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What promises to be a memoir of a father, his son, and the legacy of the Vietnam War falls short on all counts in Tom Bissell’s The Father of All Things. Bissell’s father was a Marine officer in Vietnam and together the two travel back to the country where they travel the countryside, talk to other veterans, and relive the war. Yet the book failed to resonate in an emotional way, something surprising since Bissell did such a good job making his travels in Uzbekistan
meaningful in Chasing the Sea.
The first section of the book intersperses a second-person narrative of what Bissell’s father was going through around the time of the fall of Saigon in 1974 along with a blow-by-blow account of the evacuation of the embassy. The pacing of the mass exodus from Vietnam is rendered in a way to make a real impact; such a complex and detailed historical narrative seems a bit out of place within a so-called memoir about the effects of Vietnam on a father and son. The imbalance is likely what makes this so hard to reconcile: the evacuation of the embassy outweighs the narrative on Bissell’s father by a factor of at least three to one.
The second and most substantial portion of Bissell’s book takes a broader view of history, though it too is interspersed with the travels of the author and his father in the country. The historical accounts are done within the context of the travel narrative, for example the section dealing with My Lai is placed as the father and son visit the area, yet again the history seems to overshadow the relationship between the two travelers. Bissell seems to be more interested in providing history than in actually describing the effects of the journey on his father or demonstrating how his father’s experiences in Vietnam affected the way he was raised. It’s not that these issues aren’t addressed, just that they aren’t given enough depth to prove truly interesting or make one feel as though he/she is not just reading an actual history book.
The brief third section provides an account of over a dozen grown children whose fathers were in the war, fighting for the NLA (North), AVRN (South) or the US. In these twenty or so pages, more emotion is rendered than in the previous 350. Though not quite long enough to provide true richness, these snapshots of the children’s views of their fathers was stirring, perhaps more so to me for my father also served in Vietnam.
I suppose that the true problem with this book is that it reads like a bloated magazine piece, which is what it started out to be. I am a big fan of Bissell’s work, but what seemed an ideal read for someone in my position (roughly the same age as Bissell with a veteran father), ultimately was disappointing and failed to provide any illumination on what effect Vietnam had on not just the relationship between the author and his father, but between a larger population of veteran fathers and their sons.
Tom Bissell’s Chasing the Sea is easily the best book I have ever read on Uzbekistan. We all know it’s the only one too, but despite the unfunny joke I really did enjoy this work quite a bit.
After washing out of the Peace Corps after being in Uzbekistan a few months, Bissell returned in 2002 f
or an assignment by Harper’s. The former Soviet republic has been plagued with issues, from ecological crises to rampant inflation, and given his contacts in the region, Bissell seemed an ideal choice. Primarily intending to focus on the rapid depletion of the Aral Sea, what one gets as they read is a sense of what modern Uzbekistan is truly like, as well as the history of the Central Asian nation, both before and after the Soviet government.
Quickly joining his translator Rustam, Bissell begins to proceed in a somewhat haphazard fashion, hitting contacts within the Peace Corps and taking his time looking at historical places. Rustam is sort of a sidekick on the adventure, and he provides a lens for Bissell to comment on Uzbekistan through the eyes of a native citizen. Of course, Bissell often uses other people for the same purpose, easily giving an account of events through opposing factions in what reads as easy and conversational.
Where one often sees seams in such narratives involves the introduction of historical facts into the narrative, but Bissell does a tremendous job of only providing the reader with information as it becomes necessary to contextualize things we see through his eyes or discussions that arise between he and others. The passages are never so long that one loses the primary narrative, and are always greatly informative. As someone whose many interests include the history of Islam, it was fascinating to get a history of the region extending back to the time of the Roman Empire. Typical westerners think of Islamic countries as being primarily in Persia and the Middle East, and I myself am guilty of not really understanding the role Islam plays in an often overlooked part of the world.
Though the purpose of his visit is primarily to investigate conditions of the Aral Sea, Bissell doesn’t even make it there until the last chapter, 300 pages into the book. At first this irked me a little, but I feel that the way this assignment was approached allowed me to really understand a lot about Uzbekistan and those who live there. That is a topic more interesting to me than the ecological catastrophe in the region, anyway.
Bissell leaves Rustam before traveling to the Aral Sea, promising to meet up with him when he gets back. But the book ends before his return, leaving this reader with a real lack of fulfillment with regards to his story. Though real life often interferes with natural story arcs, it would have been nice to at least see him acknowledged within the last fifty pages.
After reading this account of Uzbekistan, it is easy to see the influence his time in the region has had on his fiction. Though none of the stories in God Lives in St. Petersburg seem taken from these experiences, the tone of the fiction matches the tone struck here. I will be interested to read further fiction by Bissell with this knowledge in mind.
But perhaps the most pleasant surprise for me was the fact that Chasing the Sea is billed as a travel book. Up until now, I had always considered travel books to be the sort of things one buys to point out all the shopping and museums in a town or region, like a book published by Lonely Planet and the like. Now that I have seen what the genre can be, I am excited that I get to approach this new section of the book world freshly. Chasing the Sea is a fascinating and at times heart breaking account of an overlooked nation, one that like Bissell’s book deserves not to be.
I don’t think I’m the only person to be burned out on Dave Eggers and the McSweeney’s crowd, but I do appreciate some of the authors I have read for the first time within the journal’s pages. At the top of the list is Tom Bissell, who in his savage collection of short fiction, God Lives in St. Petersburg, delivers some of the flat out best writing about Americans and the rest 
of the world that I have ever come across.
Bissell joined the Peace Corps after college, returning how several months early for ‘emotional and complicated’ reasons. His interactions with the culture in Uzbekistan provided him with a lens to view the region and its relation to Americans. In ‘Aral,’ a female scientist goes to Uzbekistan at the request of the United Nations. But rather than following this career academic learn some sort of lesson about humanity, I was surprised when she was abducted by a KGB agent in order that he might show her his children, who have been blinded by the harsh chemical present in the drinking water. This agent’s harsh retorts to her assumptions about his culture, which uncomfortably are our own assumptions as well, are a rude awakening. Though it may be unsurprising to hear that America is exploiting third world labor and is disconnected from much of the world’s populace, Bissell’s writing makes us feel that on a deep, disturbing level.
Many readers may be familiar with his long story ‘Death Defier,’ which was included in The Best American Short Stories 2005, and concerns a photojournalist and his disconnect with his own emotions acting as a metaphor for America’s distance from the horrors that the media covers and covers up simultaneously. The title story concerns an American missionary in central Asia struggling with his inability to feel God’s presence and his sexuality.
In other stories we are witness to relationships that succeed in America being unable to survive another culture. Another story opens with an ambassador’s son having sex with two women when his mom walks in. As he shudders to a climax, the son provides the greatest line of the collection through a sheepish grin: ‘Two chicks at once, Mom,’
Though at times his word choice is a bit perplexing, using big words when short ones would do the same job without calling attention to themselves, Bissell’s prose is forceful and suited well to the confines of the short story. Devastating blows can be rendered and unlikable characters can be tolerated to a much greater degree than would be possible with a long work. His has a travel memoir and a book about his father and Vietnam, both of which I plan on reading in the near future.
meaningful in Chasing the Sea.
