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Subject: Washington Post Review of Xander's Book, _Siberia Bound_
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Cc: Angela Cooper <Angela@KnowNow.com>, xander@KnowNow.com
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From: Rohit Khare <khare@alumni.caltech.edu>
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... I'll assume that, on general principle, you've all gone out and 
bought a copy of fellow FoRKer Alexander Blakely's new book. While the 
review is broadly fair, I have to admit that the criticisim is a little 
facile. The key to writing, as with software, is to take away detail, 
not add more. But even a map would have helped with all the details of 
how vast Xander & Natasha (& Max!!)'s territory is...

Best,
   Rohit

PS. feel free to drop by SF tonight for his reading/signing!

===============================================================
Monday, August 19 at 7 pm
Alexander Blakely
Siberia Bound is a coming-of-age account of life as an entrepreneur in a 
new wild-and-free-market‹ Russia of the early 1990s. Alexander Blakely 
uses his gift for storytelling to describe the four years he spent 
living and working toward the American dream in the former Soviet Union.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24428-2002Aug15.html

'Siberia Bound: Chasing the American Dream on Russia's Wild Frontier' by 
Alexander Blakely

Reviewed by David Tuller
Sunday, August 18, 2002; Page BW08


SIBERIA BOUND
Chasing the American Dream On Russia's Wild Frontier
By Alexander Blakely
Sourcebooks. 320 pp. $22.95

Judging from Siberia Bound, Alexander Blakely seems like a pretty cool 
guy -- adventurous, engaging and fun to hang out with. After all, most 
chroniclers of Russian life base their tales in Moscow or, alternately, 
St. Petersburg, the most livable of Russia's not-very-livable cities. 
Deciding instead to settle in a former academic community outside of 
Novosibirsk, one of Siberia's major cities, Blakely set out to pursue, 
as his book's subtitle declares, "the American dream on Russia's wild 
frontier."

Blakely, who moved to Siberia after finishing college with an economics 
degree, has a breezy writing style. And although his book is flawed in 
many respects, it does include some sharp observations of life in 
Russia. "Usually with construction," he tells us, for instance, "you 
have two choices: 1) you can do it quickly, or 2) you can do it right. 
The Soviet construction worker . . . takes his time doing things wrong."

Anyone who has spent time in Siberia knows that its inhabitants are a 
breed apart. They disdain their compatriots in the country's Western 
regions and pride themselves -- perhaps excessively -- on their courage, 
strength and inner fortitude. Siberia, in fact, occupies a space in the 
Russian national psyche similar to that of the Wild West in American 
mythology. The efforts throughout the 16th and 17th centuries to settle 
Siberia's vast expanse and exploit its natural resources still resonate 
with Russians. So does the region's role as a convenient dumping ground 
for criminals and political dissidents during the czarist centuries and 
as home to the cruel network of gulags in Soviet times.

Unfortunately, little of this rich brew of history and myth makes an 
appearance in Siberia Bound. Neither do lots of other pertinent facts. 
Russians often say that, in Russia, anything can happen -- and usually 
does. So it's easy to believe that two young men could establish a 
chocolate business on little more than hope, smarts and chutzpah. But 
while Blakely describes establishing a cocoa-bean importing business 
with his friend Sasha, we never learn how they met in the first place or 
why he believes Sasha to be a trustworthy associate. The two of them 
strike a deal to sell their beans to a local chocolate factory, yet we 
find out virtually nothing about the chocolate the factory produces. Is 
it tasty? Disgusting? Are we talking chocolate bars, chocolate truffles 
or chocolate syrup? A few details would go a long way here.

The author has the makings of a terrific story. But even though Siberia 
Bound includes frequent humorous episodes, Blakely generally fails to 
transform the pungent ingredients into a satisfying meal. The constant 
descriptions of encounters and conversations ultimately differ little 
from one another. People are forever winking, smirking and slapping one 
another on the back. Slamming down shots of vodka and making sentimental 
toasts to women and friendship play an inevitable role in any account of 
Russian life, but reading about such occasions becomes tiresome after 
the 20th or 30th repetition.

Blakely is also given to facile comments that are meant to sound smart 
but often fall flat. "Democracy and the free market, the best 
institutions the West had to offer, stormed over the borders and ran 
deep into Russia," he tells us. "But like all foreign armies throughout 
history, they quickly were spread too thin and became diluted." And then 
there's this summation of his time in Russia: "Those four years have 
left me with a lifetime of rabid ambivalence to chew on until I've got 
no teeth left."

Blakely manages to include a few unpleasant -- and wholly unnecessary -- 
laughs at the expense of Chinese workers and gays. And although I like 
wordplay as much as the next guy, it's jarring when non-English-speaking 
characters make puns in English. "In a pinch," says one character, a 
chocolate factory director who warns Blakely not to store extra cocoa 
beans on site, "I'm afraid we would probably take a pinch."

Some of these faults wouldn't matter if Siberia Bound were a picaresque 
novel or an account that didn't aspire to authenticity. But the effect 
here is to undermine a reader's faith in the narrator's reliability and 
to reduce most of the characters to the stock figures encountered in 
dozens of other accounts of Russian life. So in the end, I believed the 
broad contours of Blakely's story but found it hard to take seriously 
many of the particulars. And his ultimate conclusion -- that capitalism, 
material comfort and wealth do not bring happiness -- hardly qualifies 
as a revelation. •

David Tuller is a contributing writer at Salon.com and the author of 
"Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia."


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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