Paul Theroux has done plenty of press for his new travel book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, but there are some interesting bits in his interview with his neighborhood rag, Cape Cod Today. Every year, we learn, he hosts a reunion party with his Peace Corps buddies at his house in Sandwich, Mass.:
It used to be that we did a lot of beer drinking, but now some have died and divorced. It is a big event for all of us to keep current with each other. Among other things, we play an Italian game of bowls, called ‘Bocce’ (pronounced ‘Bachee’). I found an Italian priest at a church on Route 151 who had a design for the court and I found someone in Falmouth to copy it.
Lucky is the author who can afford his own bocce court (and odd is the writer living near Martha’s Vineyard who feels compelled to tell people how to pronounce “bocce”). There are other interesting details in the interview as well, including his thoughts on being in Boy Scouts with Mike Bloomberg, infidelity, Burma, Georgia (the Asian one).
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Dept. of Self-Promotion note: If you’re in the D.C. area Saturday, Sept. 6 (that’s tomorrow), I’ll be speaking at George Mason University as part of a day-long seminar, sponsored by American Independent Writers, called “Writers–Push the Electronic Envelope:Sharing Your Writing and Selling Your Work in Cyberspace.” I’ll chat a bit on the panel about social networking, mostly in the context of journalism, but I’ll probably blather about books and blogs a fair bit as well.
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