“I launched myself into the unknown… and good things happened.” That’s Paul Theroux, on being Paul Theroux. At Landmark in Forum Mall, the eminent American travel and fiction writer let an admiring crowd of readers and aspiring writers into the mind and the machinations of the traveller and the writer.

The event, organised by Landmark in association with the US Consulate General Chennai, also doubled up as an engaging session of anecdotes from history and modern literature.

Theroux, writer of acclaimed books including The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia, The Old Patagonian Express, The Mosquito Coast and The Kingdom by the Sea, traced the “solitary journey” of the traveler through the interior world of his imagination and the exterior release that he gets from traveling to various destinations.

“It’s important for the travel writer to leave home and family at some point… go far as you can, to places where people don’t ask you questions that you don’t want to answer… good writing also comes out of being isolated,” he said. Moving from Henry Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience to the Walden Pond ice that was exported to Chennai to Wallace Stevens’ poetry to Theroux’s own opposition to censorship of creativity, the event offered enough fodder for a charged post-talk interaction.

 On Bangalore’s rise as a global investment destination, Theroux said the City was quite different from what it was during his last visit.  On his latest visit to the Silicon City, Theroux was not just beating the IT corridors dotted by glass-façades and huge concrete structures. “I was interested in Lalbagh, because I grow bamboo at home,” was the footnote.

 And does he read about destinations before getting there? “I just look at the maps… I’ll go for practical details rather than other people’s impressions.”