His interviews with both the famous and the unsung are wonderful ... Theroux also writes perceptively about authors he admires, such as Graham Greene and Georges Simenon. Although there are one or two essays here that struggle to justify their inclusion, overall the book is evidence of both the breadth of Theroux’s interests and his skill in bringing them to life.
...it goes a long way toward dispelling the image of Theroux as a long-suffering misanthrope setting out on the rails and the roads yet again. What emerges instead is a portrait of an optimist with curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms, as well as a ravenous appetite for the literary efforts of others ... Taken together, these essays draw a picture of a cheerful polymath thoroughly enjoying even those conversations that he later pretends to find tiresome.
While the title may suggest a single painting, the 30 essays included here are alive with locales as varied as Theroux’s many journeys. He is a collector of experiences with the famous and infamous, the familiar and the exotic, the literati and the little guys ... Having been everywhere and done almost everything, Theroux concludes Figures in a Landscape closer to home, examining his childhood and parents with the circumspection of a worldly-wise adult.
Those who’ve missed these 30 pieces where previously published will be impressed by the breadth of his interests, the depth of his research, and the scrupulousness of his prose ... personal pieces...add emotional heft and shape to this wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and eminently browsable collection.
On the evidence of Figures in a Landscape, Theroux’s powerful persona is, oddly, not matched by an equal vox. Open a Burgess, or a Greene or a Naipaul collection of such picked-up pieces and you know at once, from the voice, who’s writing. There are several highly entertaining essays here, and some quotably arresting lines, but the voice is elusive, unfixed and dissonant – an echo of the divisions within.
With travel pieces, literary critiques, people profiles, and personal essays, the 30 pieces here cover a wide range of subjects and are, together, his most polished collection yet. They give us everything we have come to expect from Theroux in his nonfiction: the attentive traveler's sharp eye and canny ear for everything that goes on around him and, to a certain extent, what goes on in his mind as he engages fully with life and everything that comes at him. Whether he's being seriously earnest or ironically satirical, Theroux's prose manages to hit just the right notes so that, at the end of any particular essay, even if we might not be in agreement, we want him to continue on ... At his finest, Theroux presents keen observations with language so alive that we are not merely transported but also transformed through the reading. At his worst, his misanthropic bite leaves sharply-aimed marks on the people, places, and experiences he resents, making us as readers also recoil ... Theroux gives us both literary style and new ways of seeing the world — not necessarily as it is, but as he sees it, of course.
Novelist and travel writer Theroux (Mother Land) is at the top of his game with his third collection of essays, a magisterial grouping of intimate remembrances, globe-trotting adventures, and incisive literary critiques ... A highly versatile, appealing writer, Theroux casts a wide net with pleasing and entertaining results.
Theroux manages an easygoing, self-effacing presence in his essays, as though his ego were spent somewhere around his 15th novel, and he locates his often witless or mystified self squarely within the frame of each encounter. His spare, unhurried prose style, which is rarely long-winded, betrays a novelist’s relish for illuminating details and devastating turns of phrase ... A masterfully simple and satisfying collection.
