SOURCE: Coster, Graham. “Through the Grinder.” London Review of Books (8 February 1996): 18.

In the following review, Coster contrasts the autobiographical aspects of The Pillars of Hercules with those of Theroux's fiction.

‘Are you making a trip here to write a book?’ inquires the manager as Paul Theroux books into a hotel in Corsica, 136 pages into his latest travel narrative [The Pillars of Hercules]. ‘I don't know,’ replies the author. ‘It was the truth,’ he adds as an aside. ‘It was too early in my Mediterranean journey for me to tell whether it might be a book.’ From this most assiduous of travel-writers it is an unaccustomed admission. Theroux always finishes his journeys; always writes everything up. Completing the course, accomplishing the marathon challenge, is the point of the exercise.

They are always long books—no miniature monographs like Chatwin's on Patagonia or Rushdie's on Nicaragua. Graham Greene spun Journey...