"Travel is everything," he has said, and "My way of travel . . . is more like a way of life." In his travel writings Theroux has described himself as an unrepentant eavesdropper, a self-description also used by one of his most important fictional characters, the diplomat who narrates the stories in
The Consul's File (1977) and
The London Embassy (1982). Whether he is working in the fictional or nonfictional genres, Theroux's vividly rendered international settings are both motivation and telling backdrop for his characters.
Paul Edward Theroux was born on 10 April 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts, a town he subsequently scorned. His father, Albert Eugene Theroux, worked as a salesman for the American Oak Leather Company; his mother, Anne Dittami Theroux, taught at the Hancock School, a grammar school. Both of Theroux's parents came from large families (each had five siblings), and together they produced another full household. In Sunrise with Seamonsters: Travels and Discoveries, 1964-1984 (1985), a pastiche of reminiscences, travel pieces, and literary criticism, Theroux writes, "It was part of my luck to be born into a populous family of nine unexampled wits." The Therouxs remain a closely knit family, with many of them living at least part of each year near each other on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
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