Reeling In Russia: An American Angler In Russia

Not really expecting a fishing manual, I was suddenly more interested in the characters and their daily lives who Mr. Montaigne met on his economical trek across this vast land. Having visited Siberia myself in 1997. I found many of the same conditions and circumstances as experienced by Mr. Montaigne. A Russian pen-pal of mine (who is also an ardent fisherman) confessed that many of the rivers and streams in Russia are polluted with "many of the elements from the chart Of Mendelev". Montaigne confirms this, even some of the more remote northly flowing rivers of Northern Siberia.

A great deal has been written about what was once the Soviet Union. Some predates the formation of what Ronald Reagan once called "the evil empire" and other parts cover the years since its dissolution. A couple of volumes--John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb--even appeared on the list of this century's one-hundred most important pieces of journalism. Maybe the number of books about this part of the world will eventually rival the biographies of Marilyn Monroe in total words. One of the latest entries in this literature, and certainly one of the best, is Fen Montaigne's Reeling in Russia. I have two friends now engaged in commerce in this part of the globe and each loudly proclaims this work the best representation of the lives of the Russian people. Some critics have compared Montaigne, for five years the Moscow correspondent of the Philadelphia Inquirer, to Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux. For me, though, the two writers who come to mind are James/Jan Morris and Jonathan Raban. Both of them qualify as "travel writers"; more than that, they uncannily capture the essence and the spirit of the people about whom they write. Montaigne has a literal "hook" around which he constructs his narrative. He fishes his way around the former Soviet Union. With fly rod in hand he travels from place to place, specific types of fish in exotic locales his quarry. Classifying this as a fishing book though is like categorizing Moby Dick as a story about a whale. Montaigne, neither a particularly accomplished fisherman nor an even mildly obsessed one, has a much bigger target. He wants to learn what has happened to the people among whom he lived and worked. And he also desires to find out about the types of Russians who inhabit some of the far stretches of a country he did not previously have the time or freedom to explore. From his very first adventure, near the Solovetsky Islands in northern Russia, Montaigne has his readers hooked. His impassioned and well-crafted prose connects us with types of Russians who seldom make it in front of cameras (or authors for that matter). We learn of their hopes and much more often about their frustrations. We follow him around the world's largest country, soaking up both important facts and fascinating trivia. Along the way, the author paints portraits of memorable individuals and the Russian people as a whole. There are no acceptable excuses to not buy and read this book. If you have no interest in fishing you have nothing to fear. If fishing makes your blood run as cold as that of these swimming creatures, both large and small, you will find else much in Reeling in Russia to keep you fully engaged. If you happen to actually like this sport you will have an extra bonus; you can imagine yourself in the flywaters in which Montaigne wades and learn about a fascinating people in the process.

George A. Singer

In 1996 Montaigne, with fly rod in hand, traveled 7,000 miles overland across Russia. Fly fishing is one of his passions, and through fly fishing Montaigne encountered a fascinating array of post-Communist Russians and was granted a unique look at the turmoil and complexity of that society. And believe me, this was no pre-packaged tour of the Kola or Kamchata Peninsula (although he does visit both places.) This is a trek into the most remote and unwesternized reaches of Russia. Being fluent in Russian and possessing a well developed affection for adventure, Montaigne takes the reader into the real world Russia of today, a unique and exotic place full of surprises. Along the way he fishes for everything from steelhead to salmon, from grayling to taimen. To top it off he accomplishes this with wit and a writing style as finely tuned as Theroux. The great travel writers humanize the exotic. Reeling in Russia puts a face on the disturbing and difficult lives of the vast majority of Russians. The characters here become as knowable as neighbors and their concerns as human as our own.

Obviously, I loved Reeling in Russia. It is real pleasure to recommend it.

Grant McClintock

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?

Although I am not a fisherman, I loved Reeling in Russia. The book gives such a realistic picture of Russia and its people, the beauty, the waste of natural resources and the overwhelming waste of human beings. I would advise anyone to real this book. Fen Montaigne's fishing trip which spans a summer and a continent is as exciting as any good book of fiction and cautions us as Americans against loosing repect for the law and order which we have maintained all these years. Without law and order, a country cannot survive.