prominent authors, already closing in on 80 years of age.  The young Theroux and the elderly Borges hit if off immediately, and had many meetings and meals together.  Theroux's recounting of their conversations stands alone as a fascinating piece of writing, and in itself justifies reading the book.