Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads

Ikke hans beste, men svært interessant og tankevekkende - gir et nyansert bilde av sørstatene som ikke bare avslører litt mer av USA, men også hvorfor ting som Trump kan skje.

I enjoyed this one, and it certainly made me realise how little I knew about the South prior to reading it it.

That said, while I'm a fan of Theroux and I appreciate that he was intentionally going for a cyclical, rambling feel here, I felt there was a lot of repetition. Not in terms of characters sharing very similar stories, but literal repetition: a character would be re-introduced a couple of pages after we'd just heard from them, which was a little odd. I also found that some of the ‘interludes' in between the seasons were a bit too much like an extended (perhaps self-indulgent) literary form ‘guitar solo' and they didn't hold my interest as well as the main content.

Still a recommended read, though.

Other travelers might not have noticed it, but Paul Theroux did: Poverty in the deep South here in the USA is reminiscent of poverty in Africa. Sadly, Theroux saw not only economic poverty, but also a poverty of literacy and a poverty of real equality.

Over and over, Theroux asked people in the poorest areas of the south whether any of the American foundations who so often send aid to Africa ever offered help here in the US and over and over the respondents told him no.

It was a troubling read for me, here in a part of the US often grouped with the South.