So What do you remember about Burgess himself? What

I remember is that he was someone I was dying to meet.

So in 1970, I was a very young lecturer at the University of Singapore.

But prior to that, I lived in Africa, and one of the thrills of my reading life was reading Enderby.

So, Inside Mr. Enderby.

It wasn't the first Burgess book I read, but it was one that thrilled me to the point that I then got Enderby Outside, and then later, so I had that.

Because he had taught abroad in tropical places.

Were you surprised by what you found in Canada? I

What is Canadian identity?

Canadian identity has a lot to do with the government.

They get a lot from the government, they give a lot to the government, but they're not Until Trump, they never waved the maple leaf flag.

Trump unified Canada and forced Canadians to consider their allegiances, their loyalties.

He was reminding them that they're not Americans.

A lot of Canadians feel, well, we go back and forth.

We've got a lot in common.

So give us a sense of where he came from and the Canada that he inhabited before it was even Canada.

What did you mean by that?

As you know, uh, Canada has a very small population, 42 million.

That's the population of California.

So where is this population of 42 million in a country that is bigger than China? They're on little islands, not actual islands, but island-like places, Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, uh, way up in [laughs] Corner Brook in Newfoundland.

So the archipelago is these little populous islands, and then in between, there's little, of course, there are settlements all over Canada, but that 42 million people is very widely distributed but concentrated in specific places.

The other thing which is amazing to me visually is when you're traveling across the prairie in a car, there's nothing.

It's like a sea, like you're, you're traveling in an ocean.

Yeah

So how did you then find your way to becoming a travel writer?

I lived in Africa for six years.

I lived in Singapore for three years.

That's nine years.

At no point in that nine years did I write travel.

I spent the whole time writing fiction, short stories and novels.

And I was in this very peculiar position of not having anything to write.

So with a subject in mind and both hands on the wheel, Paul crossed the border into Quebec, Canada's largest province, with a language, culture, and identity distinctly all its own.

What were you hoping to understand? Give us a sense of where this book goes, both geographically and beyond.

That's a very good question.

The answer is my ancestor, Antoine Theroux, left France, Gascony actually, in 1693.

Left New Rochelle, landed in Quebec City.

He was 18 years old and became a mariner.

He worked on a river in Gascony.

So you worked on a river.

Is there going to need to be some sort of national reckoning with a sense of self here that actually the country isn't so special after all, and it can fall under the same spells?

Now, can you tell us in brief, what is True North? Are you looking at all of Canada? Are you focusing on specific stories? What is the book about?

The subtitle is On the Road in Canada.

It's a road trip.

About ten years ago, maybe more, No, more like 15 years ago.

I was in Angola in Africa and having a very bad time.

I wrote a book called The Last Train to Zona Verde.

It was kind of a very difficult trip.

And it's such a shame because it's a wonderful country and there's so much to do.

What would you say characterizes in, in, especially, uh, successful travel writing, especially in an age when, when local people are, are, are connected to, to, uh, the World Wide Web and can comment upon and even write their own accounts of place?

I, I would say it's the human element.

It's, if you can find out in a, in a, in a travel book, the human element, the, um, the, the human factor, the, the flesh and blood of a place, anatomizing or, um, or, or describing the people who actually live in a place, what their lives are like, what their stories are like, what their past has been like, then if you can get at that, it, it's who lives in this place, not-- Take Hong Kong.

Uh, uh, I mean, you go to Hong Kong, it's, it's a, it seems like an impenetrable city, very vertical, very tall, very dense.

I mean, it, it, it's one of the most, uh, densely populated, uh, uh, cities on Earth.

[clears throat] So where do you begin? You would begin with the individual.

It's, um, through p-people's stories, the human factor.

What are some other essential nuisances that draw you closer into the travel experience and away from the passive convenience that might be characterized by internet smartphone life in the twenty-first century?

Well, we'll talk some more after the reading, and now here's Paul Theroux reading The Necklace by V.S. Pritchett.

The Necklace"Just checking up on a necklace your wife brought in this afternoon," the older of the two detectives said to me when we got to the police station.

He was sucking a peppermint and was short of breath.

The younger one kept his hands in his raincoat pockets and didn't say a word, and neither did I.

We went into an inner room and sat down.

I was afraid of having a smile too big for my face.

My mouth was watering.

Yeah.