Alexander Theroux

In 1995, The New York Times reported that one of its readers had noted the similarity of six passages in Theroux's 1994 survey of The Primary Colors with a 1954 book Song of the Sky by Guy Murchie. Theroux attributed the matter to "stupidity and bad note taking," noting that he had read hundreds of books for The Primary Colors. Theroux's editor said that future editions would credit Murchie's work, or remove the passages. A few months later, Theroux published a lengthy defense in the San Diego Reader.

His non-fiction books on color, The Primary Colors (1994) and The Secondary Colors (1996), were briefly on the best-seller lists in Los Angeles.

He was awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1991 and the Clifton Fadiman Medal for Fiction in 2002 by the Mercantile Library in New York City. He is the brother of novelist Paul Theroux and writer Peter Theroux as well as the uncle of documentarian Louis Theroux, novelist Marcel Theroux, and actor Justin Theroux.

In 1987, he published An Adultery. Laura Warholic, his longest and most satirical novel, was published in 2007.

He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1982 to 1987 and at Yale University from 1987 to 1991.

He published the fable Master Snickup’s Cloak, which was illustrated by Brian Froud, in 1979. That followed two other fables, The Schinocephalic Waif and The Wragby Cars, with illustrations by Stan Washburn, in 1975.

He spent a year on a Fulbright Grant in London in 1969. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974.

He taught at the University of Virginia in 1968 and at Harvard University as Brigg-Copeland Lecturer from 1973 to 1979. He was writer-in-residence at Phillips Academy in Andover from 1979 to 1982. Philips Academy announced in 2016 that an external investigation had found that Theroux had engaged in sexual misconduct with a student in the 1970s, and that "the school had received multiple concerns into Theroux's behavior toward students". Theroux denies the allegations and the local district attorney noted that the statute of limitations prevented them from pursuing a criminal complaint. He has been barred from Philips Andover campus and school events.

He entered the Trappist Monastery at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts in 1958, and then the Franciscan Seminary at Callicoon, New York in 1960. He earned his bachelor of arts at St. Francis College in 1964. He earned a masters of arts in English literature in 1965, and his doctorate in English literature, 1968 at the University of Virginia, where he won the Schubert Playwrighting Fellowship in 1967. He belonged to both the Raven Society and the Society of the Purple Shadows.

Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the first son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (born Dittami), was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was French Canadian. His mother was a grammar school teacher and his father was a salesman for the American Leather Oak company. Theroux graduated from Medford High School; he attended Boys State in Amherst, Massachusetts, was class president in 1956, and was a starting member of the Medford High School basketball team.

Alexander Louis Theroux (born 1939) is an American novelist and poet. He is known for his novel Darconville's Cat (1981), which was selected by Anthony Burgess for his book-length essay Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 – A Personal Choice in 1984 and by Larry McCaffery for his 20th Century’s Greatest Hits list.