Slade Steadman's lone opus, published twenty years ago, was Trespassing, a cult classic about his travels through dozens of countries without benefit of passport. With his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Ava in tow, Steadman sets out for Ecuador's jungle in search of a rare hallucinogenic drug and the cure for his writer's block. Amid a gang of thrill-seeking tourists, he finds his drug and his inspiration but is beset with an unnerving side effect - periodic blindness. His world is altered profoundly: Ava stays by his side, he writes an erotic, autobiographical novel with the drug serving as muse, and he returns to stardom. Steadman becomes addicted to the drug and the insights it provides, only to have them desert him, along with his sight. Will he regain his vision? His visions? Or will he forgo the world of his imagining and his ambition? Theroux’s 26 books should eliminate him as the basis for Blinding Light’s blocked protagonist Slade Steadman, yet critics still compare the protagonist and his creator. Theroux and Steadman do share an eye for withering details, an intellectual interest in the nature of sexuality, fame, and the act of creation, and perhaps a taste for self-absorbed prose. Reviewers describe the novel as a Faustian fable and an exploration of the limits of sensuality. Yet the San Francisco Chronicle sees "no overriding moral lesson" at all. Whether 400-plus pages is too many for a modern novel, the book feels too big given its spindly plot. Many critics also quail at the book’s explicit sexuality, which verges on the pornographic. It’s a jungle of a book, one that tests patience as it enlightens, without a miracle drug in sight. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. Unlike Slade Steadman, the one-book wonder portrayed in this suspenseful Faustian tale of toxic inspiration, Theroux has 40 books to his credit, including a number of edgy best-selling travel chronicles. A masterful and mesmerizing storyteller who has seen it all, Theroux is drawn to transgression and the darker zones of eroticism, and there is much irony in Steadman's claim to fame, Trespassing , a book about his travels around the world without a passport. Trespassing has made Steadman, now 50, rich, but he hasn't been able to write in years. Enter Ava, a beautiful doctor, who convinces him to go on a drug tour in Ecuador. There an overbearing German journalist becomes Steadman's savior and nemesis by introducing him to a psychotropic plant known as the tiger's blindfold. Although the hallucinogen does, indeed, temporarily blind Steadman, it also heightens his extrasensory powers of perception and dispels his writer's block. By day he dictates an explicit novel to Ava, then, at night, they reenact the lascivious encounters he describes (is this a variation on every writer's secret fantasy?). But as in all the indelible old myths about hubris and forbidden powers, Steadman goes too far. And he is not alone, as Theroux slyly links Steadman's harrowing downfall to that of another powerful man who can't help but tempt fate, President Bill Clinton. Theroux's greatest powers reside in his detailed and sensuous descriptions, and he is positively dazzling here as he calls forth a vivid world not of sights but of scents, sounds, and touch. So all-consuming does this sexy, gothic fable and searing social critique become, it itself serves as a mind-altering substance. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Paul Theroux’s highly acclaimed novels include Blinding Light, Hotel Honolulu, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, and The Mosquito Coast. His renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and The Happy Isles of Oceania. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod. What price art? Consider Slade Steadman, hero of Blinding Light, Paul Theroux's fable of exotic risk and reward. Twenty years ago, Steadman's hugely successful travel memoir, "Trespassing," made him rich. But Steadman values fiction, and as a novelist he is thoroughly blocked. Now in remotest Ecuador, he has acquired a goodly supply of a native hallucinogen, a datura vine that, when brewed as a drink, has the power to loose the creative stream. There is one catch: The concoction causes temporary blindness . . . that may become permanent. Should Steadman partake? In life, such choices are difficult. We favor safety and wholeness -- and with good reason. Handicaps are devastating, and tales of drug-inspired productivity are suspect. But the trade-off Theroux proposes -- inner vision for outer vision -- has cultural resonance. It draws on images of absinthe-drinking poets and the opium-eating Thomas DeQuincey. It conjures up Milton and Homer, blind singers. Within the confines of literature, there is no choice. Steadman must accept the bargain. Besides, Theroux stacks the deck in favor of the drug and his writer-hero. Beyond res