Page - 55 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Rhian Waller | Postcolonial Pictures 55 Text and Cover In journalistic writing, there is protection against accusations of mischaracterisation if an arti- cle presents both “bane and antidote” (Quinn, 2018: 219). This concept can be extended to Theroux’s writing. His early works, such as Great Railway Bazaar, contain problematic state- ments that smack of inherited imperialist perspectives and go far beyond the subtler problems of pictorial representation. He exhibits a “pejorative and patronising” (Thompson, 2011: 133) attitude toward many cultures, including the Japanese, described as “flexing their little muscles, kicking their little feet, wagging their little heads” (2008: 336). His brief and dismissive immer- sion in Japanese life consists of attending a quasi-pornographic performance which could not have been better chosen to exemplify the Orientalist view of a culture steeped in “cruelty [and] sensuality” (Said, 1978: 4). In addition, Pakistani faces have an “angular beakiness” (2008: 89), Afghanistan is “barbarous” (87) and, in a Scroogian moment, Theroux muses “it is the simplest fact of Indian life: there are too many Indians” (142). His antipathy to the Japanese continues: in The Happy Isles of Oceania he writes they are: “little bowlegged people who can’t see without glasses” (238), and also that Samoans are “pathetic conformists” (482), “oafish, and lazy”, and their culture “degenerate” (484). Lisle (2006: 83–84) provides a similar catalogue of Theroux’s attitudes. These stereotypical details, which occasionally extend to less educated westerners, seem calculated to impose a hierarchical order with Theroux at the top and his subjects at the bottom. Brevity and sweeping statements are a hallmark of his whistle-stop travel-style; snap observations obscure broader, deeper and more complex realities, in much the same way the snap of a camera lens flattens a scene. Theroux is aware of the power of narrative control. In The Happy Isles (1992), when a chief asks Theroux not to write, he opines, “It was a fact… not a savage superstition. If he told a story, and I wrote it down, the story became mine” (263). Of course, Theroux still publishes (and therefore claims) the story. In these cases, the cover is more benign than the content. However, it must be said, for all this, Theroux’s writing is far more expansive than the covers suggest. It is wide-ranging, traversing mountains, forests, rivers, coasts, urban and rural regions, borders, industrial zones and literary geographies. Unlike the covers, he foregrounds people, and while these vignettes are often critical and his observations limited, exoticised and sometimes eroticised, he is cognizant of human complexity. His work becomes more socially conscious with time, though there is a lingering sense of superiority. Harangued by an inter- viewee for his lateness, in Deep South, he is belatedly confronted with his own privileged status. Until then, it “never occurred to me that I would be perceived as entitled […] because I happened to be white” (2015: 85). However, he demonstrates greater respect to his interviewees, and offers some space within the text for his subjects to, as Blanton suggests, “have their say” (2002: 29), even if, as the shaper and selector of what is signified, he retains a high degree of authorial control over his subjects. Cultural proximity may play a part in this; however, the increased sensitivity extends to his later travels in Central America. He attempts, falteringly, to participate, spending extended periods of time in one location, learning Mexican Spanish, and making efforts to understand and contextualise. In his discussion of the contentious USA/ Mexican borderlands, Theroux discusses the neo-colonial tendencies of Mexico’s larger neigh- bour. He is aware he is “the intruder” (2019: 255). The people who ‘speak’ through him are diverse, representing a spectrum of classes, ethnicities, cultures and experiences, from Zapatista