The former Soviet republics of central Asia provide the backdrop to the assured collection from young American writer Tom Bissell



Now the Russians have gone, the people trying to perfect the area are American militarists, missionaries, 'do-gooders' and environmentalists. Bissell himself is a former member of the Peace Corps and a regular visitor to the 'Stans', and following his apparently traumatic time in Uzbekistan he knows only too well that trying to perfect yourself through perfecting others is a dangerous game. Utopias fail because people can't be perfect and you can't just blame the environment. As Victor, a cynical veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan acutely notes: "Steppe makes strong what is strong. Makes weak what is weak."

The former Soviet republics of central Asia provide the backdrop to the assured collection from young American writer Tom Bissell

In perfect Steppe with the Stans
DAVID ANNAND

God Lives In St Petersburg
Tom Bissell
Faber, £7.99

THE USSR was the 20th century's great failed attempt at perfection, and nowhere has this failure been felt more keenly than in the former Soviet republics of central Asia that provide the backdrop to this assured collection from young American writer Tom Bissell.

Now the Russians have gone, the people trying to perfect the area are American militarists, missionaries, 'do-gooders' and environmentalists. Bissell himself is a former member of the Peace Corps and a regular visitor to the 'Stans', and following his apparently traumatic time in Uzbekistan he knows only too well that trying to perfect yourself through perfecting others is a dangerous game. Utopias fail because people can't be perfect and you can't just blame the environment. As Victor, a cynical veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan acutely notes: "Steppe makes strong what is strong. Makes weak what is weak."

Victor appears in 'Expensive Trips Nowhere', the author's reworking of Hemingway's 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber', which follows a couple recklessly spending their inheritance on bizarre holidays. It contains a beautifully drawn moment of masculine weakness that is only rivalled in the title story.

'God Lives In St Petersburg' tells of missionary Timothy Silverstone's attempt to lead the Uzbeks to Christ - a project that fails spectacularly not because Uzbekistan is untamable but through his failings. Timothy, whose fate is fairly damning, gets off lightly in comparison with the collection's other American proselytiser, Ryan, who features in 'The Ambassador's Son' opposite Alec, the startlingly corrupt embassy brat. Alec is hilarious, wittily revelling in his own turpitude with all the relish of a young Martin Amis as he further corrodes Ryan's dignity. This lament from Ryan contains a perfect précis of the futility of the American project and also, in Alec's response, one of the collection's best jokes.

"I've repeatedly had to go to the bathroom in a hole. Horse has been a dietary staple. I've been stoned, mugged twice, and harassed by the SNB. I'd never tasted alcohol in my life before I came here, but I managed to spend an entire week drunk. I've been in three fistfights, two of them with children. I cheated on my wife 27 times, nearly lost my faith in God, and in the meantime successfully managed to evangelize only ten people."

"That's not too bad. Only two less than Jesus."

These stories could be simple allegories exploring the folly of America's attempt to 'civilise' central Asia when, as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib show, they lack the moral authority, but Bissell's creations are too affecting to be mere ciphers for a wider political point. When he writes well, as in 'Animals In Our Lives', which tells of a cuckolded man's return to America from Kyrgyzstan, Bissell's prose is too alive, his observations too discriminating and his characters too concrete for his work to be reduced to politics.

When this story was posted in June 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:




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