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.
What was so good about this book was that none of the three pillars (history, travelogue, and memoir) of the book would have worked on its own but together create an original work, beautifully paced that is engaging but also incredibly educational. It takes pretty amazing talent to pull something like that off. The only other book I've ever read that was comparable was Martin Amis' Koba The Dread.
Anyway, the bad reviews of this book are just weird and I can only imagine come from some jilted lover or high school nemesis but they're disheartening to see pointed as they are at such a big hearted work. The anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in people.
