Travels without Herodotus

Note: these reviews have not been fact checked and come as they are, none previously published. The author will not countenance any belly aching about spelling, syntax or other peccadillos, though he will any other reasonable opinions on the worth of the titles considered below.-JD

Finally finished my "summer" reading short list which took me through October! These were Lenin’s Tomb: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick, Travels with Herodotus by Ryzard Kapuscinski and Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties by Robert Stone. All of these highly touted books—which had to crowd out some half a dozen other contenders on my list – lived up to my expectations, more or less.

I’d always wanted to read more about the collapse of the Soviet Union (the most important historical event of my lifetime), and Lenin’s Tomb was the most frequently mentioned title on this topic. The author (working for the Washington Post at the time) is a highly talented Pulitzer-winning reporter and editor who spoke Russian fluently and was able to draw up a many-faceted picture of the end of an Empire that everyone assumed would last forever.

It is the sort of book that required of me little or no virtue or self-discipline to read since it exerted a steady narrative pull like a strongly plotted novel.

Lenin’s Tomb revived my memories of this event which I remember from real news reports but have partially forgotten: It answered most or many of the questions that remained in my mind: first on leadership level: who were the plotters who nearly unseated Gorbachev but then quickly caved in; what were the roles exactly of Gorbachev and Yeltsin (were they the great heroes they appeared to be?) before, during and after; how did the huge Soviet nomenclatura react to the revolutionary forces in the streets, and how was power finally wrested from their hands? Remnick also recounts in detail those very fraught moments when the Baltic states managed to break away from the tyrannical grasp of the ‘bear.”

Even more interesting, though, was the question of how a bunch of cowed sheep (to mix a metaphor) – the Soviet citizens -- went from abject obedience to self-confident, democratic revolt. The author had deep entrée into Soviet society, and reports on all levels; he goes to what was left of the Gulag at that time, reports on the key strike of coal-miners in Siberia and gives a rich picture of the response of the Soviet intelligentsia--writers, artists and intellectuals such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. There is a touching portrait of the latter enjoying his last few days of life in vindication. The author also interviewed Stalin’s closest living relative, a grandson, who coerced Remnick to drink a toast to his grandfather!

Yes, I enjoyed reliving the Soviet collapse (not gloatingly either since I had once been a Soviet sympathizer in a minor way) but just as I was finishing the book, the Georgia-Russia mini-war broke out over two unspellable ethnic enclaves– and Russia was behaving like the old monster that was supposedly dead and buried... Or was it?

An excellent book all in all and timely in the sense that 20 year anniversary of this event is coming up.

Travels without Herodotus
Travels with Herodotus by the Polish journalist Ryzard Kaspuscinski had come as highly recommended by critics I trusted as any book of last year, and I was so sure of its merit that I gave it to a friend before reading it (this friend luckily took a shine to it!). Finally, getting to it, after carrying the book to a place where it might shed light on my own travels, Bodrum, Turkey – I wasn’t disappointed. A strange book it is, and one of the few that concentrate on the theme of the far-flung and well travelled life and try to justify it.

Kapuscinski made his reputation travelling all over the world reporting on unlikely events in strange places for the Polish central news agency; one of his most famous books was Emperor, nominally about Haile Selassie but seen as a comment on the Polish communist regime.

In Travels Without Herodotus, the author tells story after story of the huge quandaries he faced when thrown into the international arena as Poland’s only foreign correspondent without a single foreign language to his credit and next to no knowledge of the great civilizations – such as India & China--that he had to cover. He claims that a text picked up by chance helped him navigate these dilemmas and even profit from them. The text in question was of course the Histories of Herodotus, the ‘father of history.’

RK claims he learned much of his reportorial craft from the astute native of Halicarnassus, and cites a series of passages of what he considers insightful observation of foreign peoples and their customs. He also credits the Greek as having a critical awareness of sources and an admirable scepticism in his insistence on “confirming” the rumors he heard.

A typical RK comment:
In the world of Herodotus, the only real repository of memory is the individual. In order to find out that which has been remembered, one must reach this person. If he lives far away, one has to go to him, to set out on a journey. And after finally encountering him, one must sit down and listen to what he has to say—to listen, remember, perhaps write it down. That is how reportage begins; of such circumstances is it born (76)

Far from arraigning the Greek, as does Edward Said in Orientalism, with various crimes of contempt toward Eastern cultures, Kapuscinski finds Herodotus remarkably free from those mental vices, (but is blissfully unaware of the post-colonial polemics swirling around ‘dead white males’ Greeks not exempt).

The description of Kapuscinski’s last autobiographical work as an expression of his lifelong literary kinship with Herodotus, the ‘father of history” and the “first travel writer,” is accurate and amazingly so; I expected the author to use Herodotus mainly as a peg to tell his own stories and then drop the subject, but in fact he does much more, allowing the Greek into every crevice of his strange, complex life. He also retells by quotation a number of detailed plots from Herodotus, so that the reader benefits from the suspense of two narrations.

Kapuscinski's intention isn’t scholarly, rather to point out how the ancient Greek excelled at the profession he invented. RK’s approach to Herodotus is nonacademic and in a way naïve but as such is refreshingly positive. As a classic Herodotus is an unassailable authority, and RK never tries to second-guess him.

The only other point that RK doesn’t consider deeply is his own collusion with the Polish Communist regime which permitted him this relatively privileged life.

The most appealing theme in TWH though is its deep meditation upon and attempt to justify the far-flung life lived among “difference” and the pleasures of the intellectual attempt to decipher the enigmas generated by that difference. It offers one of the strongest defenses of intellectual nomadism that I can recall.

Not finding Herodotus’ Histories readily available, I took this volume with me to Bodrum (formerly Halicarnassus), Turkey, as the next best thing. And what do you know, at the end of the book a real epiphany occurred.

No, it wasn’t the plywood cutout of Herodotus standing outside the town of Bodrum, claiming the historian as its own. It was RK’s account in the final chapter of his trip of homage to the birthplace of his literary boon companion. Curiously enough, RK landed in Bodrum from the Greek island of Kos. I read this chapter after a short trip to Kos, and was delighted to see I had followed a bit of RK's itinerary (10 kilometers of it!). His last chapter is a touching visit to the town he thought was still called “Halicarnassus.” It was poor day trip devoid of charm but redeemed by the literary coincidence. I realized that sometimes it’s good to travel without Herodotus.

A primo read
Finally, Robert Stone’s widely praised memoir of the 60’s Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties is by far the best memoir I have read on that tormented, disputed period. The title comes not from the color of an herbal substance popularly consumed during the 60s but from an early morning atmospheric phenomenon observed by Stone and hipster friends as they hid out in Baja, Mexico, along with novelist Ken Kesey, who was a fugitive from justice at the time and an influential disturber of the peace.

Stone has never completely fulfilled the heavy burden laid upon him of being a great American novelist in the tradition of Hemingway/Faulkner/Wolfe or of being a believable successor to his hero Joseph Conrad. He has a kind of stature, yes, I agree, but to what degree he belongs in the company of the fictional greats remains to be seen.

(Stone and fellow American Don Delillo have both struggled mightily to write the great American novel – or Anti-novel – and both have been seen as just falling short by tragic milli-inches)

In any case, Prime Green won’t hurt his reputation and will probably gain him new readers of his past oeuvre since Prime Green was a bestseller in a tough quality book market. On the evidence provided here, I’m planning to read his first work, A Hall of Mirrors (but for the same reason will take a pass on the movie).

I give myself no virtue points for reading Prime Green all the way through because as a fellow rememberer of that time it was all intimate enjoyment at rubbing up against shared impressions -- along with the naked joy of hearing someone else’s confessions of shameful and/or hilarious episodes.

Contrary to what I’d heard Stone in this book doesn’t pose as hero nor exaggerate his leadership role in the 60s milieu. He is modest throughout, even in the tale of his first novel’s going straight to Hollywood. The only slight dishonesty I could find is Stone’s implying that he had been on the notorious Merry Pranksters Kool Aid Acid Test bus ride from SF to NY in the early 60s, when it seems he had not.

His style is thoughtfully hirsute but never opaque – it has though the stamp of an aggressive illogic that is the true Stone style, not pretty but painfully real and sometimes awkward.

One of the most valuable aspects of Prime Green is Stone’s depiction of the San Francisco post-Beat, proto-hippy literary scene and the coterie of sorts that formed around Ken Kesey (author of perennial favorite One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). Stone seems to have really liked and admired Kesey and this book is in some ways a tribute to him.

But I like best Stone’s detailed anecdotes of his early career days when he was unknown and struggling, such as having to defend his West Coast hirsuteness from red necks on a Greyhound bus in Ohio, his journalistic fiasco in wartime Vietnam and later another disastrous flameout on a New York City tabloid. Great stories from a writer who was really there and makes it come alive. The complaint of “too short” is well earned.