THE KINGDOM BY THE SEA by Paul Theroux
Houghton Mifflin; 353 pages; $16.95
Modestly ironic accounts of crocodiles evaded, sheep's-ear soup survived, and thieving camel drivers overcome are what a proper travel book requires. The author labors at gaudy landscapes because they make good backdrops for sketches of himself in jaunty poses; the reader tolerates this hamminess because tales of bandits and dysentery make him feel snug in his armchair. Writing such stuff is an honest dodge, and in recent years no one has dodged more expertly than Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar (Europe and Asia) and The Old Patagonian Express...
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