Customer Reviews

Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I came to this book as someone who enjoys a good travelogue and has a long-standing general interest in Central Asia (I've read all the Hopkirk books). I have to say that despite Bissell's cautionary notice at the beginning that he is not attempting history or reportage or travel writing, but that the book is "a personal, idiosyncratic account of a place and a people and the problems and conflicts they share," this is one of the best modern travelogues I've encountered. Like all the best in the genre, it is outstanding precisely because it is such a personal work. Those interested in just the logistics of getting around and seeing the sights of Uzbekistan can always just pick up a good guidebook or three, and those interested in pure history have plenty of works to pick from. What Bissell brings is sparkling prose and a refreshingly open-hearted approach that admits his own limitations.

Bissell's relationship with Uzbekistan began with an ignominious Peace Corps stint in the 1996, which saw him leaving after less than a year due to a mental breakdown. He returned in 2001, ostensibly to research and write an article about the decline of the Aral Sea, but in a large part, to confront his demons from that earlier experience. As the title foreshadows, he spends most of his trip bouncing around the country in an attempt to come to grips with it (indeed, it isn't until the final 50 pages that he gets to the Aral and discusses its plight). Bissell isn't on any particular itinerary so much as he wants to see the high points and take care of a few tasks (like smuggling money to someone). Because his Uzbek is shaky and his Russian is almost non-existent, he hires a 20-something Uzbek translator named Rustam. This college student peppers his speech with "dude" and "bro", and is a Depeche Mode devotee, not to mention a bit of a ladies man. More importantly, he provides a forum for Bissell to bounce his impressions of the country, its Soviet legacy, and Islam, off of -- and their disagreements are often highly illuminating.

Bissell travels around, from Tashkent to Gulistan, to Samarkand, the Ferghana valley, the T'ien Shan Mountains, and finally to Nukus and the Aral Sea. Modes of travel vary from local bus to hired car to Uzbek Air, and he experiences all the grime and discomfort such travel involves, including a harrowing encounter with some militia who stop their hired car, rather casually club the driver to the ground, take Rustam away for a full body search, and menace Bissell. Contrary to several reviews on Amazon, the most laughable of which reads that he "keeps the indigenous people of Central Asia at arms-length" Bissell interacts heavily with the people and places he visits. Upon arrival in a new place, the first thing he usually does is head out for an aimless hour-long walk to try and get a sense of the place.

Interspersed with his travels, Bissell recounts the political, cultural, and religious history of the country and the region. This ranges all over the place, from linguistics, to British and Russian Imperial history, ethnography, political economy, folk tales, internal Soviet politics, modern corruption, and all manner of things besides. These are generally largely cribbed summaries from other sources (listed in the bibliography), but Bissell does a nice job of putting it altogether in highly readable prose lightly sprinkled with jokes, asides, and personal commentary. Some might find this approach too freeform or meandering, but Bissell makes it work. It all wraps up with the sad tale of Karakalpak people, who used to fish and live off the Aral Sea and now live over 100 miles from its shore, and Bissell is left contemplating the rusting hulks of fishing vessels adrift in an ocean of sand. A brilliant piece of non-fiction from a very talented writer.

_Chasing the Sea_ is one of the finer travel books I have read in some time. Author Tom Bissell set out originally to cover the tragic disappearance of the Aral Sea, a once large inland body of water shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan that has been slowly choked to death since the 19th century by diversion of the water to grow cotton. Through the course of the book though he not only covers the Aral Sea but also relates his previous personal experiences with Uzbekistan - he served for a time as a Peace Corps volunteer - as well as his current travels. Though he left the Peace Corps, his love for this Central Asian nation didn't leave him and he felt compelled to return, not only to his host family but to the country in general.

We learn that Uzbekistan is the second largest exporter of cotton in the world; though this achievement has not come without considerable cost (also amazingly enough they grow rice too). That this desert nation relies so heavily economically on such a thirsty plant is unusual, but Bissell details how the American Civil War cut off the supply of cotton, encouraging tsarist Russia to look for a new source. Demand for cotton only escalated during the Cold War. To grow the cotton, the Amu Darya River (known in antiquity as the Oxus) was diverted. This river, which forms part of Uzbekistan's southern border and the primary source of the Aral Sea's water, now no longer feeds into it at all. The formerly vast river, which once formed a huge inland delta, is now a mere creek at best as it reaches the receding shores of the Aral.

The Aral Sea's certain demise sometime in the first few decades of the 21st century will have ugly consequences. As late as 1960 the Aral Sea was still the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world; now it is largely salt-crusted, dust-storm swept desert, much of this salt and silt poisonous thanks to decades of Soviet insecticides and dumped toxic waste. Moynaq, once a prosperous seaside community that had 40,000 inhabitants, was a favored beach retreat, and had a cannery that produced 12 to 20 million tins of fish a year; now over a hundred miles from the sea's present (and still receding) shores, it is a near ghost town with no jobs to speak of. Fishing ships lie where they were abandoned, resting incongruously in sand dunes. Now that the Aral Sea has thus far lost over 70% of its water volume it no longer acts to moderate regional temperatures; summers are hotter and winters are colder (possibly ironically dooming the very crops that are being grown at the expense of the sea). The two dozen fish species that were once endemic to the Aral Sea are now extinct (though other species were later reintroduced to the northern Kazakhstan portion). The formerly unique desert forests that surrounded the lake are long gone as well.

More tragic still are those people who live around the Aral Sea. For over 600 years the Karakalpaks, a formerly nomadic people, have called these shores home. Now they are poor and unhealthy, as their industries - fishing, canning, and shipbuilding - have vanished and they suffer soaring rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, and other diseases directly and indirectly related to the vanished desert sea.

I don't however want to give the impression that this is a grim book, as there are many funny sections in it and Bissell is a talented writer. Nor is the Aral Sea the only subject covered. It is not even the main subject of this travel essay. Most of the book is devoted to Bissell's travels, most of them with a young Uzbek named Rustam, hired as a translator but becoming a friend as he journeyed throughout Uzbekistan, from the T'ien Shan Mountains and Ferghana Valley in the far east of the nation through Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara. Along the way the author relates many interest aspects of Uzbek history and culture, including the days of the Mongols, Timur (known in the West as Tamerlane), the Samanid dynasty of 819-1005 (during which time Uzbekistan became a center of Islamic learning, producing the great doctor ibn Sina, known to Westerners as Avicenna, revered in the West as late as 1700s, and al-Khorezmi, from whose name the word algorithm is derived), the Great Game (the 19th century Cold War of sorts between Russia and the British for supremacy in Central Asia), and the rule of Islam Karimov.

I found his portraits of the various cities the most interesting aspect of the book. Tashkent for example we learn is not only the most populous city in Uzbekistan but the most populous in Central Asia. It is also one of the most modern seeming Central Asian cities, as there is very little architecture older than about 50 years (owing partly to the fact that the city has been Russified since the late 19th century and partly due to a massive 1966 earthquake). Despite is appearances though this oasis city (its name means "Stone City") is over 2000 years old, making it one of the oldest extant cities in the world. For much of its history it was a "sporadically independent city-state" surrounded by a famous high stone wall sixteen miles long (now completely gone) and controlled at times by such various groups as the Arabs, Chinese, Mongols, and the Kazakhs.

Bissell also has many asides in the book about Uzbek culture. He wrote of the very nature of Uzbek, an agreed-upon identity that is less than a century old; that in 1902 a Russian ethnographer noted that there were more 80 clan names in Uzbekistan, more important to them than any "Uzbek" identity. Indeed, Uzbek history in any form only stretches back to the 14th century, when a fierce group of nomadic invaders came down from the plains of southern Siberia.

A good book, just wish it had pictures.

I'll say this straight out at first so those that would stereotype me can go on to the next review. I am a Marine and have spent time in Central Asia. I consider myself politcially moderate. I learned about this book in Outside Magazine, which I subscribe to. Anyone who subscribes to or reads Outside knows its political bent, and so once you are familar with its platform, you can enjoy it.
This is an outstanding book. The author was a Peace Corps volunteer after college and clealry fell in love with his host country, Uzbekistan, and its people. This story is about his return trip to the country several years later to research and write a book about the impending death of the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest lake. Mr. Bissell's prose is very solid, descriptive, and unique. He is masterful storyteller. He is essentially fair and neutral in this book, presenting both sides of almost every issue he addresses.
The only annoying aspects of his book come when he simply cannot resist the urge to go on brief politcial diatribes, such as when he claims Michael Gorbachev was a great man who has received no credit and Ronald Reagan was a mediocre man who receives too much credit for winning the Cold War. (Mr. Bissell was betwen the ages of 6 and 14 when Reagan was President, but he feels knowledgeable enough to conclude that Regan had no effect whatsoever on the downfall of the Soviet Union - this is probably something he learned in a college poli-sci class). Fortunately, Mr. Bissell is very credible without resorting to these polemics, but it is these unnecessary and irrelevant tangents that are the sole weakness in this otherwise outstanding story about Central Asia and its people.
Mr. Bissell's portrait is very accurate. Central Asia befits the saying, "It's like another world," because it is. But it is a stark and beautiful one, and although this region of the former Soviet Union is still struggling to lift itself out of the grave of its former oppressor, its people - an interesting mix of Asians, Muslims and ethnic Russians, are friendly and engaging. This book accurately captures these characteristics and stands as a fine civics and history lesson.

Part travelogue, part history, part reportage, part editorial, this is the best book of its kind that I've ever read. It is an un-patronizing portrait of people making the best of difficult circumstances that most of us can't imagine well. One thing that distinguishes "Chasing the Sea" from, say, Colin Thubron's "The lost heart of Asia" is its persistent up-beat tone. Just because the facts are sad doesn't mean that reading about them has to be depressing. Besides, you have to love an author who takes the trouble to place a sub-title at the top of every other page and who, in non-fiction, is so candid about his own weaknesses (e.g. his abortive Peace Corps service, his inability to deliver money to one promised recipient).

Miscellany:

This book could not have succeeded in its current form if Bissell had not hooked up with Rustam, his young, proud, intelligent, opinionated, endearing translator and advisor. The tension between Bissell's typically Politically Correct American views and Rustam's practical Uzbek views on the country's history, politics, and future (not to mention women) makes a lot of the book work.

Yes, early in his book, Bissell gives a description of the Aral Sea situation uncannily similar to that in "Ecoside in the USSR" by Feshbach, et al. (I own that book also). He credits "Ecoside" in his bibliography. I suppose that if this were an academic work, he'd have to have appropriate footnotes, but the important thing is that more people will find out about the eco-problems of Central Asia by reading "Chasing the Sea" than will work their way through Feshbach.

Bissell has stones. His taking of Robert D Kaplan, the highly regarded travel writer/Atlantic correspondent, to task is reminiscent of Mark Twain taking Fennimore Cooper to task, except that Fennimore Cooper was not alive when Samuel Clemens published "...literary offenses".

I'm not quite sure why, but the middle of the book drags a bit in the sections on Samarkand and Bukhara with some of the discussion of Jenghiz Khan, Tamer-the-lame, and Nasrullah (though I'm glad the material is there), but it picks up again in the chapter on Ferghana and the Tien Shan mountain funeral. The final chapter when Bissell arrives at the former Aral coastline is captivating and heartbreaking (though not depressing to read!).

I wish the glossary was larger.

The book closes with Bissell's answer to the out of context question, "What is there to do?" My own even further out of context answer is: wait for Tom Bissell to publish another book.

What the holy moly is it with this book? A bunch of one-stars, and bunch of five-stars, and not much in between. I have a theory (I just read it). Here's that theory: This is a book that takes its time to do what it does, and it doesn't care to obey the accepted rules of nonfiction. I think Mr. Bissell, the author, very self-consciously tried to write a piece of Literature. I also think he cares more about the writing than the politics or journalysis. And you are either down with that or you're not. You either like the writing or you don't. Plenty of people are turned off by Art and Literature, and here's a tome about a current-eventsy part of the world that has had little recent Art about it. Confusion! (maybe). I happened to really love Chasing the Sea, but what I'm saying is that I sort of see why a certain sort of person wouldn't. I don't think Bissell is a racist or white supremecist, though, as one reviewer does. That's kooky. All Peace Corps volunteers will love it, though, as will fans of Theroux or Matthieson.

Tom Bissell writes with such style and grace, using language with precision and wit, that he could probably tackle any subject and I'd find it fascinating. Here, he manages to write a book that crosses many genres: it is both a travel book and a history, a memoir and a reflective essay, and above all a triumph of narrative. Whether he is describing the beautiful women on the Tashkent subway, the ugly (and noble) Americans doing various kinds of business in Central Asia, the history of the Muslim former Soviet republics, the nuances of the Uzbek language, or, most importantly, what is the most profound ecological change on the planet -- the disappearance of the Aral Sea -- Bissell's prose is clear, sharp, and funny. How he managed to remember tiny details escapes me, but this book transcends its subject matter. I mean, I never thought I'd be interested in Uzbekistan, but once I started reading the author's adventures with his (very funny) translator as they investigate life there, I couldn't put the book down. Details like a laundry detergent named Barf sparkle on every page. It's Gen X ironic in a way but much more profound.

It's suprising to me how many people are talking about "the hype" around this book. I picked it up because I read the Believer (the staff of which, one particularly ridiculous reviewer called Bissell's "corporate-backed cronies"!!) and his articles are interesting, intelligent, and well-written. The book turned out to be one of the best I've read this year, but that's my opinion. Just because I say this doesn't mean everyone will love it, so the people cruising the book reviews for the next great read should beware: reviews are obviously subject to opinion. Startlingly, a number of other reviewers proclaim Bissell to be condescending, racist, or a know-it-all MFA writer. I certainly don't know where anyone came up with racism here, considering race/religion/ethnicity plays such a large role in much of the ongoing conflicts in Uzbekistan. Also, Bissell does not in any way position himself above the members of his host country. Considering Bissell's works cited includes a book written by Edward Said, I am hard pressed to find what is so racist about Bissell's attitudes. I'm also not sure where his so-called condescension comes from; whenever a writer or journalist travels to another country, there will be moments (reflected in the text) of awkwardness, seeming cultural devide, or adjustment to something new. These moments are unavoidable, beautiful, and partially the purpose of travel writing. If every place were the same, why would people travel? The trouble arises when one adopts an attitude of superiority or "normalness," when the traveller believes him or herself to be a standard against which other cultures are measured. If one has even a passing understanding of sarcasm, it's clear that Bissell not only does not do this, but completely understands what it means when one does assert superiority. The idea that Bissell acts like "another stupid American" is laughable.

Also, what's with all the MFA hate? The Believer hate? The staff of the Believer decided to do something pretty damn fine with the money they made from book deals and start a magazine for nerds who just love talking about books and writers. They also set up a non-profit tutoring center for urban youth in San Francisco (and NY as well, I believe). Also, those writers at the Believer are just writers like everyone else who ever wanted to be a writer, and early success does not make them hacks. Like them or don't, but have good reasons. If it's literary merit you're talking, Tom Bissell didn't get an MFA (and yet he has published 3 books!). There are a lot of pretentious jerk writers in MFA programs, and there are a lot of pretentious jerk writers not in MFA programs. Also, there are a lot of pretentious jerks in general. People who take McSweeney's or the Believer to task for being pretentious confuse me; if you read McSweeney's or the Believer, you'll find pockets of silliness that could only have been written by people who know what it feels like to be made to feel nerdy or inferior.

Anyway, this book is good. I think that Bissell's youth is a strength here; his original post-college trip to Uzbekistan as a PCV was fraught with the fears most college grads have(especially liberal arts majors like English, theater, etc), not to mention being coupled with the adjustment to a new and very different environment. Very relatable. Also, the language is great. At times, the narrative is a bit clogged with layers and layers of Central Asia's complicated history, but this is a detractor that was still impressive due to the breadth and specificity. Bissell is also very funny in places and it is the best kind of humor--the smart kind. Although the title character of the book (the Aral Sea) is not as central as it would seem (and this is disappointing) the description of the catastrophe is just as compelling (even as it plays second fiddle to the journey itself). I would recommend this book to anyone interested in travel writing or familiar with Bissell's work.

A thanks to Tom Bissell for returning to Uzbekistan and writing this book. I truly enjoyed it, and learned much from it. I was also made thoroughly depressed by it. What should the relatively well-off average American citizen do, upon learning in so much detail of such environmental devastation and economic poverty? It is almost difficult to go on living normally--taking showers every day, for example--after learning in what circumstances others are living.
I had been expecting (like other readers, I think) more about the Aral Sea. On the other hand, the expectation of getting to the topic of the sea was one thing which kept me reading this book. This is not to say the adventures and historical interludes which precede the part about the sea were not interesting--in fact, they were riveting, astonishing. But I would have appreciated a clearer picture of what the book consists of before reading it. And, likewise, I would love (more than ever, now) to read a more comprehensive (but still journalistic) study of the Aral Sea. I suppose Bissell's book succeeds very well in providing, at the least, a good introduction to the subject.
My final comment: Bissell often expresses surprise at his translator's facility with English and his knowledge of Central Asian history throughout the book. He also shows some rather severe differences they have in opinion. I suggest to Bissell's translator that he write his own book about Uzbekistan (or....about his travels in America).

If you're interested in Central Asia in general and Uzbekistan in particular, you will enjoy this book. Especially true if you enjoy history, as various short history lessons are thrown in as the author visits places with long historical pasts.

But this book is not as it portrays itself. The author seemed to feel he needed a "hook" beyond documenting his travels and adventures to a exotic, far away land, so he attempts this overlay of the Aral Sea and the ecological disaster that is has become. While he does eventually get around to that topic, it is not really the centerpiece. What is more central is the author's own ghosts from his past, and he bounces around Uzbekistan looking to exorcise something . . . I'm not sure even he knows what. Neither the head fake about the Aral Sea, nor the author's own self-absorbed quest for finding release from some inner demons, nor even the author's occasional too self-conscious style of "I am writing a travel book" keep this from being a fascinating book. You get to be a passenger with a window seat in a part of the world that is tragic, dripping with history, harsh climate, harsh geography, beautiful in an austere way, where hospitality and a knack for trading surive somehow through the generations - in other words, a fascinating place to read about, but where I would not actually care to go myself!

For general purpose readers who don't have a particular interest in Uzbekistan, I would give this book a lower rating.

"Chasing the Sea" is the first of what I hope are many, many books from Tom Bissell. The fact that he could make a subject as unfamiliar to most Americans as Central Asia seem so vibrant and alive is a testament to his artistry. He is modest throughout the whole work, admitting up front in his author's note that he is not a scholar, that "Chasing the Sea" is neither history nor reportage nor memoir nor travel guide, but rather "a personal, idiosyncratic account of a place and a people and the problems and conflicts they share." The book, he writes, is a testimony to the perils of ignorance that he once had (and that many still hold, even in the dawning of this imperial age), and that it should not be taken as an alpha-and-omega summation of a part of the world that cannot be contained in 350 pages. To this end, he includes an excellent bibliography and recommended reading list at the end of the book.

But what of "Chasing the Sea" itself? It is indeed heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time. I can't remember the last book I read that could dicuss Depeche Mode and Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and Tolkien, Eminem and England's "Great Game" with Russia, with such intelligence, ease, and agility, and make them all essential and connected to the point of the tale. Bissell alternates between his travels through Uzbekistan and the neighboring countries (the modern, the "known") and the histories of the area (the ancient, the forgotten) and it seems like just when you're getting overloaded with the Soviet's mishandling of the land or the horrible death of Arthur Conolly in Bukhara, Bissell switches gears back to the 21st-century and takes you along with him as he tries, for your sake and his, to understand the people of Central Asia. It happens with such lyric beauty that you don't mind the history lesson in the least. In fact, you
want more, as you realize you are perhaps living in the book's "Eighth Chapter."

I can't understand these accusations from some reviewers that "Chasing the Sea" is "austere," "condescending," "trite," or "hoity-toity." It is anything but. (And Bissell, who hails from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and who has written wholeheartedly about his love of speed metal, horror movies, and video games -- and self-deprecatingly about his distaste for the writing of Samuel Beckett and Henry James -- is certainly anything but a snob.) I would ask those who fear that Bissell is looking down upon the "natives" -- as one misguided negative review put it -- to read the end of Chapter 5, which is subtitled, affectionately, "Sacred Spaces." The author has fallen so in love with Uzbekistan that on a tour through Bukhara's Jewish Quarter, he suddenly tells his host Mila that he wants to buy an apartment she's put up for sale: "I tallied the bribes I would almost certainly be required to pay for a new refrigerator, a good phone connection, and consistent mail delivery. I rehearsed the explanations I would just as certainly be required to give my family and friends. I thought of the loneliness, the exhilarated transformation, of walking these streets as though they were my own. I imagined long days of waiting for plumbers and electricians to show up, long nights of reading in this courtyard as the moon surfaced in the sky, long Saturdays of setting up mousetraps and painting these rooms and working in the garden, and the long weeks and months of wondering what on earth I had done, what on earth I was trying to prove, what correlative might remain after the act of moving here had lost significance to everyone but me." Bissell comes to his senses and admits that, "It was just a thought. A romantic but . . . impossible thought," to which Mila replies, "Aren't all the best thoughts romantic?" If anything, the author is perhaps too attached to his subject, but if this is a failing, it is a failing of the most beautiful and humane kind.

The vagaries and gorilla dust that the negative reviewers are spewing makes it obvious that most of them haven't even read this book. Any intelligent potential reader should contrast these reviews with the testimonies from ex-Peace Corps members and others who are actually willing to attach their names to their words. Or, better yet, go to your local bookstore and read any page of "Chasing the Sea" to understand how excellent a book it is. As the author himself writes, quite beautifully: "The world, finally, is no longer large, and to ignore it likely requires more effort than simply to take notice. Now that we have suffered this truth, and suffered it deeply, we might take care to remember how comparatively fortunate we are as Americans. Any attempt to recognize American 'luckiness' will, I do not doubt, terrify many, anger some, and offer others mind-cleansing reassurance. Three things this recognition is not, and should never be: a call to arms, a lullaby, or a reason to stay home." Amen to that, and thank you Mr. Bissell.