Paul Theroux - Controversy

Controversy

By including versions of himself, his family, and acquaintances in some of his fiction, Theroux has occasionally disconcerted his readers. "A. Burgess, Slightly Foxed: Fact and Fiction", a story originally published in The New Yorker, describes a dinner at the narrator's home with author Anthony Burgess and a book-hoarding philistine lawyer who nags the narrator for an introduction to the great writer. Burgess arrives drunk and cruelly mocks the lawyer, who introduces himself as a fan. The narrator’s wife is named Anne and she shrewishly refuses to help with the dinner. The magazine later published a letter from Anne Theroux denying that Burgess was ever a guest in her home and expressing admiration for him, having once interviewed the real Burgess for the BBC: “I was dismayed to read in your August 7th edition a story … by Paul Theroux, in which a very unpleasant character with my name said and did things that I have never said or done.” When the story was incorporated into Theroux’s novel, My Other Life (1996), the character of the wife was renamed Alison and reference to her work at the BBC is excised.

Theroux's sometimes caustic portrait of Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul in his memoir Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998) contrasts with his earlier, gushing portrait of the same author in V. S. Naipaul, an Introduction to His Work (1972); events in their relationship over the 26 years between the two books colored the perspective of the later book.

Theroux's novel Jungle Lovers was banned by the ruling government in Malawi for many years. His novel Saint Jack (1972), was banned by the ruling government of Singapore for 30 years. Both were banned because the governing parties thought them to be unacceptably critical of the local government's leader(s) or cast the country in an unfavorable light.

Theroux has been critical of Bono, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie as "mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth." He has also asserted that "the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help—not to mention celebrities and charity concerts—is a destructive and misleading conceit".

Reviewer John Ryle has disagreed with Theroux's opinions on international aid, accusing him of ignorance. "I'm not an aid worker, but I was working in Kenya myself at about the time Theroux passed through...It's not that Theroux is wrong to criticise the empire of aid. In some ways the situation is even worse than he says ... The problem is that Theroux knows next to nothing about it. Aid is a failure, he says, because 'the only people dishing up the food and doling out the money are foreigners. No Africans are involved'. But the majority of employees of international aid agencies in Africa, at almost all levels, are Africans. In some African countries it is international aid agencies that provide the most consistent source of employment ... The problem is not, as Theroux says, that Africans are not involved; it is, if anything, the opposite. How come he didn't notice this? Because, despite his hissy fits about white people in white cars who won't give him lifts, he never actually visits an aid project or the office of an aid organisation."

Theroux has described himself as an "angry and agitated young man" in his early 20s when he felt he had to escape the confines of Massachusetts and a hostile U.S. foreign policy, when he joined the Peace Corps and went to Africa. He has described himself as having "the disposition of a hobbit" and remains optimistic about most of his subject matter. "I need happiness in order to write well...being depressed merely produces depressing literature in my case", he explained.