The Vanishing Point

November 11, 2024
The stories in this uneven collection from novelist and travel writer Theroux (Burma Sahib) offer fleeting glimpses into places near and far from his New England home. In such entries as “Father X,” which finds a disgraced Boston priest ghostwriting sermons for busy clergymen, Theroux writes movingly of characters who are enigmas to their loved ones. More often, however, the stories only scratch the surface. In “Love Doll,” for example, married new father Ray Blanton teaches English at a Honolulu night school, where he becomes infatuated with a Vietnamese student who turns out to be a sex worker. As Theroux pokes fun at a Brazilian student’s dialect (“I waynt to the Honolulu museum and I seen all the feengs they are robbed from odder countries.... These people are feefs!”) the story starts to feel dated. A series of linked entries follow aging writer Andy Parent, a thinly veiled Theroux, who frets about being forgotten in the contemporary literary scene. In one, “The Silent Woman,” Andy employs a researcher, Ollie, for his novel about George Orwell (a reference to Burma Sahib). When Ollie confesses that he’s interested in Andy’s work (though he hasn’t read it) because it was removed from his college curriculum over concerns about “objectifying women,” Andy risibly replies that he was once drawn to Henry Miller for similar reasons. This torpid volume doesn’t reach the heights of Theroux’s best work.