Two ways of looking at a cruise ship

Most of the work I've read by David Foster Wallace, who killed himself last week, has been his journalism and nonfiction. I never read his fiction, but of course was quite aware of his singular place in American arts and letters, especially in the 1990s. I've had friends whose opinions I respect both slam and praise him, and I think that in itself is a sort of accomplishment. But there is one thing about him that has never set well with me. In one of my magazine writing classes at Columbia, we were assigned to read Wallace's impressive January 1996 folio "Shipping Out," a long essay about the cruise ship industry and the nature of vacation, relaxation and modern American life. It was a big hit in class, as it should be because it is really very insightful and well-written. At the same time, in another class, we read some James Agee, and I was impressed enough to check out of Butler Library a volume of his collected journalism pieces. Included was a feature for Fortune magazine from September 1937 entitled "Havana Cruise," a long essay about the then-fledgling cruise industry. In subject matter and approach, these two articles are very very similar. I've never been able to square how a writer as well-read and knowledgeable -- not to mention as obsessively enamored with footnotes of all shapes and sizes -- failed to include at least a passing mention of Agee's work. I'm not suggesting there is any wrongdoing of any sort, I just can't figure it out. That said, the two articles are really very interesting in presenting what I would call the modernist and postmodernist approach to narrative journalism. With a caveat that I haven't really sat down and read through them in nearly ten years, I remember Agee's story is earnest, serious, obsessed with "breaking news" and the idea of the new. Wallace's is a bit more fun, full of jokes and asides, and seems more interested in hashing out ideas and experiences in an effort to connect seemingly random and inconsequential themes into some kind of bigger coherence. What they both share is a bit of self-indulgence (Agee's sometimes pretentious verbiage [too much Joyce]; Wallace's distractions into pop culture ephemera and jumping into rabbit-holes of his own whim) and an overwhelming sense of dread (especially well done in Agee's piece. He had a much better sense of drama). Both are excellent reads.

Regarding the politics of others

While abroad I was able to follow American politics pretty closely thanks to our wonderful wired modern world. But one of the great things about this past year is it has given me a little more perspective about how people look at one another's politics.

Consider the Sarah Palin nomination, which to me is probably the least funny thing to ever happen in American politics, but to the rest of the world is kinda amusing. In a column in the Telegraph last week, Mary Riddell lamented a bit jealously that UK conservatives weren't as colorful.

"We're playing personality politics without the personalities and, in that climate, woe betide any grey figure bold enough... to stick his eyebrows above the parapet.

"Can no Tory front-bencher conjure up a pregnant teenage daughter and a non-Etonian 'redneck' boyfriend?"

Crimmy, serious people debating serious issues about the nation and its future, without the reality television show bullsh*t? Sounds great to me.

When seen from the outside looking in, political life tends to flatten and simplify in distorting ways. On a serious note, it means that Americans refuse to acknowledge the political complexity and nuance of today's Russia in favor of a simple "the USSR is back!" narrative (which makes a dummy like Mikheil Saakashvili the inexplicable underdog freedom fighter). But on a personality level, it works the same way. We look at Nicolas Sarkozy, jet-setting with his hot new model/singer wife, or Silvio Berlusconi penning syrupy love songs with cruise ship lounge singers, and we ask ourselves how anybody could possibly take these people seriously. Well, here we have Sarah Palin, and I'm asking the same question (not two years ago, she was the mayor of a town smaller than Williamstown. Have you seen its "City Hall"?).

More excuses...

It is almost perfectly impossible to imagine that this summer actually began in Moscow, included several weeks in our old house, and several more weeks in our new one here. We’re still slowly getting unpacked, I’m settling in to a new job – more on that later – and we’re still chasing our toddler around until she starts daycare. So obviously, posting here has fallen by the wayside, but I hope to have more soon…

Ordinary weird

Slowly, we’re getting into the swing of things. The great thing about living abroad is the way that it makes the weird ordinary and the ordinary weird. For more than I year, the backdrop of my life featured onion-domed churches, billboards and posters in another alphabet, people chattering in another language all around me. Several times a day it would strike me that this was the strangest situation I’d ever been in, stranger than I would have dared to imagine when I was young. That all of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean were between me and where I was born, that there was a vast country all around that I was slowly beginning to actually understand.

Then I come back, and the scenes around me are familiar but all the details are sticking out. The first thing that came as a shock was how quiet it is up here – real quiet, as in, you don’t hear anything and when you try to actively listen you realize there is just stone cold nothing out there. It is almost unsettling. Also, I’m still at the stage at which nearly anything I do is the first time I’ve done it in ages. I had a burrito for lunch today – first burrito I’ve had in more than 15 months!

But it is all starting to sink in. Reading the Russian papers online, I feel like I’m reading about a very far away place. I don’t seem to cherish the ability to communicate freely and effortlessly with people in my native language the way I did in the first few days. And today, the Eagle ran my last “Letter from Moscow” column. It was the hardest one to write, as I tried to wrap it all up and get on paper all these stray thoughts I’d accumulated over the past year. The result is as incoherent as you’d expect from someone still going through jet lag, culture shock, life with a very busy toddler, and near constant worrying about what he’s going to do next.

Still feel gone

Before I let it slip another day, the family and I have arrived safely back in the States. Our trip back last week was a major adventure, handled with our family's now familiar stoicism. We learned more than we ever thought we would about the floor-plan of Boeing 747s thanks to chasing Mila around one for over five hours over the Atlantic, and made it from one end of Schiphol Airport to the other in under twenty minutes to catch our connecting flight while picking up three kilos of aged Gouda, The Times, Le Monde, and De Volksrant along the way. Since getting back to the Berkshires, we've been fighting jet lag and culture shock here at Camp Williamstown, where we are peacefully free of telephones and television for the time being. Still getting back on track, but more to come soon...

Walking to work

We're heading back to the States in a few days. We're starting to pack, and last week was my last one at the old office. Here are some pics I took one morning last week of the things I saw each day on my way there and back...


(The entrance to the Shchukinskaya Metro station)


(The artwork on the platform at Shchukinskaya, depicting our peaceful riverside neighborhood)



(The crossing at Barrikadnaya, where you switch to the Circle Line)



(The Park Kultury Metro station)


(Looking up Zubovsky Bulvar, my office is hidden behind that giant aircraft-carrier sized Nissan ad. This is for the best, as it is one of the more hideous Soviet relics in the city. Through my time in Moscow, it has been hidden by ads for Starry Melnick beer, Nikola kvass, among others.)

My talking head debut

Just like my favorite blogging media personalities, I now have the chance to make a cross-platform promotional post: I'm slated to appear on the Russia Today channel this evening to discuss tonight's Russia-Netherlands quarterfinal at Euro 2008. Watch me try to pronounce "Diniyar Bilyaletdinov" and "Demy De Zeeuw" on live teevee.

Kuzminki

(View of the north bank of Shibaevsky Pond)

For this long-weekend (in Russia) Friday we made a rare excursion to eastern Moscow for a trip to Kuzminki Park, which is clear across town but right on the Purple Line. The weather was nice, and Mila was in a good mood, so it was a nice family outing.

No matter what you do with a toddler, you are doing something with a toddler first and anything else a distant second. Kuzminki apparently has some interesting old estates and churches to visit, but we saw none of it. Most of the park is forest and lakes, and Mila took her time running around, blowing dandelions, and the like. We spent a good portion of our day at a simple playground where our kid discovered the unique fun of pushing her toy stroller up and down some planks.



Eventually, Mila actually wound down and decided to take a nap. This is a big deal, because lately she's uncovered some additional power source inside herself and has become increasingly convinced that she doesn't need to nap. She conked out for a little while though -- all that running up and down on the playground, obviously -- which was enough time for us to get shashlik...



I have to say that after all this time here, shashlik is probably my favorite thing about Russia. These are little chunks of marinated pork grilled over an open fire, with a side of piquante tomato sauce with cilantro, and often served with lavash, vegetable kebabs and some pickled goods...





A city park, summer, and meat grilled on sticks served on plastic is hard to beat (even if it may not look appetizing in pictures!)



On the way back, Mila fed ducks for the first time. I have to say, she's got quite an arm for her age.





(looking east over the pond)

Absurdistan

One of the books I bought on my trip to Washington and just got around to reading is Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan, which I found one sale at a bookshop in Georgetown. It's the story of Misha Vainberg, an obese son of a criminally rich man, who is eager to return to the multi-culti United States to be with his South Bronx love. But thanks to his father's line of work, Misha can't get an American visa, and so concocts a roundabout scheme involving a trip to a CIS nation on the Caspian Sea for a fraudulent EU passport. But he manages to get caught up in the murky world of post-Soviet politics.

As I read it, I felt a bit of deja vu: like his acclaimed debut, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan is in large part almost two completely different novels thrown together. In each case, one is very good, the other, not so much. Handbook is about the Russian-American immigrant experience -- full of of very sharp insights into about assimilation, America, Russia. But then goes wildly off the rails when the story relocates to Prague, or however Shteyngart specifically dubs its transparent stand-in. Absurdistan goes the same way, an opening in Russia that is full of close observation, followed by a meandering plot in some imaginary place.

I also have some concerns about his madcap quirkiness. This seems to be a common affliction among hot younger writers these days. I remember I first heard the word "Absurdistan" at a strangely under-publicized reading he gave at Barnard College years ago, right after Handbook came out. It was a very nice night, only about a dozen people showed up, and I was generally impressed. But when he mentioned he thought his next project would be called "Absurdistan," I thought, "uh-oh." But Shteyngart is writing about Russia, and having lived her for awhile, I see how that is actually probably the best key in which to work. For example, twice Misha Vainberg's cellphone doesn't work, and he gets an automated message that says, "Respected mobile phone user: your attempt to make a connection has failed. There is nothing more to be done. Please hang up." Sounds a little to quirky and cute, but that's actually what cellphones here say when they can't get a signal.

But what really sealed the book for me is the realization about what Shteyngart is really doing here. When I realized that I was starting to sympathize with a gluttonous, track-suit wearing, son of a murderous oligarch, through a lot of whining and some of the least appetizing sex scenes in all of fiction, I realized he's playing a pretty big game. He's taking a close hard look at the Russian Soul. He's trying to describe in lucid prose what, famously and aggravatingly, "can only be seen with the eyes of the soul." There are two scenes in particular that I think are laser-like in defining something important about Russia: the description of the way Misha and Alyosha-Bob become friends on a snowy night in college, and the brief speech Misha's servant Timofey delivers at a key moment late in the book. Never let it be said there are no writers anymore willing to tackle Big Themes.

The view from Sparrow Hills

Last week, Olga took me for a walk around her alma mater, Moscow State University, because I'd never been to that part of the city before and wanted to see it. From the university it is a short walk to Sparrow Hills, a steep hill over a bend in the Moscow River that offers easily the best views of the city.

Moscow is a sprawling metropolis, and it really isn't designed to be actually seen from a detached perspective like other cities. There is no skyline as it were, just buildings and smokestacks in the distance. You realize this from Sparrow Hills, which is impressive, but makes you feel like a bee that has just looked back at his kicked-over hive.

Here is the view looking a little to the north. Moving from the right to the left, you can see three of the spires of Stalin's famous "Seven Sisters," which are each impressive in their own right but never really -- in my opinion at least -- dominate the skyline as some people think. At the far right is the Foreign Ministry, moving to the left in the distance is the Kudrinskaya apartment block, and in the center (near the smokestack) is the Hotel Ukraina. That little bit of Singapore that seems to have dropped out of the sky on the far left side is the famous "Moscow-City" complex, the new business heart of the city that will eventually feature the tallest building in Europe.



This next photo below is a shot looking a little to the right. Right up front is the stolid mass of Luzhniki Stadium, the home of the 1980 Olympics. Looking just above it, you can see the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with its gold dome. Just a bit further past it, you can kinda make out the gold domes of the Kremlin's cathedrals as well.