POST's Wallace Stegner Lecture Series Presents Author Paul Theroux
February 23, 2010
Just a few tickets remain for an evening with acclaimed author Paul Theroux at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on March 1 at 8 p.m. Theroux has spent four decades transforming his world travels into more than 47 works of travel writing, novels, short-story collections, criticism and children’s literature. He appears in person locally as the second speaker in the 2010 Wallace Stegner Lecture Series presented by Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST). The lecture, titled “Madly Singing in the Mountains: Traveling in the Natural World,” will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the author and a book-signing reception in the lobby.
Novels are Theroux’s preferred medium, but it is travel writing that has gained him the most distinguished recognition. With the publication of The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train through Asia in 1975, followed by The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas four years later, Theroux established himself as America’s foremost travel writer. Other well-known books include Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train through China; The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean; Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town; and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar, which recreates the epic 25,000-mile journey he first chronicled 30 years earlier.His fiction has been adapted for television and film, including The Mosquito Coast, made into a 1986 movie starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.
Born in 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts, Theroux began his travels in earnest after graduating from the University of Massachusetts in 1963. He taught briefly in Italy before joining the Peace Corps in Malawi and later taught English at Makerere University in Uganda. In 1968, he left to teach at the University of Singapore and, in 1971, gave up teaching to write full time.
POST’s lecture series is named in honor of the late Wallace Stegner—Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Stanford University professor and ardent advocate of the West’s wild lands and open spaces. The lectures explore themes related to land, nature and conservation.
For the past 17 years, Ambassador Bill and Mrs. Jean Lane have generously sponsored POST’s annual lecture series. Support for this event also comes from media sponsor Embarcadero Publishing (Palo Alto Weekly, Mountain View Voice, The Almanac, Palo Alto Online) and lecture sponsor Sand Hill Advisors.
The series concludes on April 26 with green technology venture capitalist Vinod Khosla in conversation with KQED radio host Michael Krasny. Single tickets for Theroux and Khosla are $22 each and can be ordered from the box office at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts at (650) 903-6000 or www.mvcpa.com. All proceeds from the series benefit POST’s land-saving work. For more information, visit POST online at www.openspacetrust.org.