From: paulchem@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Icarus)
Subject: Re: The Books I Just Read [ Paul Theroux etc .. ]
Keywords: n
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 08:47:27 GMT

>  You are?  Why so?   I've read it several times, and am not
>  confident in asserting anything other than that his family is
>  transplanted to a generic Central American country, which is 
>  on the Caribbean coast.  I don't believe that Theroux meant it
>  to be identified as a specific country.
>
>  But I could be wrong, of course.  Please share with us the clues
>  which lead you to this confidence :-)  (I'm not trying to be
>  obnoxious - maybe I just missed something).

1] The book mentions that the ship that left baltimore was headed
   to the honduras and further, the fellow passengers manage to get
   the information out of the father of the family during the voyage.
   Whether or not the author meant this to be taken literally as the
   british honduras is another thing, and I think is beside the point.

2] Correct me here if I am wrong but I thought the book was never meant
   to be a travelogue in any sense. Paul Theroux used the imagery of 
   the Mesquita Coast to convey the remoteness from civilisation and the
   extreme nature of the escape that the antagonist was indulging in.
   IMHO, the story paid too much attention to character developement
   to be seen as a description of travel for its own sake.
   I thought the setting was very effective though in describing the
   reactions of the characters under the various crises that
   assail them. The crises themselves become effective from the story
   telling point of view because of their primal nature: hunger, fear,
   war etc. and are made authentic by the jungles of the Mesquita Coast.

>  
>>BTW, it was a remarkable story.  I began reading on Friday evening and 
>
>  It *is* a good story.  One of the more interesting things (IMHO) is
>  the references to the fundamentalist Christian missionary.  I heard
>  a long story on PBS the other afternoon on the spread of such sects
>  as the Penecostal Church group in Central America.  Apparently it
>  is really taking root, even though that is historically a Catholic
>  area.  The good news is that the indians are altering it to fit their
>  own practices, as they do with every religion which comes their way :-)
>
>John

3] What I found to be much more interesting was the careful developement
   of the character of the antagonist. The author manages to assert through
   almost three fourths of the book that the eccentric genius always does the
   right thing. He is shown to be a real hero for the rest of the family.
   It is only in the last few pages that the extent of his madness is 
   revealed and the reader is made to feel no regret at his death.
 
   I thought the ending was a bit contrived though.
   Especially the crawling on all fours with his eyes gone etc.

   Still a very good story. And a well told one.

4] Stay Cool.

>
>   
>
>--
>John W. Nall              | Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
>nall@mailer.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
>     "Life is only a vision, darkly seen, as through a rear-view mirror."
>	                                    - Pogo or one of his colleagues...

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.    ~ ~                                                                     .
.    o o      signito ergo sum.              paul chemmanoor.                .
.     |    i sign therefore i am.            Computer Science department.    .
.     =                                      Univ. of Colorado, Boulder.     .
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