Richard said he travels without a camera; do you travel with one?

No. For exactly the reason I described in "The Beach." You end up just remembering the things you took a photo of. As I hate having my picture taken myself, I always felt there was something very intrusive about it. I can remember early in my travels seeing some picturesque old guy in ethnic clothing with a camera stuck right in his face like he was some sort of chimpanzee in the zoo, and thinking "there's something a bit weird and fucked up about this." But sometimes I travel with a Filipino photojournalist and I'm glad he's doing it because then I have great pictures. You know -- I'm a hypocrite in all sorts of ways.

What do you think of the environmental criticisms about "The Beach"?

It was 95 percent bullshit. I was worried about it and went to have a look at the film set, but when I got there it was a DiCaprio story, it wasn't an environmental story. Danny Boyle, the director, has argued that it raised the profile of environmental issues in Thailand so overall that's a good thing. I'd agree with that. I think the net result of it will probably be positive. But there's absolutely no doubt that some environmental damage was done by the film process. It's very hard for a film of that scale to be done and not have any impact.

The whole Hollywood-ization of your book has taken over the imagination on a global scale, hasn't it? Is that rather disturbing?

The thing about it is that I had nothing to do with the filming; all I did was watch it and I found that interesting because I like watching films. But in general I felt very divorced from it. At the time I was trying to write "The Tesseract" and doing other things -- it was something happening in the periphery. Also the bigger the film got, the less I felt connected to it.

So did you like the film?

Yes. I was surprised at how emotionally attached to it I was.

What about seeing Leonardo DiCaprio play the role of Richard, when Richard is so much based on you and Leonardo DiCaprio is so different from you?

Well it's a different Richard. And that helped me watch it.

Why did you decide not to go to the premiere in L.A.?

That's a long story. But it's like -- you've got to try and keep your distance from it. The film industry is like a black hole; there's a huge gravity that seduces you and sucks you in and you have to constantly fight against it.

What have you done since "The Tesseract"?

I wrote the screenplay for "The Tesseract" for the BBC. But a film isn't definite until they start shooting it, and even then sometimes they fall apart, so we'll wait and see. I'm waiting for the publicity from the film to die down before I start writing again.

And what do you want to do next?

Oh, I just want to write another novel. That's what I feel my job is really. The only thing I don't feel my job is, is being a sort of commentator on the travel scene, which somehow has happened. I don't know that much about tourism or the environment -- I've got a reasonably informed layman's perspective on it, that's all.

Do you intend to still use foreign countries as locations for future books?

Yes, if I manage to keep doing this job then probably I will. There's something about writing stories set in foreign countries that helps you feel separate from your subject matter. But I'm also quite interested in the idea of trying to write something set in Britain.

"The Tesseract" has some similar elements to "The Beach," particularly paranoia. Did you create that theme or is it something that's part of your reaction to life?

It's probably part of my reaction to life. But it's not a coincidence that I started writing "The Tesseract" in a run-down hotel in Manila, which is quite like the one in the book, thinking "why am I here? I keep finding myself in these bloody places, why can't I just stay at home and have an easy life?" I think that probably happens once every time I go away.

Do you think you'll ever get to the stage where you'd just rather stay at home and work out what life's about here?

Yes, I think I've been at that stage for the last four years, but for some reason I can't bloody stop traveling. I think my vision of the future is that I have kids and settle down and maybe once a year I'll go off on some trip on my own somewhere but it won't be the same relentless, compulsive thing.

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