Lost Cosmonaut
by Daniel Kalder
Scribner

... does not visit places that are in any way desirable.

The anti-tourist eschews comfort.

The anti-tourist embraces hunger and hallucinations and shit hotels.

The anti-tourist seeks locked doors and demolished buildings.

The anti-tourist scorns the bluster and bravado of the daredevil who attempts to penetrate danger zones such as Afghanistan. The only thing that lies behind this is vanity and a desire to brag.

Etc. etc.; Lost Cosmonaut is a book that wears its mission on its sleeve, for better and for worse. Like Mykel Board's recent book on Mongolia, Kalder takes the perspective of a nobody traveling to nowhere — a person so contemptuous of established Western culture that he seeks to not only escape its clutches, but also to escape its penumbra, which extends through tentacles such as McDonald's, the Internet, Western music, etc.

For the most part, Kalder succeeds, and the existential struggle of writing meaningful, engaging prose about bleak post-Soviet microcosms is almost as interesting as the writing itself. Kalder's travels take him to all manner of obscure lands, including:

Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, where he views eerily preserved specimens from Peter the Great's collection of deformed humans and animals and tries to explain to incredulous locals that he's there on vacation.

Then to Republic of Mari El, where he searches for clergy associated with the region's nearly extinct native nature-worshipping religion....

And then to the storybook land of Kalmykia, where he searches for the mysterious "Chess City," a shockingly modern compound dedicated to a single game, created by the republic's megalomaniac ruler.

And, finally, the Republic of Udmurtia, where he searches for anyone who will own up to being part of the Udmurt ethnic group — a group whose members are essentially indistinguishable from Russian, and who, moreover, have been almost completely assimilated.

Observations of an Anti-Tourist is a cheerfully alienating and often very funny walk into a part of the world most Westerners — and virtually all Americans — will never otherwise read about, let alone visit. There's a real pleasure to be had in going somewhere where the spotlight never lands, where the world is never watching, and where even the locals are mostly beyond caring about the greater destiny of their small chunk of post-Soviet turf. Kalder's not a daredevil, particularly, and he doesn't bring an irritatingly gonzo persona to his story — he's curious, sure, and game for mostly anything, but he's generally a wry and sympathetic main character in a story that's sufficiently detached from the hustle and bustle of New York and London (or even St. Petersburg and Moscow) as to resemble experimental fiction.

But the inherent nihilism and deliberate pointlessness of the book conjures up an unflattering comparison to the recent travel work of another Scot, The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart. Stewart walked across Afghanistan in January, 2002, a mission that even natives suggested would lead to certain death. Bravado? Plenty. Bluster? Not much — Stewart talked down his trip, and did everything he set out to accomplish. And his story, tied together by the historic journey of the Mughal Emperor Babur resonates with precisely the sense of purpose and perspective that Lost Cosmonaut deliberately scorned and discarded.

And The Places in Between is a better book for it. Kalder gives a finger to the idea of a message or meaning, and comes up with an interesting meditation on how difficult it is to slip the orbit of Western culture, and the forgotten world that exists on the margin of empire. But Stewart embraced meaning, danger, and current events in a fearless and full-on manner, and left readers with a crackling story that paints a picture of a society in crisis. The two volumes are like bookends, and actually make excellent reading back-to-back — Kalder, to remind you of the freedom that comes from rejecting conventional narrative and externally imposed priorities, and Stewart, to remind you of the excitement of figuring out where the action is, and walking clear through the middle of the mess.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)