La Jolla 1962 Dressed in long trousers and boat shoes and a white Lacoste tennis shirt, I accompanied Toby across Vista del Mar and Neptune Place to the Pump House and down concrete steps to …
August 19, 2023
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Stories by Alexander Theroux
Fled my father in La Jolla
Cats, small dogs, and toddlers don’t last long in Borrego
Ten Reasons Why You’d Have to Be Crazy to Live in Borrego Springs To paraphrase what Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there — no people (population: about 3000), no movie …
June 18, 2023
Chuck Berry, Nat King Cole, Elvis, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Paula Abdul, Paul Anka
[Editor’s note: This is a condensed version of an article by Alexander Theroux that originally ran in the Reader on July 20, 1995, titled The Grammar of Rock ‘n Roll.] Rock ‘n’ roll music, any …
March 29, 2023
Coinshooters at Pacific Beach are just part of it
San Diego's intrepid metal finders The faint sound through the earphones is like the buzz of a mosquito on the other side of the room when you're trying to sleep. It nags at your attention, …
February 11, 2023
Alexander Theroux describes his remarkable father
Decent life led by ordinary man He loved Lincoln, above all, and was word-perfect as to every facet of the assassins’ lives, especially Booth’s. Of special interest to him was the Battle of Bunker Hill, …
November 12, 2022
A cold eye on San Diego architects 20 years ago
Orchids and Onions — 20 years later The ’95 jury opened by dubbing 1976 Orchid-winner Rancho Bernardo “the ultimate suburb.” Nicoloff and Collins concurred, calling it “one of the few really successful and well-planned new …
August 27, 2022
I was kennelboy at Coronado Veterinary Hospital
Among the creatures I put the dog on the table. I felt inexplicably ill at ease with just the dog, myself, and Dr. Smith there; it was a rare moment shared by just the two …
May 2, 2022
Doubleday follows Luis Urrea to Tijuana, priggish Richard Henry Dana visits the presidio
A Living Cloud The next morning, I am greeted by my media escort, Penny. This is a fascinating new feature of my life — escorts. They pick you up, drive you around, provide snacks, meals, …
January 10, 2022
Nathanael West, Jim Thompson, Max Miller
Janet, My Mother, and Me “We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth …
November 20, 2021
Truth about TJ taxis, cut-throat upholstery competition
I am my own queen "Once, a guy, a drunk guy took my taxi from downtown. He wanted to go to this particular colonia, this neighborhood. It was raining, I remember. When I got there, …
October 4, 2021
Dahmer's Diner, Nico, Deadheads, Paul Williams
Eating people is the ultimate control You won’t find Dahmer’s Diner on the bill at the Cannibal Bar in Mission Beach. In fact, DD has been banned from all but two venues in town, SOMA …
September 19, 2021
He-man cooks dinner, fairness of O.J.Simpson trial
Just Relax and I'll Get Dinner I am stepping through the front door of Andronico’s, my countenance set to grim purpose. Andronico’s is a grocery store, the kind that doesn’t carry 1 variety of pear, …
August 22, 2021
Alexander Theroux's father and brothers, Amy Chu's mother, Matt Lickona's grandparents
Decent Life Led by the Ordinary Man I will never forget the time a monsignor from our church, favoring our simple household with a visit, stopped by and in the course of dinner, sat back, …
August 21, 2021
Dune buggies, the Marshal South hermit family, the human race at its worst
Are Off-Roaders Destroying Anza-Borrego? "A green-sticker dune buggy decides to drive in past the closure sign and fiddle around. There’s a camper back in there, and they have a verbal duel. The camper takes down …
July 25, 2021
Looking inside Padres lockers, Maureen Connolly, Ted Williams, spying on America's Cup rivals for the Kochs
Inside the Padres' lockers Caught looking. Tony Gwynn sat in a canvas-backed chair and peered into the wooden cubicle in front of him. “What’s in my locker?” he asked, repeating the question that had been …
January 9, 2021
Beat Farmers, Frank Zappa, Lester Bangs
Birth of the Beat Farmers Jerry Raney: “This guy from El Cajon High named Jack Chan knew how to play, we’d go out and get the Beatles songbooks and go through 'em and he’d teach …
June 7, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1996
Mafia in San Diego before World War II (first in series of six stories) “The raids, all made with search warrants, started soon after noon and were not completed until early evening. All of the …
January 12, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1995
I've got Perry Mason on board! In early 1960, the man who created Perry Mason was introduced to an Imperial Beach resident named Francisco Muñoz. Erle Stanley Gardner had many friends, and he particularly liked …
January 11, 2020
Borrego Springs– no there there
From Toro Peak to Fonts Point, barely Their plan was to start at Toro Peak, in the Santa Rosa Mountains just north of Borrego Springs, hike along the mountainous spine over Rabbit Peak and Villager …
November 11, 2019
Other San Diego summers
Phoenix without apologies Traveler, consider our Phoenix. An hour away by air, this flat, posh suburb of Greater L.A. is your finest summer vacation bargain. For the price of a bad weekend in a tacky …
July 6, 2019
Alexander Theroux and the Reader
Theroux is an American novelist and poet and brother of novelist Paul Theroux and Peter Theroux, a translator of Arabic literary work. Alexander Theroux's best-known novel is Darconville's Cat (1981). Among his non-fiction works are …
March 31, 2019
Alexander Theroux describes Anza-Borrego desert
It was all of it sad, godforsaken country. Last summer in a remote area south of here, around Split Mountain, a man whose car had broken down was found dead. He was shoeless and his brain had boiled.
February 13, 1997
Myself and my brothers, part of the Theroux family
Paul told me that if he had read my novel Darconville’s Cat in high school, he would never have started to write. And in a way, I began to write in order to catch up to him.
October 3, 1996
Alexander Theroux philosophizes on Black's Beach nakedness
Black’s Beach. The “world’s largest nude beach” as it is commonly billed, it may come as something of a surprise to many San Diegans, is officially—legally, technically, formally—a non-nude beach. Clothing is not optional; it …
June 13, 1996
Revolucion: Big Curio Store, Long Bar, Hotel Nelson, Foreign Club, Sara's, Maxim's, Caesar's Hotel, Jai Alai
Avenida Revolucion begins at the boundary of the United States and Mexico, at the junction with Avenida Internacional where, at rush hour, cars come racing around the corner onto Revolucion. At the very bottom of …
February 1, 1996
Monks at Prince of Peace in Oceanside bring back author's time with Trappists
"A GREAT DEAL OF VIRTUE AND PIETY” wrote Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “is simply the easy price we pay in order to justify a life that is essentially trifling. Nothing is …
December 21, 1995
Reflections on the father of Paul and Alexander Theroux
We were not allowed to talk about money at the table, crush the counters of our shoes, leave dirty silverware on the sideboard, or refer to our mother as “she,” which he found particularly disrespectful.
November 9, 1995
O.J.'s trial part of civil rights struggle?
Only minutes before, Cochran had unctuously and fatuously portrayed the O.J. Simpson case as part of the long and unending struggle for civil rights in America, comparing this murder trial to the battles against slavery.
October 5, 1995
Alexander Theroux's grammar of rock and roll
Parsing the demon-tongue of shake-your-groove-thang-ism.
July 20, 1995
Richard Henry Dana in San Diego
So on that Sunday, young Dana — a stripling tar, 20 years old — walked into San Diego wearing a blue jersey, duck trousers, and a straw hat. He and his friend Stimson headed right to a “grog-shop.”
July 6, 1995
Alexander Theroux answers charge of plagiarism in Primary Colors
I have quoted to myself enough passages from Dante, Othello, The Changeling, The Dunciad, Swift and Yeats, skip-rope rhymes, Lord Byron, Burma-Shave jingles, “Lycidas,” Proust, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Great Expectations to have tried to make them mine.
June 1, 1995
Ted Williams' climb from San Diego to Boston
"There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived!" That was the goal — the constant wish — of The Kid as expressed not only in his autobiography My Turn at Bat (1969) but …
May 11, 1995
I would vote for Lauren Bacall as having the perfect mouth
There have been many big mouths. William Randolph Hearst. Mick Jagger. Desi Arnaz. Wallace Beery. Nat “King” Cole. MacDonald Carey. Fifties singer Guy Mitchell. Probably no one has a bigger mouth than Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
January 19, 1995