Travels In Siberia - Part I

This is just a quick progress report on my reading of Ian Frazier’s Travels In Siberia. I finished Part I last night. I enjoyed it immensely. I was surprised by the amount of new material, i.e., material not previously published in The New Yorker. Almost all of Part I is new, except for Chapter 1, which appeared in “Travels In Siberia – I” (The New Yorker, August 3, 2009). Part I of the book covers a couple of Russian trips that Frazier made back in the early nineties before he undertook the epic drive across Siberia that he described so memorably in the magazine. Part I brims with inspired writing. One of my favorite passages is a description of Nome:

It’s irregular waterfront lots accumulate crumbled-up Caterpillar treads, school bus hulks, twisted scaffolding in rats’-nest heaps, rusted gold dredges, busted paddle wheels, crunched pallets, hyperextended recliner chairs, skewed all-terrain vehicle frames, mashed wooden dogsleds, multicolored nylon cable exploded to pompoms, door-sprung ambulance vans, dinged fuel tanks, shot clutch plates, run-over corrugated pipe, bent I beams, bent rebars, bent vents. The pileup at land’s end is almost audible, as if you could hear the echoes of the cascade from the continental closet where all of it once was stored.

For me, Part I’s highlight is Frazier’s account of his trip to a Chukotka fish camp. Frazier provides numerous vivid details, e.g., descriptions of an ancient Yupik camp site (“On the long, grassy expanse above the seaside gravel, many large skulls of bowhead whales they had killed stood in an unevenly spaced line”), the sea’s surface (“Here and there curled white feathers dropped from the passing seabirds sat undisturbed like wood shavings on a shiny floor”), a Yupik village (“Most of the houses were of stucco and lath construction, trim and cozy looking, with salmon hanging all along the eaves to dry, wooden ladders leading to outside attic doors and neat yards”), making tea (“Then he produced a blowtorch, lit it, applied its flame to the blackened teapot, and boiled water for tea”). I devoured this section of the book and wished for more. At the beginning of Chapter 2, Frazier says, “When I was in my early forties, I became infected with a love of Russia.” After reading Part I, I believe I'm becoming infected, too. I'll report further after I’ve finished Part II.