 |
| The cover of Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads, by Paul Theroux, 2015. The photo shows an old movie theater in Warren, Arkansas, by Steve McCurry. |
 |
| Author Paul Theroux, photo by Steve McCurry. Theroux has written about 50 books. |
 |
| Abandoned gas station on Route 301, Allendale, South Carolina. Photo by Steve McCurry. |
Paul Theroux’s 2015 travel book Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads, marks the first time that
Theroux has written a travel book about the United States. Theroux has some
specific criteria for his book: he stays away from the big cities of the South
and only examines the tiny towns. He finds poverty that reminds him of Africa,
but also friendly people who welcome him in and quickly pour out the stories of
their lives to him.
Deep South has an
interesting structure, as traveling in his own country and journeying on his
own timetable allows Theroux to revisit some of the same people and places in
different seasons. While this sometimes leads to a deeper and richer sense of
place, it also makes for some inevitable repetition.
At the start of the book, Theroux writes, “I was to discover
that America is accessible, but Americans in general are not; they are harder
to know than any people I’ve traveled among.” (p.10) Theroux explains further, writing
that in contrast to other cultures, in America “One is more often greeted with
suspicion, hostility, or indifference. In this way Americans could be more
challenging, more difficult to get acquainted with, more secretive and
suspicious and in many respects more foreign, than any people I have ever met.”
(p.23) I found this to be an interesting observation from a traveler as
seasoned as Theroux. I wonder if American’s attitudes toward a traveler would
change if the traveler is from another country? Is Theroux sometimes greeted
with suspicion because he is an American asking questions about America? An advantage
to being a traveler is that you are an outsider, and therefore get to ask
questions that no one else would.
Deep South fascinated
me because the South is an area of America that I haven’t explored much. When I
was 15, my Dad and I took a road trip from Minneapolis down the Mississippi to
Memphis. Just like the Paul Simon song, we went to see Graceland. We drove into
Mississippi to see Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo, but that’s as far
south as we went. I still haven’t been to Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia,
North Carolina, or South Carolina. I’ve been to Florida, but Florida is really
in its own special category.
As someone who has spent most of my life in Minnesota, I haven’t
encountered that many Southerners. (Why would anyone move from the South to a
place known for cold and snowy winters?) When I spent a semester in Washington,
DC during college, I had a friend in my dorm from Tennessee. As smart as he
was, I remember him once insisting to me that Abraham Lincoln had owned slaves.
(No, he didn’t.) One of my college history classes was “The Civil War,” and we
had one guy in the class who was from the South. He ended up dropping the
class, shortly after attempting to argue that Robert E. Lee was more liberal on
slavery than Abraham Lincoln. I still don’t know many people from the South,
but I'm good friends with a co-worker who grew up in Alabama. She’s reading Deep South now as well, and it’s been
interesting to compare our notes on it.
The urban-rural divide in America really fascinates me, so I
was eager to learn more about the rural areas of the South that Theroux focused
on. Theroux sometimes repeats himself, which is perhaps understandable over the
course of a 440 page book. He constantly reminds the reader that various
Southern towns remind him of ones he’s seen in Africa. This is perhaps
justified as something that all travelers do-we compare things we are seeing
for the first time to things we have seen before. Theroux also wonders many
times why more isn’t being invested in the South-either by the state and
federal governments or by private foundations, like Bill Clinton’s Clinton
Foundation.
Throughout the book we see towns like Greensboro, Alabama
and Allendale, South Carolina that have been devastated by the loss of
manufacturing jobs. An officer in a bank
in Greenville says to Theroux, “Things are worse than they look.” (p.118) I
couldn’t help but wonder if Theroux had traveled through rural towns in the
North, what would he have found? Would he have encountered the same mixture of
poverty and decaying small towns where industry has moved on?
Theroux encounters his share of stereotypical southern
tropes, such as when he attends gun shows. Religion also surfaces as a theme,
as Theroux attends several different churches where the congregation is largely
African American. After quoting a long list of signs that we are in the Last
Days from an evangelical radio show, Theroux sums up his feelings towards those
prognosticators: “Last Days? Don’t they know? These traits are the traits of
all days, every day, everywhere.” (p.305)
Theroux’s writing is sharp and incisive, and people instinctively
trust him, as they open up to him and reveal their thoughts and worries. One of
the most interesting people Theroux runs across is Randall Curb, a book lover who
has now gone blind, living on his own in Greensboro, Alabama. Randall could
surely be a character in a book of Southern fiction, an intelligent man who is
very sensitive and also suffers from depression.
In an interview with the Chicago
Tribune, Theroux said that one of the differences between the North and the
South is how friendly people are: “I have a new policy of always saying hello
in the post office now, and I get very strange reactions. You say hello to a
stranger in the North and they think you're drunk. Or if it's a woman, she
might think you're a stalker. They might think you're insane. Why? Because you
said hello. But in the South, it's a normal interaction. And for me, it's a
very great advantage if people are approachable.”
Steve McCurry’s photos at the back of the book are all
excellent, but they seem almost like something of an afterthought. His photo
for the cover, of an old movie theater in Warren, Arkansas, with the evocative
name of “Pastime,” is just perfect. Pastime, so close to “past time,” bringing
to mind the image of a South in a state of perpetual elegant decay.
Deep South is a fascinating
look at a part of America that doesn’t get much media attention, and although
the book has its flaws, it’s well worth your time.
