Interview

Travel writer J. Maarten Troost describes his struggles with alcoholism and why he finds the islands of the South Pacific so endlessly inviting.

What is it about the South Pacific that draws you back?
Have you ever wanted to escape, to fall off the map and disappear for a good long while? Me too. No place in the world elicits that kind of draw than an island in the South Seas. It's where I go when I'm looking for a little dissonance in my life, a place to turn down the white noise of continental life and replace it with something more elemental. Like sharks. And long sea journeys. And sublime beauty. And all the other things that get your senses humming.

Also, having written two books about the region, I liked the idea of completing a South Pacific trilogy. It makes me feel like, I don't know, a real man now.

You followed in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson. Why him? Have you read his books?
Stevenson has long been peripheral to my life, just hovering in the margins. It seemed like no matter where I washed up, whether on the islands of Kiribati or the Central Coast of California, I was somehow following in his footsteps. But it wasn't until I started reading him that I decided to explicitly follow Stevenson. I liked how he described the early books on the South Pacific. He called them sugar candy sham epics. This dude can write, I ...