There was a sort of Hitchcock-Rear-Window-esque voyeurism to the at first seemingly unrelated stories--full of closed doors and private anecdotes. It plays with this idea of the secret, with the dichotomy of inner and outer--exploring outside and inside a hotel room, outside and inside a so-called paradise, outside and inside the human psyche.
And as I was reading it, after many travels of my own which felt in some ways to be a way for me to edge so far beyond my comfort zone that I would discover things previously unknown to myself--and in some ways a way for me to run away--it took on a strong undercurrent about being native to a place. Even after years of existing with his new family and friends in Hawaii, Theroux was still simply existing. Everyone trailed his own meandering history behind him, and the blindingly bright, stiflingly warm sun around the whole crowd seemed to illuminate even more starkly the fact that no one was really able to break free of his own mental hotel room walls.
Some bits to remember:
"You could live in Florida with an idea, he said, 'if you are content that your idea shall consist of grapefruits and oranges'". 212
"Somehow I had taken hold and become involved with these strangers, who seemed as ferocious and simple and unreadable as savages, and in time I had learned that they had unguessable, improbable histories. I had attached myself to them, attached myself to another past." 296
"You had to be happy to understand, and understanding made you even happier." 376
"The only place that can truly be hell is the one that was once paradise." 378
"You're a writer. Among other things, that's a pathological condition." 382
Bees drowning slowly, pleasurably, in honey 422
"I had proved what I had always suspected, that even the crookedest journey is the way home." 424
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