"Dark Star Safari" Paul Theroux

tivoli · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 4:43 pm Post subject: "Dark Star Safari" Paul Theroux

I picked this book up whilst on my honeymoon ( found it on a shelf in a resort). Finally finished it and I thought it would be worth mentioning not so much as a direct treatise on PO but rather illustrative of societies in "powerdown".

Synopsis:

Paul Theroux is a well-regarded travel writer who travels to Africa and embarks on a north to south trek by land ( rail/bus/taxi) from Cairo to Capetown. This trip was to coincide with his 60th birthday and served as a sort of homecoming to the site of earlier Peace Corps work as an educator.

The points I find to be of interest to PO folks would be his descriptions of Sub Saharan Africa and its current devolution of social orders from the time right after the end of the Colonial, the time of Paul's youth, to the present. What I mean is how many of the subsidized colonial institutions ( plantations, road and rail systems) have fallen in to disuse and disrepair, how "cash crop" economics is changing (back) to subsistence farming, and the impact of urbanization of the rural poor. One comment from a bus driver he was with was quite striking. It dealt with how lives are cheap but shoes aren't, because everyone has to walk...

Obviously a travelogue written by a well off Westerner carries some baggage, even if the author didn't, in terms of portrayal and attitude, but I found the depiction of grinding poverty without end or hope to be fairly in line with what I see ( 10-20 years out ) for the future of Man.

Even his time in South Africa ("A 1st world country with a 3rd world mentality" he writes ) is a hint of things worsening.

Again not a PO book perse, but a good travelogue of societes in collapse or at a steady state that is not desirable.

MicroHydro · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Apr 10, 2005 Posts: 1286

Madpaddy · Expert Joined: Jun 25, 2004 Posts: 1989

Ah but South Africa's population has nearly doubled since the end of Apartheid so it is coping very well under the circumstances.
_________________
www.askaboutenergy.com

I_Like_Plants

Theroux is a very enjoyable writer, his Mosquito Coast is a very good book from a powerdown and technology vs sustainability standpoint. I've been meaning to read this one on Africa - and keep in mind Theroux is very wealthy, very comfortable, for things to get through to him, they have to be really bad.

Case in point: He writes The Happy Isles of Oceania and makes most of the place, and at the end Hawaii, sound great. After reading it, I move back there, which was an utter disaster. Hawaii's still a hellhole.

You can always do worse than pick up a Theroux book though, I highly recommend him.