Catalogues, not the holiday kind

I've been reading Nicole Krauss's novel The History of Love, which has made me want to re-read Italo Calvino's dream Invisible Cities, which only primed me for the one-two of these articles-- about Russian airports and boring towns in the Maritimes-- both owing something to the master. 

First, Calvino:

Diomira: The special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time. 

Then Edward Riche writing in The Walrus:

Cranstock cannot even assert that it is the most boring town in New Brunswick, a title held for many, many, many years (too many to bother counting) by Addleby, the historical museum of which displays a copy of the 1968 phone book, the last year a separate edition was issued for the county. Frestover, Nova Scotia, situated at the mouth of the turbid, sluggish, and meandering Western River, on the featureless Northern Shore, was long considered one of the most uninteresting places in all of Canada, let alone the Atlantic provinces, until, in 2001, a fair-sized sinkhole appeared near the municipal boundary and a hobby farmer nearby acquired a llama.

Finally, an apparently un-bylined article in The Economist

Irkutsk: Five hours ahead of Moscow, in eastern Siberia, Irkutsk is the nearest city to Lake Baikal, the world's largest body of fresh water—water so clear that it induces vertigo in many of its visitors. The drive to the lake leads through vast forests, past the roadside shamanistic altars of the indigenous Buryats, under an enormous Siberian sky. In the 19th century Irkutsk was home to many of the so-called Decembrists, and the wives who followed them into exile after their 1825 revolt against the tsar: men and events that might have changed Russia's history, and the world's. Alexander Kolchak, a diehard White commander, was shot in Irkutsk in 1920; his body was thrown into the icy Angara river.

Planes descend into the city's airport over identikit Soviet apartment blocks and rickety Siberian dachas. The current arrivals terminal is a hut on the apron of the tarmac. Passengers wait in the street until the baggage-handlers feel inclined to pass their bags through a hole in the hut's wall. The bags then circulate on a terrifying metal device apparently borrowed from a medieval torture chamber. The nearby departure terminal is chaos, though by ascending an obscure staircase passengers can find an interesting photographic display on “minerals of eastern Siberia”.

The hut, however, is only temporary: a new, modern terminal is being built. It will be needed if the local authorities attract all the tourists they are hoping for. Lake Baikal, the awesomely beautiful main draw, was threatened by a new oil pipeline—until Vladimir Putin ordered its route moved away from the shores of what Buryats call the “Sacred Sea”.

Comments

[Valentine Cadieux]

Have you seen Mike Davis's recent New Left Review article "FEAR AND MONEY IN DUBAI"? (http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2635) Definitely Calvino:

‘Although you have an important business meeting at Internet City with clients from Hyderabad and Taipei, you have arrived a day early to treat yourself to one of the famed adventures at the ‘Restless Planet’ themepark. After a soothing night’s sleep under the sea, you board a monorail for this Jurassic jungle. Your first encounter is with some peacefully grazing brontosaurs. Next you are attacked by a flock of velociraptors, the animatronic beasts—designed by experts from the British Natural History Museum—so flawlessly lifelike that you shriek in fear and delight. With your adrenaline pumped up by this close call, you round off the afternoon with some snowboarding on the local indoor snow mountain (outdoors, the temperature is 105°). Nearby is the world’s largest mall—the altar of the city’s famed Shopping Festival, which attracts millions of frenetic consumers each January—but you postpone the temptation. Instead, you indulge in some expensive Thai fusion cuisine. The gorgeous Russian blonde at the restaurant bar stares at you with vampirish hunger, and you wonder whether the local sin is as extravagant as the shopping . . . ’

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In the past, the Baikal was respectfully referred to by many Russians as the "Baikal Sea", rather than merely "Lake Baikal". This usage is attested already on the late-17th century maps by Semyon Remezov. To these days, the strait between the western shore of the Lake and the Olkhon Island is called Maloye More.

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