book review
West on Books: A Review of “The Tao of Travel” by Paul Theroux
Reviewed by Richard West Somewhere in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” Will Ladislaw airily posits that some places should remain unknown, “preserved as hunting grounds for the poetic imagination.” I don’t believe Paul Theroux got Will’s message. In the 50 years since he first spread his canvas to the gale, Theroux
Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island
By Richard West "Spain sobs, Italy wails, Germany bellows, Flanders howls, only France sings," goes an 18th-century (surprise) French saying. Yes, but what about the Marshall Islands way beyond God's back in Melanesia out in the South Pacific? After reading Peter Rudiak-Gould's charmingly funny memoir on spending a year
West on Books: David Byrne’s “Bicycle Diaries”
Reviewed by Richard West David Byrne has gone from writing charmingly goofy lyrics while fronting for Talking Heads, the art-school punk band he cofounded in the 1970’s, to a polymathic avant-gardist involved in movie directing, art installations, photography, collaborations with Twyla Tharp, and now a prose stylist with Bicycle
