Dark Star Safari
By Paul Theroux, 2003

At the risk of being taken to task by the likes of author and criticism watchdog Heidi Julavits for reviewing a book I was predisposed to dislike, I’ll admit that I expected to hate Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari. Theroux’s is, in my humble opinion, one of the most unlikable voices in contemporary American literature, and his curmudgeonly travel writing never fails to try my patience. Yet, after suffering through his last literary trip, the Mediterranean tour of The Pillars of Hercules, I was willing to set out with him once again, this time to Africa for a land journey from Cairo in the north to Cape Town in the south. My mind was open as wide as I could manage, but unfortunately, I still found Theroux as unpleasant a traveling companion as I always have.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that conflating the author and his art is irresponsible criticism, but in the case of Theroux the two are inseparable. Indeed, one should always be wary of going to Africa with Theroux because the author has a history of pretending to write about the continent when he is, in fact, writing about himself. His 1989 novel My Secret History, which begins in the African bush, is transparently autobiographical, and the later My Other Life revisits the same unimaginative territory even more clumsily as it tells the story of a fictional protagonist named Paul Theroux, whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the author. Theroux is, perhaps, the most narcissistic author in recent memory, and his openly nonfictional travel writing makes no attempt to mask his self-absorption. Therefore, it’s not illegitimate to criticize the guy’s work for being written with an authorial voice that is so overwhelmingly annoying.

As travel writing, Dark Star Safari is far from path-breaking. Theroux looks often for inspiration to the most obvious model of African exploration possible, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Mark Twain’s satirical travelogue, The Innocents Abroad. Ironically, Theroux fails - and does so spectacularly - to incorporate the common trait that made those authors masterful travel writers: their deep and respectful humility. Twain was quick to skewer himself and never lost a certain affection for those others at whom he poked fun, while Conrad said of his cultural observations, “I know nothing, nothing! except from the outside. I have to guess at everything.” Such an admission of ignorance is the key to acceptable societal commentary, and it is undeniably beyond the grasp of Theroux. His motivation for returning to Africa was to compare it to the continent he remembered from decades earlier and set the record straight on the current state of African affairs; we are to presume everything written previously about Africa by other travelers is to be dismissed in light of Theroux’s conclusions.

Theroux’s compulsion to seek out the worst in every culture he encounters tends to lead him down the slippery slope of self-contradiction. The only way to have disdain for everyone you meet is to set yourself apart culturally from every other individual on the planet, to turn yourself into an omniscient Other who is qualified to hand down unrestricted judgment. This is precisely what Theroux attempts to become: a wise and unreproachable traveler who is allowed to be annoyed by all who cross his path because they are not him.

But one has to ask, who is Paul Theroux? He testily and condescendingly defends America and the West from verbal attacks by irate Muslims, but he is openly revolted by harmless American tourists. He engages one moment in postmodern irony, praising Cairo’s garbage-strewn streets as “gorgeous,” then, barely a page later, refers to the same rubbish as “demonic.” He belittles the ignorance of nervous tourists who “[confuse] Israeli and Palestinian violence with much more placid Egypt,” then gleefully recounts tale after tale of violence perpetrated upon tourists by Egyptian extremists. This last contradiction especially illustrates the illogical balancing act necessary for Theroux to construct his desired image: he is smarter than you, and he is braver than you. Ultimately, it is clear that Theroux’s allegiance lies only with himself, and that he can be counted upon to deride anyone who is not Theroux or, at least, terribly Theroux-like (such as the ridiculously egotistical Egyptian Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz).

This is what we can learn about Africa from Dark Star Safari: Africa is dirty and dangerous (Theroux can handle it, but you probably couldn’t); African diplomats are stubborn, backward and greedy, and they refuse to give preferential treatment to Theroux regarding visas; tourists are profoundly irritating to Theroux, who, you shall never forget, is a traveler and not a tourist; many African citizens are backward, greedy, and profoundly irritating to Theroux. These revelations are, surprisingly, quite familiar to anyone who has read Theroux’s accounts of other countries and continents, leaving one to wonder if we do not, indeed, learn much more about Paul Theroux than we do about the ostensible subjects of any of his books.

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