SOURCE: Sylge, Caroline. “The Wanderer.” New Statesman 129, no. 4476 (6 March 2000): 54–55.

In the following review, Sylge offers a positive assessment of Fresh Air Fiend.

Dipping in and out of Fresh Air Fiend, I am struck by what a damn good life Paul Theroux has had: a life on the road achieved through his own will and energy—not from privilege, but from a desire for adventure. Raised in a large, noisy, talkative family in Massachusetts, Theroux went away often in search of personal space. One day, he went and simply never returned. Such an urge for exile helped mould him into a writer and traveller, and his reflections on his early career provide the best reason to read this new anthology.

Theroux travelled for more than a decade in Africa, Asia and Europe before he wrote his first travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar. An advocate of disconnection and the...