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.
The Aral Sea disaster is the motivating force behind this book, but it's got a lot more than that in it. I barely knew what an Uzbek was before I picked this up, but now I feel like I have a grasp of the region's weird and extremely interesting ethnic politics. Bissell is also really good at summarizing long, complicated swaths of history in funny prose. I admit I also never really thought about how bizarre the Soviet Union was, and how diverse, until I read this book. Maybe that is the best thing about Chasing the Sea: you learn so much, and yet it is so much fun to read. How did Bissell do that? He wrote a piece about meteors in Harper's that was the same way: educational, yet joyous, even when the subject matter is upsetting. (Warning: you will find much upsetting subject matter in this book. One part, about torture in Uzbekistan, moved me to tears.)
I think even people who don't like to read nonfiction (I don't, usually) will be enchanted by Chasing the Sea. Tom Bissell is a wonderful new writer.
Bissell is not trying to give you a travel guide or a history of Uzbekistan, though in parts he touches down in these areas. He writes unabashedly in the first person, signaling the reader that while his observations might be smart and well-drawn, they are, of course, still filtered through the author's own prejudices and partialities, as are most books. In spite of that, or maybe because of it, this has been my favorite pre-service read as of yet, something that should be reccomended not only to past and future PCV's (though for some reason its not on the list of books in the Volunteer handbook...hmm.), but to people merely wanting an engaging read.
'Chasing the Sea' fully captures without romanticism the grit, strangeness, and beauty that comes with traveling in an economically-hardened country unexplored and avoided by most Americans, and issues a much-needed cry for help for one of the world's largest man-made disaster areas, the Aral Sea. In addition to that, something that might only apply to future Uzbekistan PCVs, it has increased my desire not only to visit and experience (Bissell has a scathingly true section on larval PCV writers.) Uzbekistan, but to do my best to serve the country that is hosting me, a place that, truth be told, I had never really been conscious of before. "One of those -stan countries.", "Where-the-hell-istan". Uzbekistan.
Still, it's far from the worst example of its genre, so if this sounds like a fun beach read to you, my advice is to pick up a copy in the remainder bin now before they all get pulped to make way for the paperback edition. The fact that Pantheon can even be bothered with a paperback edition comes as a suprise given CTS's glacially-slow sales, though that was doubtless all planned earlier when it landed top reviews in the Economist and elsewhere.
One thing worth weighing in on though is the whole plagiarism controversy. Obviously, plagiarism has been a big story over the past year, with two of the nation's leading newspapers axing top scribes for the offense, and the release of the film Shattered Glass. But a closer examination reveals just how different the situation is here.
When Jason Blair, author of Burning Down My Master's House was exposed, it was done by The New York Times. Ditto for Jack Kelley at USA Today--granted, it took them almost a decade to do it, but they got the job done in the end.
Here, the situation is completely different--you've got a bunch of amateurs with their websites, picking up on some totally unproven allegations posted on this site. Granted, the evidence looks pretty convincing at first glance, but how many of us are really going to look beyond that? Is there even a book called Ecocide in the USSR by Feshbach and Friendly? I'll tell you this: the USSR doesn't exist anymore, so I wouldn`t be surprised if the book doesn`t either. And I'll tell you another thing: if the book does exist, do you think Bisell actually read it? Do you think I did? Did anyone? Doubtful...
And Bissell, no matter what you may think of his wooly beard and wet t-shirt, is no amateur. He is a writer for Harper's magazine, and an instructor at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer's Bakery and Workshop founded by Robert Frost in Vermont. A bit crusty, yes, but legitimate. So, unlike his many online critics, he is a professional writer, paid in cash and fellowships for his work.
What does all this have to do with plagiarism? Well, it's simple. If anyone is going to "expose" Mr. Wooly Beard for his alleged transgressions, it isn't going to be a bunch of Yahoos with Websites in Brooklyn or Philadelphia or Montana. That is not the role our society has chosen for these crude and absurd savages--that's Harper's role, that's Pantheon`s role.
Now we see who the real plagiarists are, because some people steal more than words, they steal other peoples' jobs, other peoples' authority. Instead of obeying their betters and consuming their products, they've gone off and pretended to be the editor in chief of Harper's, or chief executive officer of Pantheon. But they can't fool me -- they are no Lewis Lapham, and they are no CEO. It`s time to expose them for what they really are: PLAGIARISTS !!!!
PD
