Elizabeth Pisani: Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation. (2014)
Tue, Sep 16, 2025./noise/books | LinkKindle. Probably eventually inevitable after reading her The Wisdom of Whores (2008) fifteen years ago. Prompted by a recent column by Duncan Graham.
This is a polemical piece of travel writing, light on the anthropology and freed of her focus on public health though some of her professional interests do leak through. She leans into a "Bad Boyfriend" motif of about 25 years standing. The general avoidance of commentary on the more populous areas, tourist Meccas (she acknowledges leaning on the restorative powers of Bali and so forth but does not detail how) and "tourist objects" (beaches, volcanoes, etc.) makes stretches of it seem like hard and thankless slog: days on boats with barely room to sit out of the sun and rain, jaunts into degraded rainforests on motorcycles with people she doesn't know, unskilled hard yakka.
Pisani obviously has deep connections with Indonesian culture, very strong language skills and a bravery I once may have envied. I wonder how much of the ready Indonesian hospitality she encounters is due to this. Many of her experiences seem inaccessible to a man (and in counterpoint I guess she missed out on the men-only things — but it is possible that there aren't any.) She doesn't dwell too much on foody things; memorable but unenticing are the sugary drinks and the omnipresent Padang restaurants. She must have guts made of iron. Some stories just tail off.
Keeping it light, the book is thin on the literature. She updates Koch (1965/1978) on how wayang is very different now. I wanted to know more about land tenure and property rights in general, given all the upheaval and disposition of various groups over the decades; did Indonesia go through a redistribution like Việt Nam (disastrously in the 1950s)? Where are the lines drawn between personal and clan property?
Pisani recounts some great yarns but with enough cracks to make me suspect that the best bits were unpublishable.
