Declare Books Conducive To Riding the Iron Rooster

Original Title: Riding the Iron Rooster
ISBN: 0804104549 (ISBN13: 9780804104548)
Edition Language: English
Setting: China
Literary Awards: Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (1989)
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Riding the Iron Rooster Paperback | Pages: 464 pages
Rating: 4.02 | 8160 Users | 317 Reviews

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Title:Riding the Iron Rooster
Author:Paul Theroux
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:Deluxe Edition
Pages:Pages: 464 pages
Published:March 28th 1989 by Ivy Books (first published 1988)
Categories:Travel. Nonfiction. Cultural. China. Asia. Autobiography. Memoir. Travelogue. Adventure

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3 Things about Riding the Iron Rooster: (1) land sakes, Paul Theroux does not like human beings! he seem like a very disdainful and contemptuous person in general. that disdain and contempt certainly includes the Chinese - which was an off-putting and distancing thing to experience when reading a travelogue concerning China. at times it really got to me and i found myself disdainful and contemptuous of the author in return. he began to drive me up the wall with - as another reviewer notes - his relentlessly consistent authorial voice. i'd have to remind myself that he also wrote The Mosquito Coast, which besides being my dad's favorite film (scary, that), is all about escaping from the dirty, disgusting world of conformist, unimaginative humans - and the terrible dangers that can arise from that sort of mentality. so it's not like Theroux doesn't have a good read on his own personality and his maybe-not-so-secret desires. and that's kind of admirable. (2) i read this side-by-side with Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk. the contrast between the two was illuminating. on the one hand, Salzman seems like such a decent and sweet guy, someone i'd like to know. his book is very well-intentioned... and, sadly, sorta vapid. it has no teeth and no bite, just a soft babyish gumming of sorts. the writing is also basically uninteresting. on the other hand, Theroux, who is a person i have no interest in knowing, is all bite (and lots of bark too). he lets you know his thoughts and he is fearless when it comes to being percieved as a snotty asshole. he doesn't care and he writes it like he sees it. his writing may be bleak, but it is also very real. this is a man who looks at the ugly side of things and reports on it in prose that is often exceedingly impressive. but still rather ugly. (3) apparently people who regularly sleep in (as i do) have homes that smell "feety". you know, like feet. huh. i did not realize this and i'm not sure if this is true. i think this is another example of Theroux being a dick regarding habits he disdains. oh, Paul.

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Ratings: 4.02 From 8160 Users | 317 Reviews

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China by train is educational but uninspiring. I got the meaning of a hundred of Chinese Ha-Ha! but still wouldn't jump aboard that train. Except for Tibet. The last chapter outweighed the rest of the book.

This isn't a travel book or just a book about China. It's a book about the pain in the ass that travel can be and the annoying, obnoxious, petty and unpleasant people you meet along the way. These are all the things that make the book (and most of his others) interesting. He doesn't leave out the boring parts in between. He's a little bit of a curmudgeon and can sometimes be downright mean. Every road isn't rocky however, and he gives you a real sense of place; you can almost smell it.



Among the first inventions of the Chinese were such things as toilet paper (they were enamored with paper and in fact invented a paper armor consisting of pleats which were impervious to arrows), the spinning wheel, seismograph, steam engine (as early as 600 A.D.) and parachute hang gliders in 550-559 B.C. which they tested by throwing prisoners off towers. This same country, according to Paul Theroux in Riding the Iron Rooster, is driving many animals to extinction. The Chinese like to eat

If Rick Steves is your type of guide than this is not your book. Paul Theroux is the UN-romantic travel guide. Well he isn't really a guide. He is a man on a long vacation through Mongolia, China and Tibet. He is wonderful at telling stories within his book without making the book seem a collections of short stories. He suffers no fools and readily critques aspects of culture that he thinks are worthy of it. He does not hesistate to point out that sub standard education, or housing or even

Theroux is a great American travel writer. This is one of my favorites of the many I have read. The Iron Rooster is a Chinese train that carries him deep into the back waters of China in the mid 80s. His descriptions are both acrid and humane. Go figure.

Theroux in China. As always, sprinkled with his reflections, more than travel.