Reeling In Russia : An American Angler In Russia

by Fen Montaigne

Release Date: 15 May, 1998

Edition: Hardcover

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"On the cheap" are the key words describing the author's jou

One thing is clear: "Reeling in Russia is no "Year in Provence". It has no warmth, no charm and little humour. Instead, it is a painstakingly detailed account of a poorly planned journey across Russia. Granted, the author has courage: he dared go alone through a foreign country with bad roads and a poor infrastructure. His command of Russian seems amazing, his research of reference materials on the places he has visited is thorough, and his translations of Russian idioms are witty.

Intent on sharing his adventures, Fen Montaigne must have had trouble deciding what audience to aim at. The title of the book almost scared me away, for it suggests that the intended reader is a fly-fishing enthusiast. However, Mr. Montaigne is not an expert sportsman and hardly a connoisseur of intricacies of getting fish in Russia. As far as fly-fishing is concerned, his book just might be a HOW-NOT-TO guide, for the number of places he fishes far exceeds the actual catch.

Despite some interesting encounters and philosophical detours into the nature of Russia's present crisis, the prevailing feeling I experienced when reading the book was ever-growing irritation with the author. Determined to cross the country without spending a lot of money, he starts his journey at Solovetsky Islands and finishes it three months later in Kamchatka. He diligently transcribes names of all the people he comes across, illustrates his narrative with little-known facts, qoutes other travellers... yet "on the cheap" remain the key words. Aware of the low living standards of the tortured postcommunist country, Fen Montaigne is resolute to take advantage of hospitality of strangers and to pay them only when forced to. Instead of money, he relies on cheap presents and the magic of being the first American in the Siberian wilderness.

It is hard to imagine a Russian traveller traversing the vast territories of America in the hope that kind strangers would provide him with room, board, expertise and transportantion -- all free of charge. Yet, this is exactly what Mr. Montaigne has managed to do in Russia. On the rare occasion when he does encounter a man unwilling to render services for free the author is appalled: "Suddenly, it dawned on me. I would be paying for all this - the driver, the van, the cottage, the cook, the food, the sleazy services of Arthur". Excuse me, and what did the author expect - that poor out-of-work Arthur would pay for it himself out of friendship to a man he had never seen in his life?

The bill "sleazy Arthur" presented for a 5-day program of fishing and sightseeing was $950. "This was my budget for a month! This was a Russian pensioner's income for an entire year!" the author laments. A double standard is obviously in effect here. How many countries does Mr. Montaigne know where you can cover thousands of miles on $950 a month? Comparing the bill to the pensioner's income, the author is also well aware of the $250 a day charged by the only local fishing camp open to foreigners, and on the last stretch of his trip he joins American anglers who had paid "$5,500 apiece to fly-fish for the steelhead used in the study" by the joint Russian-American expedition. Dealing with the locals, however, he prefers to leave them with warm thank-yous and firm handshakes.

Having reached the Buryat Republic, the free-spirited Fen Montaigne meets Alexander Sedenov, uneployed, living on earnings from chopping firewood. Alexander ("Me, hotel. You - come"} opens his home ("a hovel") to the weary traveller and becomes his guide. He also introduces him to a professional hunter Valery who agrees to join them in search of fish and the deputy farm manager who provides transportation. After an interesting three-day fishing expedition, however, "everyone... had his hand out". Obviously, realizing that they were going to be stiffed, the locals started dropping "strong hints about wanting to be paid." As a result, one of them received about $40, and then the other two candidly admitted that if they were not paid for the trip they would think "oh, that greedy American!" Would they be right! Meanwhile the American feels offended because, you see, he has already given one of them "a dozen flies and some other presents" and "did not want to offend him by offering money". As a result, Valery received about $60 and Alexander slightly less. "I didn't mind parting with the money, but I did object to the constant hints that I ought to pay", the author writes. Well, man, if you had at least mentioned paying from the start, they wouldn't have had to hint, would they?

With the wealth of materials that the author had at his disposal, the book had all the chances to become a serious contribution to travel literature. It could have pained a vivid portrait of the great land in distress and of its hard-drinking, but kind and strong people. However, the petty considerations of Mr. Montaigne trying to save here and to freeload there overshadow everything else in the book. Even throughout his touching encounter with the former inmate of the Gulag who now lives as a hermit in the taiga, the reader is left wondering: did the author pay the old man for his stay? And if he did not want to offend his host with money, what did he leave him - a dozen of flies?

Unique Personal Journey, But Little More

I do a fair amount of work in Russia, so I was interested in Reeling in Russia to deepen my understanding of this complex country. Essentially a travel diary, this book provides a very personal view of the author's fishing trip through Russia, remarkably made almost exclusively by land and water. Given his fluency in Russian and his laid-back--bordering on reckless--approach to travel planning, Montaigne's book provides a fascinating and truly unique view of Russia in 1996. This approach, however, is also the book's weakness. Montaigne's encounters are wonderful to read in and of themselves, but they rarely add up to more than snapshots of a point in time. Montaigne's journalistic background prevails as he recounts the here and now (actually the then and there in '96) without fleshing things out into a more enduring book. So if you're looking for an analysis or current history of Russia's transition out of the Soviet period, you will probably not be satisfied with this book. Otherwise, I do recommend Reeling in Russia for those seeking a tale of adventures crossing the chaos and desolation of 'early post-Soviet Russia', in meeting some of the human faces of this extraordinary culture, or simply for fans of this diary style of travel writing.