Deep South

Written by Paul Theroux

Narrated by John McDonough

For the past fifty years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the earth - to China, Africa, the Pacific Islands, Russia, and elsewhere. In Deep South he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home. Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas he writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and above all, the lives of the people he meets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Sep 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781510009387

Paul Theroux

PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

Reviews for Deep South

[untraveller · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Superb book with like observations and reflections. Have read all his travel books and a good chunk of his fiction. This is unlike any other of his travel books in that he repeatedly visits the same region and uses private transportation (his own car) versus public transportation. "To live well is to live unnoticed." - Ovid

[skinglist · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There were some really good bits to this book, but by the end I was struggling and mostly skimming. I just do not enjoy Theroux's writing despite the amazing places he writes about. He's traveled-did you know that? He's been to India and Africa. And he writes books. And if you didn't know that you'll find out-repeatedly-by about the second chapter. I think that's honestly my biggest issue with his writing-it's too much about him and not about what he's seeing. That's a real shame with this title because pieces of the south do peek through and it left me wanting more.I was glad that this book took place over four visits as I really did enjoy many of his repeat visits to some of the same people and places. It helped paint a more complete picture. Reading this, as I did, after nationwide celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights act was especially poignant as you realize how much hasn't changed in 50 years. The culture of the people, their welcoming nature even when he was asking painful questions about the area's past, was a wonderful insight into their culture.I did like his literary interludes, but I think he went a little too heavy on Faulkner and a little short on the other iconic writers of the south. "The poor, having little else, keep their culture intact as part of their vitality, long after the well-off have dumped it"

[Andrew Farnsworth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Theroux travels the back roads of the Deep South meeting everyday people and finds out about the culture, cuisine and history.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[maryreinert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another really interesting and hard to put down travel book by an author I an really say I enjoy reading. Theroux, who has traveled the world, gets in a car and drives through the deep South: Mississippi, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Arkansas. Theroux avoids the big cities and travels to the small towns over a period of several years - going back 2 or 3 times, meeting some of the same people. The stories are overall dismal: poverty, racism, lack of opportunity, lack of education, just general malaise in many. Very little of what Theroux saw or wrote about surprises me as a resident of rural Missouri - not all that far from the Arkansas that he explored. Along with the travelogue, he writes a lot about Southern literature - Faulkner, Agee, and other writers. He never comments as much as he just presents. Good read.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

nonfiction (casual conversations with people in the deep south). parts of this were dull (I am a traveling writer, I follow in the footsteps of other traveling writers, here are some famous writers who wrote about their travels, here is what I think about what they wrote) but there was also a lot of information revealed just by Theroux's driving around, stopping people, and starting conversations. The South is a complex place with complex problems, and these problems need to be attended to before we can expect to ease any of this unrest. That said, there are still a lot of perspectives that aren't necessarily covered here, but it is a more complete picture than you might have otherwise.

[pdcread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After five decades spent exploring and writing about the far-flung and exotic places of the world, Paul Theroux has looked to his home country for inspiration. America has always been a place of contrasts and there is none as stark as the differences between the rest of America and the Deep South. Unlike his other journeys, this is one difference; he can climb in his car and drive there. So he does, leaving his home and traveling to the area over the course of four seasons. Each time he catches up with friends made from the previous visit, dodges twisters, sees new places and experiences fresh things.

The American South has a long history, there are deeply ingrained attitudes and prejudices, widespread poverty, high unemployment and collectively some of the worst performing schools in the country. The contradiction is that he has some of the warmest welcomes, listens to some brilliant music and eats probably too much of the fine local cuisine. He will talk to anyone regardless of colour or status, the mayor, the homeless, authors, church leaders, gun traders and those that stood up to segregation. The stories that he draws out from these people in his return trips vary from the fascinating to the sad, there are happy moments and some frankly horrifying stories.

Theroux tells it as it is, not seeking to judge those he meets, but to let them tell their story in their own words. What comes across is a part of a nation that feels unwanted. The fantastic but equally melancholic photos by Steve McCurry show just how abandoned and derelict some of the towns are, haunted only by ghosts and echoes from the past. It is a poignant book, one that shows just how tough life is there. It is my first book by Paul Theroux, even though I have had a number of his books sitting on my shelves for ages, and it definitely won’t be my last.

[lyzzybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unusual journey for Theroux, who usually travels by public transport, in a line, dropping in on people and communities and getting one impression. Here, he makes four trips South, one in each season, and takes people at their word when they encourage him to come back again to find out more. This gives a real depth and more humanity to his book and, I think, shows him at his best. He says himself that he gets more depth and nuance this way, and also sees the small but important adjustments in communities and people. he also travels easily on good roads, so the usual travel writer’s content of moaning about terrible trains and delays at airports is just not there and he can concentrate on other things.His humanity really comes across; he takes time to get to know people and find out their stories, and stops where he likes, as he has no plan or rail timetable. He’s genuinely angry, for example that the Clinton Foundation and other US charities give so much to other countries but seem to ignore and do nothing to help the horribly poor communities living below the poverty line in their own country (obviously, this attitude can lead to that awful thing where people complain about foreign aid budgets: he stops well short of that and it’s about helping these people as well as, not instead of, the similar communities Theroux has encountered on other continents). He gets behind the “raging politeness” of the South to find a polite and welcoming but wary and multi-levelled community and reception.Theroux has his usual railings about people like Thoreau and at Faulkner and others for making the South look so gothic but ignoring the racism and racial inequality in their line of sight. This is part of an erudite and wide-ranging discussion of travel writers and fiction authors who have taken the South as their subject, though, good and bad. He even meets a few writers, though one hero is very slippery. He’s deeply respectful towards most of the people – definitely the genuinely struggling ones – who he meets, and highly attuned to nuance and awkwardness, even though he can be his usual grumpy and scathing self, for example at a literature festival he attends. He also has the respect to write in detail – but not gratuitously – about racially motivated crimes, and lays out their details and who has written about them as well as tracing the places they occurred. He has an interesting interlude on the “n” word, and, while he is respectful and understanding of the folk at gun shows, he certainly doesn’t support a lot of their claims, and makes that clear. To summarise: he’s human and humane and lives up to what you’d expect of him.The sociology of the book is fascinating, especially his many encounters with small-motel-owning people with the surname Patel. As he memorably says, it’s like a load of Southern Baptists called Smith suddenly run half the paan-selling shacks in India. This is part of “non-linear ethnic niches” where there’s no underlying ethnic reason for a group of people running a lot of similar businesses, for example, it’s not like people from Beijing opening Chinese restaurants in the UK, but is like the proliferation of Greek-owned fish and chip shops. I loved all these investigations and details.A lovely, depressing journey highlighting wonderful small self-help initiatives and interesting characters, as well as grinding, inescapable poverty and institutionalised racism that is shocking but sadly not surprising (but it should be!). He doesn’t give any real answers but then he’s not there to provide them, but to observe. And in his crumpled, older man way, often now mistaken for someone of no real importance, that’s what he does.PS: he expresses a love for the “other” Elizabeth Taylor amidst a list of authors – hooray – although he does describer her as a short story writer.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Theroux is always an enjoyable and informative writer, and this book certainly measures up to the rest of his work. I've travelled a lot in the South, and much of what I saw is captured in this book. There is still terrible poverty in parts of the South, there is still a great deal of prejudice, and there is still an isolation to a lot of the region. But there are also places where the economy and employment are booming, where prejudice is being worn down by education, and where influxes of people from outside the region are reducing isolation. I'm not saying that everything needs to be "fair and balanced": Theroux has a powerful image of the Deep South, and he projects it powerfully. But a little more investigation of some of the positives, I think, would have added depth.

[rmcox38111 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Deep South, or A Southern Man Views Himself Through a Glass, DarklyI enjoyed reading Paul Theroux’s Deep South (2015), a travelogue of the rural southern U. S. Theroux raises several issues in the land where I’ve lived and often traveled, from central South Carolina through Alabama into Mississippi and finally into Arkansas and back. Reading this book evoked layers of memories while it raised questions about race, history, identity, and economy. In the beginning, this book documents a trip to find Black America, the dreaded poverty tourism but in the end, it was something altogether different. I started reading with one eye open for shared experience and one eye hypersensitive to poverty tourism and positive stereotypical messages about strange others. The book opens with a Yankee in search of the real South—not a sanitary Upper Middle-Class South as it appears in glossy magazines or the social media of the White establishment. It closes with a traveler who found what he sought. By the end, the author--and this reader--have changed as the story becomes steeped in reality.Theroux writes about places I’ve been, often multiple times. Having driven and walked some of the roads Theroux drove for this book aroused my curiosity. I drove along the Blues Trail; Theroux drove along the Civil Rights Trail. Both of us peering into history and viewing leftovers standing along once populated roads and shelved in dim and dusty stores. Both of us learning about what it took to be oneself in a xenophobic land.One of the most powerful experiences of this reading is the challenges leveled at race. In Deep South racial constructions are on full display and cemented into every interaction. It is a tribute to the author that he slips behind the masks and hostilities to get deep into the Black South. The experience changes the man. If we were ever to have lunch I’d like to hear his reflections and what he learned about himself. Anyway, the topic of race in the South, reflected to someone raised White in the South, seems curious and cloudy, as if the mirror used is de-silvering with age. For me, this book intensified a commitment to listening with curiosity and compassion to how a history of fear and insecurity informs everyday interactions.Curiously, for a guy so interested in the Black experience in the modern South Theroux has little to say about Black writers. Always he comes back to Faulkner; always the enduring Truth of Faulkner. Faulkner is the filter Theroux sees his subject through. In fairness, much of what Theroux seems to be doing, at least in the beginning, is re-discovering Faulkner, challenging modern incarnations of Southern Gothic tropes and themes. But there are African American authors whose perspective on the frayed threads of history could also inform a curious reader.Theroux spends much of his time in south-central South Carolina, where a few friendships developed. A barber/preacher, a lawyer/preacher, and a blind author, who is one of the only Whites that didn’t seem stereotyped or Gothic. In a way, Theroux has turned the tables on the voyeuristic, sensation-seeking tourists by focusing on the foibles of White Southerners. Most of them found in the numerous gun shows documented throughout this book. Much of this book is a documentation of shoestring community development in neglected and forgotten hometowns. This work deserves celebration with less comparison to the under-developed villages and towns of Central Africa. By the final section of the cycle something has changed in this author—he doesn’t tell us exactly--though he leaves behind the slow dramas of re-developing a forgotten time and place documented in the first 3/4 of the book for the focused struggles of striving farmers in a hostile land.Deep South is a book for readers of travel books and those interested in the rural South, especially for those interested in community development and questions of race and economy. For greatest enjoyment, read with a dictionary and an atlas handy; one might say, “Theroux makes his readers smarter.” At the same time, this book is accessible and provides a mirror for the reader familiar with South. Readers can judge for themselves the clarity of the mirror.

[gerrit5anne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best travel book I have read sofar. It brings the genre to the next level. You cannot learn about a place when you pass by. You have to visit the place several times.

[konastories · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Joy's review: Theroux travels throughout the deep South returning often to places and people over 4 seasons. He focuses on poverty and race and racial relations. For me, Theroux provided many helpful sights and glimpses into lives I will probably never be exposed to. He has a couple of axes to grind (for example, he tells us often that the Clinton Foundation should be focused on the South rather than Africa) and he uses every opportunity to demonstrate is expansive and deep reading of southern literature. Still, I'm much better informed and have more understanding of the South than I did going in.

[zmagic69 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was hesitant to read this book. I really do like the author's Tavel books as well as his fiction, but with his travel books he can be a bit of a stereotypical New England liberal, and I thought this book would be him going down south to point out how backwards all of the gun-loving, poverty stricken rednecks were. This could not be further from what the author describes.I have traveled through some of the areas this book covers but was blind to just how depressed the the people and the economy is for them. I experienced some of the levels of racism, he describes, but again nothing like what he has the opportunity to describe. And the reasons given behind it, from both white and black people alike.He is especially hard on Bill Clinton (good lord what a colossal disaster NAFTA was for this part of the country, not to mention how little he did as governor of one of the poorest states, but home to the small town economy wrecking Goliath Walmart) and the tech billionaires who fall all over themselves to pat themselves on the back for everything they have done in Africa, while completely ignoring America's own version of Africa in the southern part of our country. It is truly appalling how little attention this area receives, how everyone brushes off this disaster by saying oh those people are lazy, gun loving, bible thumping redneck southerners. This book gives the reader an introductory look at the south and race relations without adding opinions from the author but rather hearing it from those who live there an believe it or experience it.The author discusses the power and hold the church has on so many in the south, and the reasons for it. He also has a wonderful statement regarding extremes that are quoted in the Bible and are used to justify racism, and other forms of hatred. I will paraphrase:"The Bible is often a happy hunting ground for an unbalanced mind"I think The same could be said of any religious documents and the extremes followers use, as justification.Overall this is a fantastic book that I did not want to end.

[klockrike · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have read many of Paul Theroux's travel books, and this one 'hits closest to home', despite the fact that I haven't really travelled in the South, and I didn't live in this country during many of the historical episodes he talks and interviews people about. But, this is probably the most ethically challenging book for Americans, at least of the ones I have read so far. He describes, in pain and despair at times, how the South was left behind, ignored, underfunded, and how money that could have helped this region is instead sent abroad. What would the South have looked like with a better funded educational system and living towns? I don't see that Theroux has a particular political agenda, instead he tells it as it is, even when it is unfair, unromantic, depressing, dirty, hopeful, or simply loveable. This book is realistic and sets its mark on you, at least if you are willing to just read, listen, and learn. I will never look at the southern US states like before after reading this book.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although he has also had considerable success as a writer of fiction, Paul Theroux is probably best known as the pre-eminent travel writer of his generation. His first travel book (and to my mind probably still his finest), 'The Great Railway Bazaar', was published more than forty years ago and chronicled his journey from London to Vladivostok and back, travelling by train. Since then he has made a career of writing about his journeys, generally peppered with his now infamous vitriolic barbs about the countries he has visited. He has travelled throughout the Americas, southern Africa and India by train, sailed through Micronesia, walked around the British coast and hitched his way around the Mediterranean, spitting venom much of the way.His latest travelogue sees him back home in his native America, driving through the southern states. In fact, he made four separate journeys, one in each season of the year, detailing the towns he visited and many of the people he met. He meandered by car throughout the southern states, appalled by the intense poverty he observed, though also inspired by the positivity and hope that encountered, often in surroundings of the greatest deprivation. He visits churches, organisations working towards urban regeneration and a surprising number of gun shows, which he described with great brio. Fifty years on from the Civil Rights movement, it is, sadly, clear that bigotry and hatred are far from gone. Theroux meets Klansmen whose opinions are predictably archaic and objectionable. More sadly, he finds similar views among all too many ‘ordinary’ citizens that he comes across at random.Even at his most bitter, Theroux always writes with great clarity, and in this book his customary bile seems to have been diluted. His observation is acute, he applies his extensive powers of description deftly: although the book includes a selection of photographs, Theroux’s account is so clear it renders them almost superfluous. Theroux offers interludes between each season’s journey in the form of brief essays. One offers a detailed account of the taboo racial epithet and how ownership of the word has changed. Another gives an intriguing writer’s view of William Faulkner and his literary legacy – Theroux finds echoes of Faulkner’s world (not always welcome) throughout his journey.Informative and very entertaining.

[emed0s · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Be advised this book is a departure from previous ones by Mr. Theroux. Mainly for being a book derived from experiences from repeated travels to the area in question as well as because of his age.These mean that the people the authors interviews is mostly old people, who offer a glimpse into the segregated era but maybe not the best one on the current atmosphere. Also for showing so much interest on segregation his interviewees are mostly black, hence rendering only a part of the picture to the point of keeping the words "white guilt" on my mind most of the time. Also because of his age there're some reflections throughout the book on finality and the passing of time in general. Other than that his love of books is still alive and well, providing plenty of opinionated comments on the literature from and about the region.

[fizzypops-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A masterpiece. Life changing read. If you have a conscience and a soul, this portrait of life in the south is simply an imperative. The injustice, the prejudice and the hypocrisies of faith should shame every American. Theroux's usual evocative style brings this tragic place to life. I've never been more profoundly affected by a book: Paul Theroux, thank you.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have been a fan of Paul Theroux's travel writing for a long time, particularly enjoying the way his work allows the reader to become so totally immersed in worlds that would otherwise forever remain a mystery. Via his books, I have traveled by train, boats, and automobile to places I am unlikely ever to see with my own eyes. And along the way, I've learned a lot about people, places, and myself.But this time around, Theroux has written about a region of the U.S. that I know quite well, the section of the country that has come to be called the "Deep South." I was born in East Texas (a part of Texas that is far more Deep South than it is Southwestern United States), have extensive family roots in Louisiana, and have taken close, leisurely looks at the states the author travels through in Deep South. As a result, I wish that I could have a long, personal conversation with Theroux because, while I do not think that his assessment of the South is all that far off, I find myself wondering about some of his conclusions and wanting to tell him what he may have missed. Theroux is largely sympathetic to the plight of the Deep South, its generational poverty and hopelessness disturbs him - and it should. He rightly lambasts charities like the one run by the Clintons for sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Africa when the same problems they are focusing on in that continent exist in their own back yards. He is particularly hard on the Clinton foundation because of the way that it ignores the problems so common in Bill Clinton's own home state of Arkansas. As he points out, most agencies working on domestic poverty and education issues have budgets in the hundreds of thousands, not in the hundreds of millions.But at the heart of Deep South, as it should be, is the issue of race relations, and I think that Theroux nailed it here. From my own observation and interaction (as a white man not much younger than the author) in little towns in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, I came to similar conclusions about the white-black relationship in those places. On the surface, based solely on the behavior that outsiders are allowed to see (and what Southerners want to believe about themselves) the relationship between the two races is better today than it ever has been. Scratch that surface a bit though, and there is still much hidden suspicion and animosity on both sides. Prejudice towards, and fear of, each other is very common to both whites and blacks in the region, something that will not be entirely overcome for decades to come, if ever. Such is the nature of human beings.Where I think Theroux is a bit off in his observations is in his impression that the American South is home to few books and readers. This is a point that the author returns to several times, and it is one that, in my estimation, he over-simplifies. While I am not surprised that he found few readers and even fewer filled bookshelves in the homes of the Southerners he came to know, Theroux seems to have forgotten that he was most often spending his time with people who have little discretionary income to spend on luxuries like books - and that they have little ready access to books whether they want them or not. Books, after all, are seldom a high priority item for people living below or near poverty level. In only slightly larger cities than the ones Theroux spent most of his time in, I have managed to have casual, "bookish" conversations with the people I randomly met along the way. I have seen people dining alone and reading a book to kill the the boredom; I have visited tiny libraries and talked books with librarians and patrons; and I have visited many literary landmarks in the region.This is a rather small quibble with Theroux's overall impression of the Deep South. But, as I say, I would love to sit down with him some day over a beer or two so that I could perhaps tell him some of the things that his Southern friends did not tell him during his four seasons of travel among them, things that I think would temper some of the conclusions he has come to.