The Columbia encyclopedia Book

Now that more and more writers in my age bracket are getting published, I've noticed something unsettling: reading their books is a bit like listening to my own voice on tape and has the same cringe-inducing effect. I realize every generation has its own jargon, its in-jokes and iPod playlists, but experiencing it from the inside is different. And demoralizing. It makes you appreciate how hard it is to rise above the idle chatter and say something halfway original.

At any rate, Chasing the Sea struck me as just the sort of book I might have written if I'd spent a few months bumming around Uzbekistan'and if I were, you know, a little brighter and more enterprising. As a person, Tom Bissell is probably nothing like me, but various little signs and shibboleths give away his age. He's definitely one of us.

Take his sense of humour. I'm not sure how to categorize it exactly, but I know it when I hear it, if only because of the Pavlovian regularity with which it cracks me up. Much of the comedy in the book is provided by Rustam, the MILF-chasing Uzbek slacker who serves as Bissell's interpreter. The exchanges between the two, full of comic misunderstandings and crude affection, have this loopy, laid-back, THC-infused quality:

"We need to go somewhere soon, bro, because my pee bubble is full."
"Your pee bubble?"
"This is the bubble which holds my pee."
"Your bladder, you mean. Bladder. B-l-a-d-d-e-r."
"In English you don't call it the pee bubble?"
"I will from now on, probably."

And later:

"Ferghana is safe, bro. I don't want you to worry."
"I'm not worried."
"The only thing you have to worry about is the Wahhabi rebels in the mountains. And then only during Rebel Season."
"Rebel Season."
"Yeah. When the snow melts. They move around."
"When exactly is Rebel Season?"
"Well, I guess now."


For me'and maybe only for me'the interesting thing about travel writing is that, while technically non-fiction, it's hedged with as many codes and conventions as the novel. Among other challenges, the writer is faced with the delicate task of creating a narratorial voice, of constructing a persona. The trick is to be sympathetic without appearing to curry favour with the reader. The classic British travel writers'whom Bissell has obviously read with care'solved this problem in classic British fashion: through irony, understatement, self-depreciation. Bissell adopts an up-to-date, American version of this strategy, presenting himself as a bumbling but well-meaning doofus whose courage keeps deserting him at critical moments (thus, having agreed to smuggle some cash to the wife of an imprisoned Uzbek journalist, he gets so freaked out by the superintendent of the woman's apartment building that he falls all over himself trying to run away'something it's very hard to imagine Sir Wilfred Thesiger ever doing.)

Even if it is just a conventional pose, Bissell's innocent-abroad routine seems very credible to me, mostly because I can relate all too well to his habit of losing his shit in spectacular ways. All the same, it's kind of a sad commentary on 21st century manhood that we've gone from aristocratic sangfroid ("Being tortured by Papuan cannibals is rather a bore") to our present state of gushy enfeeblement (Bissell has a recurring joke about how his decision to quit the Peace Corps back in the 90s was 'emotional and complicated''basically he missed his girlfriend and went crazy). What the fuck has happened to us?

Structurally, Chasing the Sea is'excuse the pun'a little choppy. Every time Bissell gets to a new town, he calls a halt to the narrative and piles on the scholarly in-fill, giving you a potted history of the place from medieval times to the present. And he can't so much as glance at a minaret without writing two pages of expert commentary on its lovely neo-Byzantine ribbing or whatever. Unless you have a truly perverse passion for Central Asian history and architecture, you're going to find all this expository stuffing very lumpy.

But read it anyway. Even if you're not lucky enough to belong to my fabulous cohort'heck, even if you're one of those insufferable baby boomers'you're bound to get something out of it. It's a sad, funny, (extremely) informative book. Just skim the minaret parts, is my advice.