In 1996, the writer Tom Bissell had the good fortune to be sent to the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan to teach English as a Peace Corps volunteer. Or so it seems today. Bissell ended up cutting short that tour of duty, but it ignited his fascination with Central Asia, which brought him back there in 2001, and has inspired and haunted much of his smart, engaging and prolific writing ever since.
Stepping into a swirl of grenades and clubs
Reviewed by Dan Zigmond
Sunday, February 13, 2005
God Lives in St. Petersburg
And Other Stories
By Tom Bissell
PANTHEON; 212 Pages; $20
In 1996, the writer Tom Bissell had the good fortune to be sent to the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan to teach English as a Peace Corps volunteer. Or so it seems today. Bissell ended up cutting short that tour of duty, but it ignited his fascination with Central Asia, which brought him back there in 2001, and has inspired and haunted much of his smart, engaging and prolific writing ever since.
"God Lives in St. Petersburg" collects for the first time the sharp, captivating fiction Bissell has been quietly publishing during the past seven years. These six stories, all but one set in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the other 'stans of the region, revolve around the way these places affect the Americans of various stripes who dare to venture within. The first story, "Death Defier," describes the life of Donk, an American combat photographer in Afghanistan. This is the book's longest entry, but Bissell manages to convey more in its 58 pages than many writers do in a whole novel, filling the prose with evocative descriptions of the country under U.S. invasion:
"The large courtyard, its trees stripped naked by autumn, was patrolled by a dozen more men holding Kalashnikovs. They were decked out in the same cross-bred battle dress as the soldiers Donk had seen loitering around Kunduz: camouflage pants so recently issued by the American military they still held their crease, shiny black boots, pakuls (the floppy national hat of Afghanistan), rather grandmotherly shawls, and shiny leather bandoliers. While most of the bandoliers were empty, a few of these irregulars had hung upon them three or four small bulblike grenades. They looked a little like explosive human Christmas trees."
Bissell has an amazing ability to single out fascinating physical details in a scene. When another writer might have said simply that two people held hands, Bissell, in "Animals in Our Lives," writes: "He takes her hand, she squeezing back so tightly the vestigial remnant of webbing between his fingers pulls tight." Or take his description of a dance club in an anonymous Central Asian capital in "The Ambassador's Son," with its "seizure-inducing lights, manufactured smoke, music so loud it felt as if something were laying eggs in your eardrum." And Bissell is also a master at narrating action. In "Expensive Trips Nowhere," as the nomadic Americans Douglas and Jayne are hiking through Kazakhstan with their Russian guide, Viktor, Bissell uses the seeming trivialities of their trek to take us deep within each character, as in this scene in which Jayne falls into a frigid stream:
"Viktor lifts Jayne's backpack from the river, water pouring from its innumerable pockets. Jayne's teeth chatter as harshly as dice in a wooden box. She is still speaking when Viktor scoops her up and carries her toward the shore, her wet, frightened face pressed against his chest. Douglas stands at the bank, arms out, waiting for a delivery that never arrives, uselessly conscious of the play of a thousand rainbows on the water and in the air."
The timing of this book couldn't be better, with current events drawing rare media attention to this part of the world. Anyone puzzled by the East- West divide within the Ukraine, for example, would do well to read Bissell's complex and moving title story, a wrenching account of an American English teacher (and undercover missionary) in Uzbekistan, and Susanna, a young, ethnic Russian student in his class. Susanna's mother's distasteful account of life for Russians on the wrong side of the post-Soviet borders makes for painful but eye-opening reading, and the story's closing images of yet another lost soul abroad will long linger with readers.
To say that "God Lives in St. Petersburg" is a wonderful and poignant collection is not to say that it is without flaws. Anyone who has followed Tom Bissell's work, particularly his essays in The Believer, will know that he can be a bit of a smart aleck. In his previous book, the travel memoir "Chasing the Sea," he confesses that while riding to the Tashkent airport terminal in a truck he calls "cattle-car dark and cold," he began humming the theme to "Schindler's List." That he both admits this was "not mildly funny," but still can't stop himself from sharing it with his readers, sums up a lot about Bissell's approach, and this inability to pass up a punch line occasionally gets the better of him in "God Lives in St. Petersburg," too. Labeling a tourist's puffy winter vest "marshmallowy" is both funny and descriptive, but it's probably not how the character would describe it, and this sarcasm creates a certain distance that can detract from these powerful stories. At times, Bissell's lucid narration of men and women in difficult, faraway places reads as the work of a resurrected Hemingway, but he is a Hemingway who may have watched a lot of "Seinfeld."
Still, we need all the Hemingways we can get, and for the most part, Bissell's clever humor draws us in rather than pushes us away. "God Lives in St. Petersburg" is a rare treat, transporting us deep within this often- overlooked region, expanding our horizons while never condescending to teach us any prepackaged lessons. Bissell's more recent travels have apparently taken him to Vietnam, and we can only hope that the stories that emerge from his wandering there are half as inspired as these.
Dan Zigmond is a contributing editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He lives in Freiburg, Germany.
