Reading these three great books, I felt I was actually making the journeys they describe. That’s the highest compliment I can pay a piece of writing. Reading them was an immersive experience. Bailey put me right there with him as he drove along the Iron Curtain from Travemünde, on the Baltic Sea, to Trieste, on the Adriatic. Same with Sullivan, as he and his family traveled across the U.S. from Portland, Oregon, to New York City. Same with Frazier, as he and his two Russian guides traversed Siberia from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
The books are similar in several ways. For one, they’re all epic road trips. For another, all three are chronologically structured. They read like journals, which is really what they are – wonderful day-by-day journals that tell us what their authors saw, felt, and experienced in detail after vivid detail. It’s my favorite form of writing. A third similarity is that all three exude a deep love of geography. Cities, towns, rivers, lakes, valleys, mountains – everything is noted, named, and particularized. I love rivers; these books brim with them: in Along the Edge of the Forest, the Trave, the Elbe, the Havel, the Spree, the Ecker, the Werra, the Saale, the Regen, the Danube, the Vltava, the Inn; in Cross Country, the Willamette, the Columbia, the Snake, the Clark Fork, the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the Red, the Mississippi, the Fawn, the Maumee, the Black, the Cuyahoga, the Musconetcong, the Passaic, the Hudson; in Travels in Siberia, the Neva, the Barguzin, the Maksimikha, the Severnaya Dvina, the Irtysh, the Ob, the Chulym, the Yenisei, the Mana, the Esaulovka, the Angara, the Ingoda, the Zeya, the Amur, the Bureya, the Khor, the Arseneveka, the Avvakumovo, the Lena, the Aldan, the Olchan.
Another similarity is that all three books are about incredible man-made phenomena: the Iron Curtain (Along the Edge of the Forest), the interstate highway system (Cross Country), the Toplinskaya Highway (Travels in Siberia: “If most Russian construction looks handmade, this r0ad appeared to have been beaten into the earth by hands, feet, and bodies”).
The brutality of the Soviet Union figures in two of them. In Along the Edge of the Forest, Bailey writes about the Iron Curtain – not as history, but as a real, existing, visible fact of life (barbed wire, land mines, watch towers, machine guns, guard dogs) that many border people he talked with considered an ineradicable fixture forever dividing East and West. In Travels in Siberia, Frazier visits an abandoned Soviet prison camp, which he describes in unforgettable detail right down to the nails, boards, logs, and barbed wire.
But these books differ substantially from each other, too. For instance, Along the Edge of the Forest is about one journey. Cross Country is also about a single journey, but it includes flashbacks of other trips, most memorably “The Worst Cross-Country Trip Ever.” Travels in Siberia consists of five separate Siberian trips, plus several Alaskan ones. Also, Along the Edge of the Forest is a solo trip. Cross Country is a family trip. Travels in Siberia features a trio of travelers – Frazier and his two Russian guides.
Another difference between these books is their writing styles. The prose in Along the Edge of the Forest is sparer and plainer than it is in Cross Country and Travels in Siberia. This isn’t a criticism. I relish this form of writing. It’s the equivalent of using a great point-and-shoot camera. Sullivan and Frazier are more descriptive than Bailey is. Sullivan creates fascinating compound adjectives, e.g., “in that decent-but-not-great, stereo-in-a-rental car kind of way,” “a smile breaks out across my sunburned-even-through-the-windshield face,” “the more-expensive-than-a-motel-but-not-outrageously-priced Saint Paul Hotel.” Frazier is a master metaphorist (“To me St. Petersburg seems more like a hole in the corner of a sealed-tight packing crate that Peter crowbarred open violently from inside. Once the breach was made the light flowed in, and it continues to flow”). All three writers are great company, where "great" means curious, observant, humorous, perceptive. This, in the end, is what counts most for me. I love spending time with them.
Now, to conclude, I want to imagine a collage that captures the essence of these three splendid books. I picture it like this: a 1981 map of Europe, showing Bailey’s route along the Iron Curtain from Travemünde to Trieste; East German watchtower; 1973 Saab station wagon; concrete post painted in chevron stripes of black, red, and gold; metal fence with SM-70 automatic sentry guns mounted on it; a makeshift balloon basket and hot-air heating burner; barbed wire; Soviet radar station (antennae, towers, domes); glass of beer; apple; nylon knapsack; a 2004 map of the U.S. showing Sullivan’s route from Portland, Oregon, to New York City; 2004 Impala sedan with rooftop pack; Lewis and Clark signpost; take-out cup of Kum & Go coffee with plastic lid; squeegee; parrot; Holiday Inn Express sign; tumbleweed; enMotion towel dispenser; a 2001 map showing Frazier’s route across Siberia from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok; Renault step van; mosquitos; satellite phone; fishing rod; crows; birch trees; watermelon; abandoned Soviet prison camp. Overlap these maps and images; paste them at crazy angles to each other; and randomly across the surface paint three black stripes representing the Iron Curtain, Interstate-90, and the Sibirskii Trakt. I call my collage “Sulbaizier.”
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