What do you think?
Rate this book
Blinding Light
From the New York Times best-selling author Paul Theroux, Blinding Light is a slyly satirical novel of manners and mind expansion. Slade Steadman, a writer who has lost his chops, sets out for the Ecuadorian jungle with his ex-girlfriend in search of inspiration and a rare hallucinogen. The drug, once found, heightens both his powers of perception and his libido, but it also leaves him with an unfortunate side periodic blindness. Unable to resist the insights that enable him to write again, Steadman spends the next year of his life in thrall to his psychedelic muse and his erotic fantasies, with consequences that are both ecstatic and disastrous.
438 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
37 people are currently reading
421 people want to read
About the author
Paul Theroux
239 books2,612 followersPaul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin. Although perhaps best known as a travelogue writer, Theroux has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.
He is the father of Marcel and Louis Theroux, and the brother of Alexander and Peter. Justin Theroux is his nephew.
He is the father of Marcel and Louis Theroux, and the brother of Alexander and Peter. Justin Theroux is his nephew.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
September 25, 2015
This book is THE BOOK is 'crazy-insane'....and I could not --COULD NOT --put it down!!!!
I don't recommend it to many people for 'many' reasons.... (but I'm telling you --I LOVED IT!!!!!)!
I think you know it you want to read this or not!
It does get a little repetitive towards the end --which can drive a reader somewhat 'batty'...
However --I was able to forgive the 'flaws'....because the fantasy of this story -with this couple--
A writer --who lost his touch --(looking for his missing piece)....lol, is just TOO GOOD for words.
I haven't seen other reviews --(I'm guessing not many 5 reviews --but I don't care --I give it 5 stars with JOY) --- I won't ever forget this book!!!
May 3, 2007
Being a fan of his other works, I was eager to read this but it kind of made me want to crawl into an AA meeting wearing dark glasses and a large hat. I think P. Theroux needs to have more sex and actually take some drugs---this was the most lackluster and acrid fiction I've ever read about a subject that's usually pretty juicy. And his primary female character was just like a literary version of a blow up doll, only made from wood. Splinters are not nice.
May 17, 2007
Not so fabulous. Very overboard on the descriptions and the whole blind sightedness theme. i never like to read stories about authors writing books, like watching a chef write recipes. i just want to eat the cake dammit.
And also so much repetition, at one stage i seriously thought i was rereading a section, but allas. and it continued throughout the book. Over and over. just so much redudant repetition. And then again.
Only finished for the sake of it, but really shouldn't have, was no redeeming ending, and book suffered minor injuries from being thrown aside in disgust.
And also so much repetition, at one stage i seriously thought i was rereading a section, but allas. and it continued throughout the book. Over and over. just so much redudant repetition. And then again.
Only finished for the sake of it, but really shouldn't have, was no redeeming ending, and book suffered minor injuries from being thrown aside in disgust.
October 4, 2016
Okay this is my last Paul Theroux novel. I've read two now and that's enough for me to determine this author isn't for me.
In this doorstopper of a novel, we have a thoroughly unlikeable man with a ludicrous name, Slade Steadman, taking us on fantastical and often preposterous ride. Steadman is successful beyond his skill level, the author of a cult classic and a spinoff merchandising deal which has made him wealthy beyond imagining. He lives in the swanky Martha's Vineyard, rubbing shoulders with the snobbish, prosperous and connected elite who seem to find him a charming pet.
His life is pretty darn good, what with all that money, except, goshdarnit, he's the author of only one successful novel, and he wants it to be two successful novels. There is much made of this, lots of adult mental machinations and angst, which a two year-old could have eloquently summarised in a supermarket tantrum.
He has a dubious relationship with the smart and somewhat sneaky (possibly even sinister) Dr Ava. They travel to Ecuador on a drug trip, which is also a "break up trip" - apparently this is something the well-to-do actually do: go on an extravagant overseas vacation to mark the end of their romantic relationship. They really can't stand each other at this point. That's when they're not having riotous sex in their hotel rooms, luridly described in rather ridiculous detail. (as an aside on this point, we learn that Dr Ava is one of the "6% of women who enjoy giving a man oral sex", which is one of the many sex acts vividly described. This is definitely adult reading).
Riiiiight. We can't stand one another, we're breaking up, we're in Ecuador on a drug tour, we're having hot sex. It's all making sense now.
During this trip Steadman partakes of an extra-elusive and secret plant/drug which renders him temporarily blind but with an inner vision. This gives him the idea that he could use this drug to write his second classic cult novel. Yes you heard that right sportsfans! Our man Steadman doesn't want to just right another book he insists on writing another classic. Yep. At this point, the main character is so utterly obnoxious, I'm not sure I care one way or the other what happens to him. But I continue reading. Still many many pages to go (we're not even a third through at this stage) - it could get better.
So that's what he proceeds to do. He procures from another traveller, Manfred, who somehow has obtained a stash of this drug, roughly a year's worth of this blind-yet-vision-making drug, goes home to Martha's Vineyard, drugs himself every day to become blind-yet-visionary, and writes the next American classic masterpiece. Got that?
But he can't do it alone. Oh no. He needs help. And who helps him?
Dr Ava helps him. Instead of Ava leaving him when they return to Martha's Vineyard, she inexplicably stays with him to, er, well, there's no easy way of saying this: transcript his novel and be his sex slave. Yes! Our smart and in-demand doctor gives up her beloved job, decides not to break up with Steadman after all and instead moves into his reclusive estate and transcribes his novel by day and enacts his sexual fantasies at night.
For what reason does she do this? We don't know. She doesn't especially care for him, she doesn't especially like him, she's getting no financial benefit from it. There seems to be virtually nothing in it for her at all. And yet she stays. And stays. For over a year, she stays. On sufferance for much of the time, too. She doesn't appear to especially enjoy either of her weird jobs (and we learn later how much she was "phoning it in" when it came to her nighttime escapades, bringing his sexual fantasies to life in inconceivable detail).
So it's all very strange. During this time we bear witness to even more adult material in the form of sexual escapade after sexual escapade, some bizarre, others simply Penthouse material. But as strange as this all is, it gets stranger.
Even though the drug makes him temporarily blind, he decides it would be a really great idea to draw attention to himself as the Blind Author (BA), and starts attending high profile parties on the Vineyard, where he can be "outed" as the BA. And Marvelled At. He doesn't want to be pitied, he wants to be seen as superior, victorious, courageous, insightful through adversity. He's a giant pain in the ass really. Pompous, grandiose, bombastic, conceited. He's just awful.
There's even a series of pretentious pages where he has an interlude with POTUS (yes, the President of the United States) at one of these high-falutin' Vineyard parties, where he has special insight into the President's soul. He sees his gnawing pain, his terrifying weaknesses, his adolescent internal drivers and petty motivations. He's prescient to the President. Oh it's all too ridiculous. It just makes the author seem delusional. I know it's supposed to be satire, but it's just silly.
So back to the story. Dr Ava knows he's awful and conceited and flaunting a mask. She begs him to put his BA act aside, to be real, to drop the mask. "There are truly sick people I could be helping". But no, that can't be done. He must be SEEN as unseeing. After accepting an invitation to the White House, where he is again Seen as Blind Author and praised/marveled at, he goes on a national book tour.
Where he's superior and obnoxious on a whole new level, belittling escorts who are there to help him from airport to hotel or book signing (some for crimes as small as suggesting the audience asked great questions, therefore reducing his prowess as a speaker of to-be-marveled-at-pronouncements from the podium), slashing his white cane at fellow travelers who have the temerity to try to assist him, and growling at his editor back in New York at every opportunity.
If it kept on in this way, I would have to have thrown the novel out the window. I was at my limit for how much pompous overbearing bullshit I could stand for one protagonist to be showing. But this is about where the book started to get interesting, as a plot twist was on its way. We're well over 300 pages in by now, and it's just getting interesting. You may not have the patience. But I kept going.
It's while on this book tour that he discovers in a blinding flash (forgive me the pun) that he is actually blind - not just drug-induced, temporarily so. The drug is no longer required to make him blind - something has happened (we don't know what) and he just is blind. But it's different to his previous blindness - there's no inner vision, no inner light, no prescience. It's just blackness.
Oh joy! This contemptible insufferable man is actually blind. Hooray! At last, on page 348, we get some satisfaction as readers: this man will be served his just desserts for all that boasting counterfeiting of who he really is and all that lording it over others and all those outrageous superior thoughts, feelings and proclamations over every other human being on the planet (which is roughly how our man Steadman feels about everyone else - they are Less Than).
And bad things do start to happen. He gets mugged while being "helped" across the street - both his expensive handmade watch and his wallet are lifted. Joy! He gets a call from the head of merchandising from his ludicrously successful product line from his first book to say they are getting rejections to their product development ideas. Wonderful! Sadly, that storyline doesn't go anywhere else from there -- I so wanted him to lose the lot, and have his massive income from the merchandising line dry up, leaving him destitute.
Unmasked, unloved, disgraced and impoverished: that's what I hoped was coming.
Alas, Steadman only received a small portion of his just desserts. Sure he was in mental agony at the thought of being totally blind for the rest of his life. But apart from that, he doesn't suffer too much. Ava stays with him, and bizarrely brings in a female lover. We are treated to another series of sex scenes, explicitly drawn in a rather ugly fashion, involving this new lover, with Steadman as sex toy. But Dr Ava fades in and out, we can't quite get a bead on where she's at and who she's being, except that she's emotionally withdrawing from Steadman (which is how the novel started, so she hasn't really traveled a great distance).
The novel ends with a form of redemption. Back to Ecuador we go, with the villain of the piece, Manfred, our German-born, American journalist who pops in and out of the story without really advancing it in any real way, except to give Steadman the jitters from time to time. There's a few short passages describing a toxic yet healing ritual and we're left with some form of loosely drawn, vague hope for Steadman. It's all ambiguous and enigmatic and we are essentially left to draw our own conclusions about what kind of redemption it actually is, and where Steadman is placed to go from here.
This is one of those epic books which could have been rather excellent, but isn't. It makes you wonder if you couldn't do a better job, if this is one of America's best loved and most successful authors of fiction, and if this is one of his best works.
In this doorstopper of a novel, we have a thoroughly unlikeable man with a ludicrous name, Slade Steadman, taking us on fantastical and often preposterous ride. Steadman is successful beyond his skill level, the author of a cult classic and a spinoff merchandising deal which has made him wealthy beyond imagining. He lives in the swanky Martha's Vineyard, rubbing shoulders with the snobbish, prosperous and connected elite who seem to find him a charming pet.
His life is pretty darn good, what with all that money, except, goshdarnit, he's the author of only one successful novel, and he wants it to be two successful novels. There is much made of this, lots of adult mental machinations and angst, which a two year-old could have eloquently summarised in a supermarket tantrum.
He has a dubious relationship with the smart and somewhat sneaky (possibly even sinister) Dr Ava. They travel to Ecuador on a drug trip, which is also a "break up trip" - apparently this is something the well-to-do actually do: go on an extravagant overseas vacation to mark the end of their romantic relationship. They really can't stand each other at this point. That's when they're not having riotous sex in their hotel rooms, luridly described in rather ridiculous detail. (as an aside on this point, we learn that Dr Ava is one of the "6% of women who enjoy giving a man oral sex", which is one of the many sex acts vividly described. This is definitely adult reading).
Riiiiight. We can't stand one another, we're breaking up, we're in Ecuador on a drug tour, we're having hot sex. It's all making sense now.
During this trip Steadman partakes of an extra-elusive and secret plant/drug which renders him temporarily blind but with an inner vision. This gives him the idea that he could use this drug to write his second classic cult novel. Yes you heard that right sportsfans! Our man Steadman doesn't want to just right another book he insists on writing another classic. Yep. At this point, the main character is so utterly obnoxious, I'm not sure I care one way or the other what happens to him. But I continue reading. Still many many pages to go (we're not even a third through at this stage) - it could get better.
So that's what he proceeds to do. He procures from another traveller, Manfred, who somehow has obtained a stash of this drug, roughly a year's worth of this blind-yet-vision-making drug, goes home to Martha's Vineyard, drugs himself every day to become blind-yet-visionary, and writes the next American classic masterpiece. Got that?
But he can't do it alone. Oh no. He needs help. And who helps him?
Dr Ava helps him. Instead of Ava leaving him when they return to Martha's Vineyard, she inexplicably stays with him to, er, well, there's no easy way of saying this: transcript his novel and be his sex slave. Yes! Our smart and in-demand doctor gives up her beloved job, decides not to break up with Steadman after all and instead moves into his reclusive estate and transcribes his novel by day and enacts his sexual fantasies at night.
For what reason does she do this? We don't know. She doesn't especially care for him, she doesn't especially like him, she's getting no financial benefit from it. There seems to be virtually nothing in it for her at all. And yet she stays. And stays. For over a year, she stays. On sufferance for much of the time, too. She doesn't appear to especially enjoy either of her weird jobs (and we learn later how much she was "phoning it in" when it came to her nighttime escapades, bringing his sexual fantasies to life in inconceivable detail).
So it's all very strange. During this time we bear witness to even more adult material in the form of sexual escapade after sexual escapade, some bizarre, others simply Penthouse material. But as strange as this all is, it gets stranger.
Even though the drug makes him temporarily blind, he decides it would be a really great idea to draw attention to himself as the Blind Author (BA), and starts attending high profile parties on the Vineyard, where he can be "outed" as the BA. And Marvelled At. He doesn't want to be pitied, he wants to be seen as superior, victorious, courageous, insightful through adversity. He's a giant pain in the ass really. Pompous, grandiose, bombastic, conceited. He's just awful.
There's even a series of pretentious pages where he has an interlude with POTUS (yes, the President of the United States) at one of these high-falutin' Vineyard parties, where he has special insight into the President's soul. He sees his gnawing pain, his terrifying weaknesses, his adolescent internal drivers and petty motivations. He's prescient to the President. Oh it's all too ridiculous. It just makes the author seem delusional. I know it's supposed to be satire, but it's just silly.
So back to the story. Dr Ava knows he's awful and conceited and flaunting a mask. She begs him to put his BA act aside, to be real, to drop the mask. "There are truly sick people I could be helping". But no, that can't be done. He must be SEEN as unseeing. After accepting an invitation to the White House, where he is again Seen as Blind Author and praised/marveled at, he goes on a national book tour.
Where he's superior and obnoxious on a whole new level, belittling escorts who are there to help him from airport to hotel or book signing (some for crimes as small as suggesting the audience asked great questions, therefore reducing his prowess as a speaker of to-be-marveled-at-pronouncements from the podium), slashing his white cane at fellow travelers who have the temerity to try to assist him, and growling at his editor back in New York at every opportunity.
If it kept on in this way, I would have to have thrown the novel out the window. I was at my limit for how much pompous overbearing bullshit I could stand for one protagonist to be showing. But this is about where the book started to get interesting, as a plot twist was on its way. We're well over 300 pages in by now, and it's just getting interesting. You may not have the patience. But I kept going.
It's while on this book tour that he discovers in a blinding flash (forgive me the pun) that he is actually blind - not just drug-induced, temporarily so. The drug is no longer required to make him blind - something has happened (we don't know what) and he just is blind. But it's different to his previous blindness - there's no inner vision, no inner light, no prescience. It's just blackness.
Oh joy! This contemptible insufferable man is actually blind. Hooray! At last, on page 348, we get some satisfaction as readers: this man will be served his just desserts for all that boasting counterfeiting of who he really is and all that lording it over others and all those outrageous superior thoughts, feelings and proclamations over every other human being on the planet (which is roughly how our man Steadman feels about everyone else - they are Less Than).
And bad things do start to happen. He gets mugged while being "helped" across the street - both his expensive handmade watch and his wallet are lifted. Joy! He gets a call from the head of merchandising from his ludicrously successful product line from his first book to say they are getting rejections to their product development ideas. Wonderful! Sadly, that storyline doesn't go anywhere else from there -- I so wanted him to lose the lot, and have his massive income from the merchandising line dry up, leaving him destitute.
Unmasked, unloved, disgraced and impoverished: that's what I hoped was coming.
Alas, Steadman only received a small portion of his just desserts. Sure he was in mental agony at the thought of being totally blind for the rest of his life. But apart from that, he doesn't suffer too much. Ava stays with him, and bizarrely brings in a female lover. We are treated to another series of sex scenes, explicitly drawn in a rather ugly fashion, involving this new lover, with Steadman as sex toy. But Dr Ava fades in and out, we can't quite get a bead on where she's at and who she's being, except that she's emotionally withdrawing from Steadman (which is how the novel started, so she hasn't really traveled a great distance).
The novel ends with a form of redemption. Back to Ecuador we go, with the villain of the piece, Manfred, our German-born, American journalist who pops in and out of the story without really advancing it in any real way, except to give Steadman the jitters from time to time. There's a few short passages describing a toxic yet healing ritual and we're left with some form of loosely drawn, vague hope for Steadman. It's all ambiguous and enigmatic and we are essentially left to draw our own conclusions about what kind of redemption it actually is, and where Steadman is placed to go from here.
This is one of those epic books which could have been rather excellent, but isn't. It makes you wonder if you couldn't do a better job, if this is one of America's best loved and most successful authors of fiction, and if this is one of his best works.
May 14, 2016
4.5, but I rounded up, because I really think most reviewers are being a little too harsh on this book. It's almost perfect, it's just a tad verbose and repetitive at times. It could use a trim.
First let me say that I read this 10 years ago, seeing it at the library. I often browse books and feel like certain ones on the shelves call to me, like tarot cards, the perfect books for me to read at that time because they mirror my life in some way. This is the only book I ever read by the author. I had just experienced my first hallucinogen at that time in my life, 5 meo-AMT, and it heightened all my senses and gave me insight into what people were thinking, and it lifted my writer's block for a while afterwards. I felt forever changed by the one night I took it. So of course this book appealed to me, a story of a writer who hasn't written anything in years having his creativity revived by a form of datura. I loved this book when I read it.
But then I came on Goodreads 7 years later, and saw all the negative reviews and hatred for this book, so I just marked it as 3 stars, thinking perhaps I remembered it too fondly. I didn't always have good taste In literature when I was young. Let's just say I read a lot of those Oprah book club novels and liked them. Haha.
Anyways, I just finished reading this again, a decade later, and I still love it. I have not outgrown it as I have many other books, in fact, I think my age has given me a richer understanding of it than I had the first time.
This is a classic tale of "careful what you wish for." All the protagonist's dreams come true, before suddenly turning into a nightmare he can't wake from. It's a beautiful story. Yes, very detailed, and sometimes the author even seems to ramble or reiterate things already said. But there are some parts of this story that are just so universally true and plainly stated that I got chills.
Since everyone is saying this author's other books are much better than this one, I can't wait to read more from him!
First let me say that I read this 10 years ago, seeing it at the library. I often browse books and feel like certain ones on the shelves call to me, like tarot cards, the perfect books for me to read at that time because they mirror my life in some way. This is the only book I ever read by the author. I had just experienced my first hallucinogen at that time in my life, 5 meo-AMT, and it heightened all my senses and gave me insight into what people were thinking, and it lifted my writer's block for a while afterwards. I felt forever changed by the one night I took it. So of course this book appealed to me, a story of a writer who hasn't written anything in years having his creativity revived by a form of datura. I loved this book when I read it.
But then I came on Goodreads 7 years later, and saw all the negative reviews and hatred for this book, so I just marked it as 3 stars, thinking perhaps I remembered it too fondly. I didn't always have good taste In literature when I was young. Let's just say I read a lot of those Oprah book club novels and liked them. Haha.
Anyways, I just finished reading this again, a decade later, and I still love it. I have not outgrown it as I have many other books, in fact, I think my age has given me a richer understanding of it than I had the first time.
This is a classic tale of "careful what you wish for." All the protagonist's dreams come true, before suddenly turning into a nightmare he can't wake from. It's a beautiful story. Yes, very detailed, and sometimes the author even seems to ramble or reiterate things already said. But there are some parts of this story that are just so universally true and plainly stated that I got chills.
Since everyone is saying this author's other books are much better than this one, I can't wait to read more from him!
December 29, 2007
This was a great surprise in terms of the quality of the writing and the scope of its ambition. I had carelessly under-valued Theroux and bought it hoping I suppose for a page turner or brief vacation from more serious stuff.
Blinding Light is a fairly savage travelogue that delights in upending the definition of the genre. Theroux cites William Burroughs, infers Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castenada and devotes a useful amount of energy to puncturing the glib fantasies of irretreivable yuppie dot.com whorewmongers. This, however, is not the half of it as Theroux sardonically includes a certain notorious ex-president [as a sort of Nabakovian double], Borges, extravagant sexual hijinx, fraudulent celebrity and all maner of dark minded improvisations on the notion of 'blindness'.
Even after all this I suspect I have failed to fully communicate the pleasures and intensities Theroux is so Seriously intent on developing; Blinding Light is a studied, convulsive reaction against the obvious inevitabilities and responds, somehow, accordingly.
Blinding Light is a fairly savage travelogue that delights in upending the definition of the genre. Theroux cites William Burroughs, infers Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castenada and devotes a useful amount of energy to puncturing the glib fantasies of irretreivable yuppie dot.com whorewmongers. This, however, is not the half of it as Theroux sardonically includes a certain notorious ex-president [as a sort of Nabakovian double], Borges, extravagant sexual hijinx, fraudulent celebrity and all maner of dark minded improvisations on the notion of 'blindness'.
Even after all this I suspect I have failed to fully communicate the pleasures and intensities Theroux is so Seriously intent on developing; Blinding Light is a studied, convulsive reaction against the obvious inevitabilities and responds, somehow, accordingly.
October 29, 2024
The opening scenes of Paul Theroux's Blinding Light in the Amazonian jungle showed great promise which the rest of the book didn't quite deliver. You might say it was about sex, drugs -- but no rock and roll. It's the tale of an unnamed author who, having written one overwhelmingly successful book -- makes a deal with the devil to restore his craft and his waning manhood. That devil is ayahuasca, or datura.
The drug makes him blind, but allows him to see not only the outer form of things, but also much of the inner form. He takes a supply of the drug back to the US with him and writes a novel about sex while revitalizing his relationship to his physician wife, Amy.
He is dogged by one of the group that went to the Ecuadorian jungle, a German named Manfred. Around the time his supply of the drug runs out, the writer becomes truly and medically blind. Manfred finds him; and the two go back to the jungle for an interesting denouement which I will not reveal here.
In the end, Blinding Light is a tale of a tragic flaw, much like the myth of Midas, for whom everything he touched turned to gold. But Theroux shows us that, as in the Midas myth, it's not always a good thing to get what you want.
The drug makes him blind, but allows him to see not only the outer form of things, but also much of the inner form. He takes a supply of the drug back to the US with him and writes a novel about sex while revitalizing his relationship to his physician wife, Amy.
He is dogged by one of the group that went to the Ecuadorian jungle, a German named Manfred. Around the time his supply of the drug runs out, the writer becomes truly and medically blind. Manfred finds him; and the two go back to the jungle for an interesting denouement which I will not reveal here.
In the end, Blinding Light is a tale of a tragic flaw, much like the myth of Midas, for whom everything he touched turned to gold. But Theroux shows us that, as in the Midas myth, it's not always a good thing to get what you want.
June 30, 2012
I've liked Theroux's writing for years - both his travel writing and fiction. Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping up with him for some time. The last book I read by him was "Hotel Honolulu" which I remember being an okay novel. I was a little mixed about "Blinding Light." I loved the premise of the novel with the main character, Slade Steadman (a travel writer like Theroux) traveling to Ecuador in search of a drug to give him some enlightenment so he can write about the experience. He gets more that he bargained for when he takes a different drug which makes him temporarily blind but unlocks his creativity and insight. The middle part of the novel details his effortless writing of his second book which is a tell-all confessional filled with loads of highly erotic experiences (this part of the novel got close to pornography). Then for me, the novel kind of went down hill - describing Steadman's socializing with the elite on Martha's Vineyard, including President Clinton, his book tour, his reliance on the drug and his abuses to others. The long-term effects of the drug seemed to be what he deserved. Overall, I would give this one a mild recommendation - I really did enjoy the first couple of parts of the novel including the beginnings in Ecuador and the erotic descriptions, but I think the book could have been cut by about 100 pages to make the second half of the book move along better.
May 29, 2012
On December 1st I started reading Blinding Light, fascinated by the possibilities for a story about an author dealing with writer’s block and the remnants of 60’s consciousness issues. Ten days later, on a Saturday, I wrote that I had read much of the day’s Boston Globe, and a few more pages of Blinding Light. Three days after that, “I was thinking this morning of posting on GoodReads that I have read over 100 pages of Blinding Light, admire the author’s style and craft with words, yet feel very little motivation to keep reading.” It took nearly another month, and several renewals, to make it to page 137 and return it to the Library, having never found that motivation to finish it. This might be a more helpful “review” if I could tell you exactly what was the problem, but I can’t put my finger on it. I guess I just didn’t want to spend any more time with his cast of characters.
May 16, 2013
I could say that I am a Paul Theroux fan. He is one of the best contemporary novelists I know. However, this book taught me how boring sex can be in a novel, completing missing the magic that may (or may not) occur; is that the point he is trying to make about sexual bondage pleasure? Whatever point he is making about sex, I can only read so many descriptions of genital caresses before I lose interest. Why? Because descriptions of genitalia caresses are necessarily limited, however skillful. (Is that the point?) Anyway, I felt free to skip portions of this book and did not actually lose interest and wanted to know, to the bitter end, Slade's story: a fall from smug arrogance into real feeling (so, he is redeemed). That, to me, was the novel.
August 11, 2015
A fantastic book following the path of the classic concept of Hubris. A modern day Shakespearian tragedy. A man wishes for something, and, to his ultimate dismay, he gets what he wished for. Excellent writing...creative story.
April 9, 2015
This was my first book by the author and I quite enjoyed it. The story of Datura brought me back to my own experience with ayahuasca in the ecuadorian oriente so I might have enjoyed reliving my own memories more than this story itself. The idea of drug induced blindness brought an interesting turn to the story and the Germans that I met in Ecuador really helped me personify Manfred. The book dragged on a bit but I thought it all came together well at the end. It reminded me somewhat of the Stephen King book (authors writing about writers). I think this book satisfied my thirst more than other readers because of the personal connection to Ecuador and I have always dreamed of writing a travel memoir. This served as an example of one way it can be done. I would be inclined to read more by this author.
February 7, 2008
I didn't enjoy this book. Although I like Theroux's writing style and the cut glass quality of his descriptive passages, I found the overall work to be pretentious and self-serving. The characters were uniformly unlikable, and I think that was my biggest problem with the book - there wasn't a single character one could empathise with, let alone feel a sympathy for. I didn't mind the pace or the plot or the 'dirty' subject matter, just simply that I didn't see any justification for it, either character driven or moral. Perhaps I wanted there to be a lesson, a reason, and ultimately a glimmer of redemption. But there was none.
March 19, 2019
I plodded though it. I found the central character intrinsically unlikable, the pseudo-porn unnecessary, the Presidential involvement ridiculous, the Manfred character two-dimensional at best and the ending little better than a middle-schooler's attempt to finish a story. Satirical? I don't know. Hugely disappointing.
September 23, 2023
Half the length might have pulled this tale off
Hey, I like Theroux the travel teller. I've only read three of his fictional works, long ago. The Ecuadorian setting enticed me even though the Goodreads reviews were warning of a mediocre effort. Part one, in the Amazon with unappealing fellow tourists looking for an Ayahuasca high, is typical Theroux...snarly, self-esteem mixed with self-serving rationales and smug resentment of those he observes. The second part with its parallel to Bill Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair. The name dropping of real life literary lions, celebrity snobs, and irritating journalists may be payback by Theroux, or a shorthand way to convey the kinds of chattering classes that both the novel's author and his sometimes alter ego both would be familiar among. But the pace slows, the sex gets the satiated reader weary, and the indulgent self-pity and the relentless scorn wears. There's no sympathetic character, and while this may be realistic, it doesn't make for a page turner. The protagonist meets his comeuppance, but the ending hints at ambiguity, admittedly a nice touch. If Theroux had reduced the pages by at least half, it might have worked out better. The uneasy sense of Theroux pouring both his scorn of others and his pleas for self-pity into a self-referent figure may have been inspired by Philip Roth (who gets a cameo), but in my opinion, the conceit...in more ways than one...gets tiresome after repetition of the central figure's off-putting caricature. Still, the satire of how his first book leads to a sellout of products, spin-offs, and conspicuous consumption could have been funny, and a better narrative.
Hey, I like Theroux the travel teller. I've only read three of his fictional works, long ago. The Ecuadorian setting enticed me even though the Goodreads reviews were warning of a mediocre effort. Part one, in the Amazon with unappealing fellow tourists looking for an Ayahuasca high, is typical Theroux...snarly, self-esteem mixed with self-serving rationales and smug resentment of those he observes. The second part with its parallel to Bill Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair. The name dropping of real life literary lions, celebrity snobs, and irritating journalists may be payback by Theroux, or a shorthand way to convey the kinds of chattering classes that both the novel's author and his sometimes alter ego both would be familiar among. But the pace slows, the sex gets the satiated reader weary, and the indulgent self-pity and the relentless scorn wears. There's no sympathetic character, and while this may be realistic, it doesn't make for a page turner. The protagonist meets his comeuppance, but the ending hints at ambiguity, admittedly a nice touch. If Theroux had reduced the pages by at least half, it might have worked out better. The uneasy sense of Theroux pouring both his scorn of others and his pleas for self-pity into a self-referent figure may have been inspired by Philip Roth (who gets a cameo), but in my opinion, the conceit...in more ways than one...gets tiresome after repetition of the central figure's off-putting caricature. Still, the satire of how his first book leads to a sellout of products, spin-offs, and conspicuous consumption could have been funny, and a better narrative.
December 16, 2019
(Short note before the review: As a man who considers 'The Mosquito Coast' to be one of his favourite novels, I was immediately intrigued to read 'Blinding Light' by the same author some time ago. After finishing reading it for myself, I was amazed to find all of these negative reviews here on Goodreads and wanted to write a review to share my positive response to this novel).
The famous British neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks, quite fittingly described 'Blinding Light' in his own review as being "as rich and dense as the jungle itself". It is a fitting description of this novel because Sacks was comparing the relationship between fiction and reality in 'Blinding Light' to a vast wilderness. 'Blinding Light' is stunning achievement in fiction as it explores the foundation of writing and life itself, such as what makes fiction metafiction, reality artifice and truth irony.
The protagonist of this novel, Slade Steadman, is best known for his hugely profitable and best-selling book, 'Trespassing'. It is a piece of travel writing which had become a phenomenon spawning a T.V. series, and a trademark clothing line to mention but a few examples. In 'Trespassing', Steadman describes all of the risks when crossing borders from one country to another without a passport or proper documentation (hence its popularity). However, he had failed to follow up on its success with another book for a number of years so he plans to go on a drug tour in Ecuador which he hopes will inspire and motivate him, a tour which he hopes will also fix his troubled and complex relationship with his 'ex-girlfriend', Ava Katsina. That, in short, is the basic concept of 'Blinding Light' as a novel: venturing into the unknown and going where you don't belong ("trespassing"), all of which have a series of dark and chilling consequences to its protagonist.
Before long, Steadman experiences the 'drug' (datura) for the first time which causes a hallucinogenic trance and being 'blinded' for a considerable amount of time. Steadman considers this to be a moment of intense revelation and illumination. This is a pivotal shift in the novel as this concept of blindness is explored from varying perspectives until the final chapter. However, at first, Steadman considers his blindness as a gift to see the world unlike nobody else, which is so crucial for a writer like himself. Even this comparison between blindness and revelation, inherently contradictory, turns out to be really significant later on:
"He was blind in a powerful way, in the thrall of a luminosity he had never known before, so that blindness was not the shadowy obstacle of something dark but rather a hot light of revelation, like a lava flow within him, and he was euphoric."
To continue summarising the story beyond what is already written here would make this review too long to be interesting to the general reader. What is important to mention is that Steadman acquires more of the drug to help him finish his second novel and this gradually changes his perception of blindness after making him arrogant in his belief he is "illuminated" more than others. And this is one of more powerful instances of irony in the book:
"He had never been blinder, his world never blacker. The quality of the darkness was complete, like a curtain of utter ignorance, a mangy blanket of evil, like the black drapes of tyranny. This persistent night bore no relation to the peculiar illumination he had known before... he was treated like a trespasser."
Besides the pure metafictional and ironical nature of this novel, 'Blinding Light' is also a compelling narration of one man's descent into an alien world in which he feels like a trespasser. It is so obviously fascinating to the literary student or critic but also hopefully to the general reader as it makes one question basic ideas which never occurred to us before, the most obvious ones being: what is real and what is artifice, what is the ostensible truth and what is a facade? It is the story of an illuminated man who is blinded, a blinded man who is illuminated.
'Blinding Light' must have been a novel which was very personal and very deep for its author, Paul Theroux. One might also say that is is also auto-biographical (although Steadman hates biographies) as both Theroux and Steadman are travel writers lost in a strange fictional world which knows no boundaries.
The famous British neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks, quite fittingly described 'Blinding Light' in his own review as being "as rich and dense as the jungle itself". It is a fitting description of this novel because Sacks was comparing the relationship between fiction and reality in 'Blinding Light' to a vast wilderness. 'Blinding Light' is stunning achievement in fiction as it explores the foundation of writing and life itself, such as what makes fiction metafiction, reality artifice and truth irony.
The protagonist of this novel, Slade Steadman, is best known for his hugely profitable and best-selling book, 'Trespassing'. It is a piece of travel writing which had become a phenomenon spawning a T.V. series, and a trademark clothing line to mention but a few examples. In 'Trespassing', Steadman describes all of the risks when crossing borders from one country to another without a passport or proper documentation (hence its popularity). However, he had failed to follow up on its success with another book for a number of years so he plans to go on a drug tour in Ecuador which he hopes will inspire and motivate him, a tour which he hopes will also fix his troubled and complex relationship with his 'ex-girlfriend', Ava Katsina. That, in short, is the basic concept of 'Blinding Light' as a novel: venturing into the unknown and going where you don't belong ("trespassing"), all of which have a series of dark and chilling consequences to its protagonist.
Before long, Steadman experiences the 'drug' (datura) for the first time which causes a hallucinogenic trance and being 'blinded' for a considerable amount of time. Steadman considers this to be a moment of intense revelation and illumination. This is a pivotal shift in the novel as this concept of blindness is explored from varying perspectives until the final chapter. However, at first, Steadman considers his blindness as a gift to see the world unlike nobody else, which is so crucial for a writer like himself. Even this comparison between blindness and revelation, inherently contradictory, turns out to be really significant later on:
"He was blind in a powerful way, in the thrall of a luminosity he had never known before, so that blindness was not the shadowy obstacle of something dark but rather a hot light of revelation, like a lava flow within him, and he was euphoric."
To continue summarising the story beyond what is already written here would make this review too long to be interesting to the general reader. What is important to mention is that Steadman acquires more of the drug to help him finish his second novel and this gradually changes his perception of blindness after making him arrogant in his belief he is "illuminated" more than others. And this is one of more powerful instances of irony in the book:
"He had never been blinder, his world never blacker. The quality of the darkness was complete, like a curtain of utter ignorance, a mangy blanket of evil, like the black drapes of tyranny. This persistent night bore no relation to the peculiar illumination he had known before... he was treated like a trespasser."
Besides the pure metafictional and ironical nature of this novel, 'Blinding Light' is also a compelling narration of one man's descent into an alien world in which he feels like a trespasser. It is so obviously fascinating to the literary student or critic but also hopefully to the general reader as it makes one question basic ideas which never occurred to us before, the most obvious ones being: what is real and what is artifice, what is the ostensible truth and what is a facade? It is the story of an illuminated man who is blinded, a blinded man who is illuminated.
'Blinding Light' must have been a novel which was very personal and very deep for its author, Paul Theroux. One might also say that is is also auto-biographical (although Steadman hates biographies) as both Theroux and Steadman are travel writers lost in a strange fictional world which knows no boundaries.
August 16, 2020
This novel, set in the late 1990s, may essentially be about one’s control over one’s body and therefore one’s life. Author Slade Steadman, rich beyond all measure from sales of his first book written twenty years earlier, has nonetheless failed to write another book in two decades. He decides to take a drug tour in Ecuador, and his live-in girlfriend, Ava, a physician, accompanies him. According to both parties, having reached a certain impasse concerning moving their relationship forward, they consider it their “break-up trip.”
Part One of six may provide the most unfamiliar background and yet a most exciting one to most Americans. Theroux spares nothing in describing the local color, and readers live vicariously through the danger he evinces. The couple are part of a tour that includes five other people. Part of the deal, under certain precautions, is to experience natural highs found among tropical flora. In this section, Theroux paints a picture of the True Ugly American by bringing alive four beauts (one born a Brit) whose snobbery and arrogance and ethnocentricity are alarmingly racist. As stuffy as the two couples are, however, they are game for trying one drug, in which they all get sick and vomit over themselves. Steadman, after a certain wrangling on price, dickers with yet another member of the group to purchase “datura,” yet another drug, one that “blinds” the user yet opens up yet other avenues of seeing. To demonstrate its strength, Steadman stares blindly at the group and reveals each one of their peccadilloes including one man’s shady corporate dealings and the fact that one husband is having an affair with the other man’s wife and has been for a long time. The fifth man—a German journalist working in America, who ultimately sells Steadman his stash of datura—Steadman reveals to be the son of a Nazi and intuits the man’s deep shame over the fact. If you believe at the time that this man will return to haunt Steadman, you wouldn’t be wrong.
In Book Two, Steadman and Ava return to their home in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, to renew their love life and for Steadman to write a brand new book. Day after day, Steadman partakes of the drug datura and dictates his new book (essentially a fictionalization of their renewed sex life) called The Book of Revelation to Ava who continues her leave of absence from the hospital where she is employed. Steadman becomes so comfortable with his blindness (always leaving him when the drug wears off) that he attends a local party where POTUS (Clinton and wife) show up as guests of honor. Ava has begged him not to take the drug before attending but he insists. Theroux seems to be at his best in creating these public personages we think we know so well through public media. President Clinton hones in on Steadman, keeps touching him, unctuously patronizes him, as do many of the hangers-on including many horny women. Steadman feels, intuits that Clinton is harboring a deep secret, which the astute reader realizes will be the unveiling of his relationship with a young (yet of legal age) intern.
The remaining four parts of the book take the reader through Steadman’s experiences as he goes on tour for his explosive new book, a visit to the White House, a comeuppance as he runs out of the drug and a rather miraculous (though terrible) consequence that results. The moral seems to be: Be careful what you wish for while taking a drug from the jungles of Ecuador, one you know nothing about. You may get exactly that and more.
Part One of six may provide the most unfamiliar background and yet a most exciting one to most Americans. Theroux spares nothing in describing the local color, and readers live vicariously through the danger he evinces. The couple are part of a tour that includes five other people. Part of the deal, under certain precautions, is to experience natural highs found among tropical flora. In this section, Theroux paints a picture of the True Ugly American by bringing alive four beauts (one born a Brit) whose snobbery and arrogance and ethnocentricity are alarmingly racist. As stuffy as the two couples are, however, they are game for trying one drug, in which they all get sick and vomit over themselves. Steadman, after a certain wrangling on price, dickers with yet another member of the group to purchase “datura,” yet another drug, one that “blinds” the user yet opens up yet other avenues of seeing. To demonstrate its strength, Steadman stares blindly at the group and reveals each one of their peccadilloes including one man’s shady corporate dealings and the fact that one husband is having an affair with the other man’s wife and has been for a long time. The fifth man—a German journalist working in America, who ultimately sells Steadman his stash of datura—Steadman reveals to be the son of a Nazi and intuits the man’s deep shame over the fact. If you believe at the time that this man will return to haunt Steadman, you wouldn’t be wrong.
In Book Two, Steadman and Ava return to their home in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, to renew their love life and for Steadman to write a brand new book. Day after day, Steadman partakes of the drug datura and dictates his new book (essentially a fictionalization of their renewed sex life) called The Book of Revelation to Ava who continues her leave of absence from the hospital where she is employed. Steadman becomes so comfortable with his blindness (always leaving him when the drug wears off) that he attends a local party where POTUS (Clinton and wife) show up as guests of honor. Ava has begged him not to take the drug before attending but he insists. Theroux seems to be at his best in creating these public personages we think we know so well through public media. President Clinton hones in on Steadman, keeps touching him, unctuously patronizes him, as do many of the hangers-on including many horny women. Steadman feels, intuits that Clinton is harboring a deep secret, which the astute reader realizes will be the unveiling of his relationship with a young (yet of legal age) intern.
The remaining four parts of the book take the reader through Steadman’s experiences as he goes on tour for his explosive new book, a visit to the White House, a comeuppance as he runs out of the drug and a rather miraculous (though terrible) consequence that results. The moral seems to be: Be careful what you wish for while taking a drug from the jungles of Ecuador, one you know nothing about. You may get exactly that and more.
January 2, 2013
"Blinding Light" is about the best book that can come out of a self-absorbed writer's life. A novel about a well-known travel writer writing a novel can only be compared to the book's author, a well-known travel writer who writes novels. The mirrors facing each other can have blinding lights at times.
The other author who haunts "Blinding Light" is V.S. Naipaul, a one-time friend of Theroux's. Theroux wrote a coruscating book, Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents, which further documented what an asshole a good writer can be. And the main character in "Blinding Light" is a narcissistic (blinding mirrors of Narcissus?), selfish creep.
I am all for books about narcissistic and selfish creeps. At some point we were all narcissistic and selfish creeps - if not in later life than when we were about five years old. But it takes a fine technique to convince the reader to invest 440 pages in reading about him. Yes, he does meet his comeuppance for his Promethean theft, but there are long stretches where Prometheus is enjoying his fire a little too much not to get burnt. And all the sex? What was that all about? At least Theroux writes sex scenes better than Tom Wolfe, but then, Mother Theresa can too.
Near the end I was thinking that this was book sewn together out of the experiences Theroux has had in the job as a travel writer/novelist. The actual traveling unfortunately ends and he has to write and deal with the horrible people who have read his books. Tip: Do not approach Theroux at a reading!
The other author who haunts "Blinding Light" is V.S. Naipaul, a one-time friend of Theroux's. Theroux wrote a coruscating book, Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents, which further documented what an asshole a good writer can be. And the main character in "Blinding Light" is a narcissistic (blinding mirrors of Narcissus?), selfish creep.
I am all for books about narcissistic and selfish creeps. At some point we were all narcissistic and selfish creeps - if not in later life than when we were about five years old. But it takes a fine technique to convince the reader to invest 440 pages in reading about him. Yes, he does meet his comeuppance for his Promethean theft, but there are long stretches where Prometheus is enjoying his fire a little too much not to get burnt. And all the sex? What was that all about? At least Theroux writes sex scenes better than Tom Wolfe, but then, Mother Theresa can too.
Near the end I was thinking that this was book sewn together out of the experiences Theroux has had in the job as a travel writer/novelist. The actual traveling unfortunately ends and he has to write and deal with the horrible people who have read his books. Tip: Do not approach Theroux at a reading!
July 27, 2010
I like paul Theroux. His travel books have sustained and goaded me over the years. This novel has a bright premise and parts of it are very entertaining. But what is this lust for lust? Can it be impossible to sell a book without wide eyed orgasmic sexuality on every page? I'm not one to be prudish, on the contrary, I think sexuality drives the history of mankind, but, when it becomes ever more tantalizing, ever more over the top, ever more impossible to believe then it's just gone too far. This is a situation where sexuality is essential to the story but takes off with the writer's best interests and leads him into dark, dangerous and unnecessary alleyways.
All in all I recommend the book - if only for the craft of Theroux's writing and the novelty of the premise. but be ready to become desensitized to ever more tantalizing, ever more amazing, ever more unbelievable (ever more unnecessary) s.e.x.
"Memory helped, desperation helped, blindness did the rest. he could see with his teeth, his tongue, his lips, his face, his whole body. He knew later that the two must have been making love - an unmistakable vibrato, the specific sounds irregular, like a lapse from ordinary life. Not like sex between a man and a woman, a pattern of slaps he knew, a familiar rhythm, a top and bottom, an act writhing echoic, but instead a tussle of equals, the percussive kisses, the whappity whap of two women: a sudden sapphic sandwich with no filling."
"People might call themselves perfectionists, but at the bottom of pedantry is an abiding laziness. Raise enough objections and you never have to accomplish anything."
All in all I recommend the book - if only for the craft of Theroux's writing and the novelty of the premise. but be ready to become desensitized to ever more tantalizing, ever more amazing, ever more unbelievable (ever more unnecessary) s.e.x.
"Memory helped, desperation helped, blindness did the rest. he could see with his teeth, his tongue, his lips, his face, his whole body. He knew later that the two must have been making love - an unmistakable vibrato, the specific sounds irregular, like a lapse from ordinary life. Not like sex between a man and a woman, a pattern of slaps he knew, a familiar rhythm, a top and bottom, an act writhing echoic, but instead a tussle of equals, the percussive kisses, the whappity whap of two women: a sudden sapphic sandwich with no filling."
"People might call themselves perfectionists, but at the bottom of pedantry is an abiding laziness. Raise enough objections and you never have to accomplish anything."
April 13, 2023
I will read Paul Theroux even if he scribbles on paper; there will be a sharp prose in it.
Slade Steadman, a one-book marvel travel writer, heads to the jungles of Ecuador in search of a story, for a spark that lets him put pen to paper again in the hope that he produces a second book. You start reading it as an adventure plot - the humidity, heat, village, blindfolds, the haughty "others" on that same journey. The drug tour separates the meek from the brave. Slade gets the best out the drug tour, a blind "insight" from the datura swigs.
Over pages and pages of laborious conceitedness and smugness and repeated sexual romps, you start to think of Slade as one of the lowest species of humans and malevolently wish for him to meet a fitting end. The plot is agonizingly dull in the middle parts of the book but only a mastermind like Paul Theroux could construct a prose that would still keep you at it.
There is retribution in the fourth part of the book, where you will develop schadenfreude and smile your way through to the end.
The end is lurid and phantasmagoric. Did Slade get cured? Did Slade die? Or Was he dreaming?
Slade Steadman, a one-book marvel travel writer, heads to the jungles of Ecuador in search of a story, for a spark that lets him put pen to paper again in the hope that he produces a second book. You start reading it as an adventure plot - the humidity, heat, village, blindfolds, the haughty "others" on that same journey. The drug tour separates the meek from the brave. Slade gets the best out the drug tour, a blind "insight" from the datura swigs.
Over pages and pages of laborious conceitedness and smugness and repeated sexual romps, you start to think of Slade as one of the lowest species of humans and malevolently wish for him to meet a fitting end. The plot is agonizingly dull in the middle parts of the book but only a mastermind like Paul Theroux could construct a prose that would still keep you at it.
There is retribution in the fourth part of the book, where you will develop schadenfreude and smile your way through to the end.
The end is lurid and phantasmagoric. Did Slade get cured? Did Slade die? Or Was he dreaming?
Read
February 5, 2009Theroux's 26 books should eliminate him as the basis for Blinding Light's blocked protagonist Slade Steadman, yet critics still compare the protagonist and his creator. Theroux and Steadman do share an eye for withering details, an intellectual interest in the nature of sexuality, fame, and the act of creation, and perhaps a taste for self-absorbed prose. Reviewers describe the novel as a Faustian fable and an exploration of the limits of sensuality. Yet the San Francisco Chronicle sees "no overriding moral lesson" at all. Whether 400-plus pages is too many for a modern novel, the book feels too big given its spindly plot. Many critics also quail at the book's explicit sexuality, which verges on the pornographic. It's a jungle of a book, one that tests patience as it enlightens, without a miracle drug in sight.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
March 12, 2018
I read Theroux's "Mosquito Coast", "The Old Patagonian Express', and others decades ago, so when I saw this Theroux book on a discounted remainder shelf, it seemed like a good buy. It wasn't. The story is about a one-hit wonder author, who finds a drug in the Ecuadorian jungles that blinds him but enables him to write another book. If this were a meditation on seeing and writing or had some interesting plot twist, like having his lover be the real author of the new book, perhaps it would have been good. There was no depth however, to the tale. Along the way, Theroux makes gratuitous, nasty remarks about Ecuador, Martha's Vineyard, and Monica Lewinsky. Further, it was larded with sex scenes that I probably would have loved 50 years ago in my teens and twenties, but not now. This book makes me not want to reread Theroux's previous books, for fear that my positive view of him as an author will be shattered.
December 19, 2015
A work of fiction by one of my favorite travel authors (and writers in general), about a washed-up writer trying to write a new story to avoid the fate of being a one work wonder. Quite sexual at times, which I was not expecting. This book includes many of Theroux's musings on the value of travel, travel as a commodity that people collect (and how even those trying to be "real travelers" often fall into this trap), exploring the inner world vs. the outer world, and even a little of what it is to live a good life.
June 3, 2013
It seems that in general this book is one of the most disliked of his books to most people, definitely not to me though. His journeys into the amazon and then into his own mind mirror my experience of Ayahuasca but puts it into a self-analytical perspective which from the point of use and experimentation of psychedelics is quite engaging to read.
May 21, 2008
why oh why can't we give half star reviews. this was a 3.5. but i round up. because i'm that kind of generous.
i really liked the first part of this book. towards the second half it started to get both predictable and weird. everything that happened that wasn't predictable was downright weird.
i really liked the first part of this book. towards the second half it started to get both predictable and weird. everything that happened that wasn't predictable was downright weird.
May 23, 2009
Aging travel writer scores a years' worth of primo Ecuadorian hallucinogenic herbs and jump starts his life. As an old fan of Carlos Castaneda, I became blissfully absorbed in the story. So often we are limited not by circumstances, but by some sort of weird, self-induced stinginess of awareness.
September 13, 2023
In "Blinding Light", Theroux guides us through the three psychological stages of man (with a small "m"): the unfulfilled fantasies and aspirations of the young, remembered here by the main character, one-trick writer Hugh Steadman; the yearning to match those desires both sexually and professionally in the prime of life, also known as Conquest; and the inevitable decline of both his physicality and his perceived importance in society. Some men arc through this progression fairly gracefully, with just a bump in the road here or there, while others clamor for an extra scene or two in the proverbial board room, bedroom or both. They are the ones, Theroux may be saying, who push their luck and set themselves up for a tumble - in this case, literally and figuratively.
There's a good deal of Theroux's usual deft writing in "Blinding Light", and the author's ability to make touch, taste and smell almost palpable again demonstrates his chops as a writer. Unfortunately, the reader must endure what seems like an eternity of literary voyeurism as well as Steadman's considerable deception, nastiness and self-pity to arrive at any payoff.
With only one or two fairly likeable, minor characters, a torrent of purple prose that made me want to skip entire chapters, and a pall that envelops much of this work's 400-plus pages, Theroux seems to have "channeled" his protagonist, so much so that it makes his entire work suffer. I've been reading the author's work since he began, and knowing this is just my opinion, the man cannot write a sensual sex scene; if anything, and oftentimes he says the most misogynistic language that seems repellent and leaves you wondering if he even likes women. He has been the ever Boy Scout on his adventures, to the detriment of some personal relationships. My other gripe, as it were, is how he will rip into the frailty of humanity with zero empathy. He is above it all. The observer. I can't help thinking he could suck the air out of a room..
"Blinding Light" makes you reflect, but you'll need to slog through too many pages to enjoy that liberty. Poor Bill Clinton. All of those references during the Lewinsky scandal came back to me during that time. And poor Monica. Theroux repeatedly refers to her as "fat," "chubby," and in one sentence calls her fat and mentions her "chubby fingers." Pow and pow. He also mentions the stains on her "cheap dress." Monica was living in the Watergate (her parent's pied a terre) and shopped at the very best stores: Saks, Neiman's, Bergdorf's. She wore designer clothing. I doubt that dress was "cheap." Theroux sits judgment on her: the adventuress, the aggressor, starved to be near power and the attention of a powerful man. Nothing is ever that simple, is it?
There's a good deal of Theroux's usual deft writing in "Blinding Light", and the author's ability to make touch, taste and smell almost palpable again demonstrates his chops as a writer. Unfortunately, the reader must endure what seems like an eternity of literary voyeurism as well as Steadman's considerable deception, nastiness and self-pity to arrive at any payoff.
With only one or two fairly likeable, minor characters, a torrent of purple prose that made me want to skip entire chapters, and a pall that envelops much of this work's 400-plus pages, Theroux seems to have "channeled" his protagonist, so much so that it makes his entire work suffer. I've been reading the author's work since he began, and knowing this is just my opinion, the man cannot write a sensual sex scene; if anything, and oftentimes he says the most misogynistic language that seems repellent and leaves you wondering if he even likes women. He has been the ever Boy Scout on his adventures, to the detriment of some personal relationships. My other gripe, as it were, is how he will rip into the frailty of humanity with zero empathy. He is above it all. The observer. I can't help thinking he could suck the air out of a room..
"Blinding Light" makes you reflect, but you'll need to slog through too many pages to enjoy that liberty. Poor Bill Clinton. All of those references during the Lewinsky scandal came back to me during that time. And poor Monica. Theroux repeatedly refers to her as "fat," "chubby," and in one sentence calls her fat and mentions her "chubby fingers." Pow and pow. He also mentions the stains on her "cheap dress." Monica was living in the Watergate (her parent's pied a terre) and shopped at the very best stores: Saks, Neiman's, Bergdorf's. She wore designer clothing. I doubt that dress was "cheap." Theroux sits judgment on her: the adventuress, the aggressor, starved to be near power and the attention of a powerful man. Nothing is ever that simple, is it?
December 7, 2025
This my second trip with this book,since the newest version is an audiobook.I enjoyed it more this way.The narrator really made the characters come to life. Manfred,the German has a convincing accent. The scinitilating sex scenes are very evocative. The character,Steadman, who's a washed up writer of note goes to Ecuador on a drug tour and discovers although he's blinded he can now read people's minds and it spurs him on to buy more datura from Manfred and to use his girlfriend Eva,a doctor,to help him write a second book. He gets to me the president, Clinton,who has just been caught with Monika Lewinsky and the plods on as Steadman goes on a book signing tour. Is blackmailed by Manfred and then he actually becomes blind and descends into a depression. In the end he has to return to Ecuador with Manfred and the reader is left to believe Steadman has his sight restored after enduring a kind of poisoning. I went back and tried re-reading the last chapter and have to say the ending is less than satifying after such a long book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 13, 2018
An enjoyable but meandering novel that is wonderful in places and rather lumpy and repetetive in others.
Although quite a-moral the novel does take time to land some body shots to the upmarket thrill-seeking traveller. I got the impression Theroux was unloading a lot of frustration and anger at those expensively kitted, wilfully ignorant travellers to exotic destinations he must have encountered down the years.
Actual novel was a lot of fun but in dire need of trimming down - the whole middle passage taking place in Martha's Vineyard was unnecessarily long and border line dull. Worth persevering with though as it is an ambitious novel trespassing into some quite dark and uneasy places at times.
Although quite a-moral the novel does take time to land some body shots to the upmarket thrill-seeking traveller. I got the impression Theroux was unloading a lot of frustration and anger at those expensively kitted, wilfully ignorant travellers to exotic destinations he must have encountered down the years.
Actual novel was a lot of fun but in dire need of trimming down - the whole middle passage taking place in Martha's Vineyard was unnecessarily long and border line dull. Worth persevering with though as it is an ambitious novel trespassing into some quite dark and uneasy places at times.
January 4, 2025
Paul Theroux has an enviable imagination and a knack for the erotic, but his editors need to put a bridle on him.
Blinding Light takes you on an unexpected journey. At least four times while I read it, I mumbled, 'I did not see that coming.' The psychotropic drug scenes in the Ecuador jungle are enthralling but as the book progresses, Theroux becomes too enamored with his own writing.
Slade Steadman, the writer who risks blindness for greater insights, is a deeply self-absorbed man. We want to like his bravado and his insightful sex scenes are very arousing, but we end up despising him for his self-deception.
Dear Mr. Theroux -
Next time, don't overshare. Thank you.
Blinding Light takes you on an unexpected journey. At least four times while I read it, I mumbled, 'I did not see that coming.' The psychotropic drug scenes in the Ecuador jungle are enthralling but as the book progresses, Theroux becomes too enamored with his own writing.
Slade Steadman, the writer who risks blindness for greater insights, is a deeply self-absorbed man. We want to like his bravado and his insightful sex scenes are very arousing, but we end up despising him for his self-deception.
Dear Mr. Theroux -
Next time, don't overshare. Thank you.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews