B. TravenBesprekingen

A Pretty hard boiled account of how a man who won a small prize in the Mexican state lottery, and parlaaid that nto a year of hard work working a small gold claim in the Mexican mountains. Things do not create a happy ending, but the film is a classic.

Der Ich-Erzähler Gales – er taucht bereits in der Erzählung Die Baumwollpflücker (1925) auf, dann in Die Brücke im Dschungel (1929), jedes Mal ohne Vornamen[1] – ist in diesem Roman ein amerikanischer Seemann aus New Orleans. Er verpasst nach einem Landurlaub in Antwerpen sein Schiff, die Tuscaloosa. Da sein einziges Identitätsdokument, nämlich seine Seemannskarte, an Bord geblieben ist, macht er eine neue Erfahrung, nämlich ohne Papiere durch alle Maschen anerkannter gesellschaftlicher Zugehörigkeit zu fallen. Als Staatenloser geltend, wird er über Landesgrenzen[2] abgeschoben und macht eine Irrfahrt durch Westeuropa von Belgien über die Niederlande nach Frankreich, Spanien und schließlich Portugal. Am deutlichsten gibt ihm der amerikanische Konsul in Paris zu verstehen, in welche Situation er ohne urkundliche Bestätigungen seiner Existenz geraten ist, so dass ihm auch der Konsul nicht mehr helfen kann:

„Ich war nicht geboren, hatte keine Seemannskarte, konnte nie im Leben einen Pass bekommen, und jeder konnte mit mir machen, was er wollte, denn ich war ja niemand, war offiziell gar nicht auf der Welt, konnte infolgedessen auch nicht vermisst werden.“

– B. Traven: Das Totenschiff. Kapitel 14[3]

In Barcelona zwingt ihn seine Lage, auf dem völlig heruntergekommenen Dampfer Yorikke anzuheuern. Das Schiff soll nach Liverpool auslaufen. Auf dem Schiff arbeiten außer dem Skipper nur Seeleute, die keine Papiere mehr haben, also lebendige Tote sind, für die sich niemand mehr zuständig fühlt, außer dass sie noch für den Eigner eines „Totenschiffes“ wie die Yorikke arbeiten können. In keinem Hafen werden sie mehr durch die Kontrollen an Land gelassen, so dass sie, über die ihnen zustehende geringe Heuer zusätzlich dem Skipper ausgeliefert, kaum die Chance haben, das „Totenschiff“ je ordnungsgemäß wieder verlassen zu können. So geht die Reise auch nicht nach Liverpool, sondern das Schiff, das offiziell mit wertloser Fracht unterwegs ist, betreibt Waffenschmuggel auf Mittelmeer- und küstennahen Atlantikrouten. Bei einem Landgang in Dakar wird Gales mit dem aus Posen gebürtigen Stanislaw Koslowski, seinem einzigen Freund, der nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg weder die deutsche noch die polnische Staatsangehörigkeit erlangen konnte, shanghait und gerät auf die Empress of Madagascar.

Die Empress ist ein erst drei Jahre altes Schiff und in entsprechend gutem Zustand. Sie bringt aber die angegebene Maschinenleistung nicht, so dass die durch Fracht zu erwirtschaftenden Gewinne ausbleiben. Deswegen haben die Schiffseigner schon zwei Versuche unternommen, das Schiff zum Zweck des Versicherungsbetrugs untergehen zu lassen. Bei einem erneuten Versuch von Dakar aus, an dem Gales und Stanislaw gezwungenermaßen beteiligt sind, geht das Schiff schließlich mit Mann und Maus unter, und Gales findet sich ohne Aussicht auf Rettung total erschöpft und von Halluzinationen verfolgt auf einem Stück Kajütenwand im Meer treibend wieder.

„Gale jedoch überlebt – wie, wird nicht geschildert, und Traven hat in [einem] Aufsatz über Das Totenschiff die Auskunft augenzwinkernd verweigert, nur zugegeben, daß wer erzähle, ‚wohl auch‘ lebe. […] So kann Gale weitererzählen.“ (Wikipedia)

Surprisingly mediocre.

Tapa dura con sobrecubierta.
Buen estado.
Bruno Traven (en algunas fuentes) era el seudónimo de un novelista, supuestamente alemán, cuyo nombre real, nacionalidad, fecha y lugar de nacimiento y detalles de biografía están sujetos a disputa. Una certeza sobre la vida de Traven es que vivió durante años en México, donde también se desarrolla la mayor parte de su ficción, incluido El tesoro de Sierra Madre (1927), cuya adaptación cinematográfica ganó tres premios de la Academia en 1948.
Entretenida novela de aventuras con pretensiones moralizantes, aunque con bastantes errores.

There are several good reasons to read this. It's a funny first-person yarn by a happy-go-unlucky societal misfit that's reminiscent of Mark Twain. It's a brilliant sendup of governments and bureaucracies. It's a slice of maritime history that will give you a detailed experience of working life aboard an early steam freighter, written in the colorful lingo of the time but without sacrificing readability. It presents a moving psychological portrait of an outcast who never loses spirit to keep going in a cruelly exploitative world. And finally, it casts a revealing light on systems in which we are all complicit that can in the name of efficiency doom good people to non-personhood.

If you haven't read any B. Traven, that's another reason to read this book.

Gerard Gales, marinero mercante de Nueva Orleáns, es abandonado de manera accidental en el puerto de Amberes, indocumentado y sin dinero. Perdidas sus señas de identidad, Gales dará tumbos por media Europa siendo repudiado en todas partes. Tras vivir de la mendicidad durante un tiempo, entra a formar parte de la infame tripulación del Yorikke, un barco ruinoso en el que habitan aquellos que han sido expulsados de la sociedad y que se dedican al contrabando internacional.

Canasta de cuentos mexicanos es el producto de la privilegiada visión de uno de los escritorios mas destacados del siglo XX. B. Traven, narrador que pudo entender e interpretar como nadie la reallidad mexicana, nos describe en una serie de cuentos la vida de los indios resaltando su ingenio, agudeza y mordacidad. Estos textos de prosa sencilla y humor directo han sido leídos y alabados por generaciones enteras en todo el mundo.

I got this from the library in spanish, without realizing it. I do read and write in Spanish, So I kept it, and figured I'd be able to Wing it. There were so many words that I didn't know, but I didn't want to look up every word I didn't know, because it would have taken me four times as long to read it. I could more or less figure out from the context what those words meant.

Macario is a wood cutter. He has pestered his wife so much that they have 11 children. They are so poor that they go to bed every night hungry. As much as Macario has pestered his wife, she still loves him dearly. His One wish in life is to eat a whole turkey all by himself. His wife saves a penny a day or a penny a week, who knows? After 3 years of this scraping and saving, she buys him a whole turkey for his name day. She cooks it with tenderness and love, and when he wakes up the morning of his name day, she tells him to take it out to the woods where their children won't see it so he can enjoy it in peace and solitude.

He finds a spot in the woods where he can sit down to eat. He begins to separate a leg from the turkey, when he sees a pair of charro boots in front of him. He looks up and sees a fancy dressed man in front of him. this man begs him for a piece of his turkey because he's so hungry. Macario denies him. The man keeps on begging him, saying these woods belong to him and he'll give them to him so he can cut as much wood as he wants to cut. Macario still denies him. The man finally leaves. Macario is just about to pull the leg again to eat it, when a pair of worn sandals appear in front of him. He looks up at the man in front of him and sees a man so poor and so skinny. The man begs him for the leg of turkey. Macario tells him that he just can't give it to him. He has been waiting all his life to eat a whole turkey by himself and he just has to do it. The man pleas with him, telling him how hungry he is as Macario can see for himself. Macario still refuses. Macario once more begins to eat his turkey when another man appears in front of him. This man is the Grim reaper. This man, Macario cannot refuse. So he splits the turkey with him. The two of them have a good time eating and talking for a while in the forest. As a reward for his generosity, the Grim reaper gives Macario a bottle of drops that can cure any illness. But he warns Macario that once the bottle of drops is gone, that's it! There's no more. Also, he tells Macario that if he appears at the head of the patient, he cannot let him be returned to good health. However, if he appears at the foot of the patient, then macario can cure him.

"...Nunca tendré un pavo entero para mí solo. nunca, nunca. Así, pues, qué hacer? bien, compadre, llénase la barriga, yo bien sé lo que es tener hambre. Nunca he tenido otra cosa en mi vida. siéntese, siéntese frente a mi. medio pavo es suyo, gózelo."

Macario cures many people, and becomes rich from the people who give him money for curing their wives or their sons. He builds a nice house for his family, and he has money to send his children to college. But there comes a Day when a big politician ask him to cure his son. He tells him that if he cannot cure his son he will have to burn him on the pyre in the Commons. The trouble is, that the Grim reaper is standing at the head of the bed with the sick child in it. No matter how many times Macario spins the bed around so that the Grim reaper will be at his feet, there the Grim reaper is again at the head. The child dies. Macario takes his fate in his hands, accepting it. But out of pity and gratitude for his sharing his turkey, the Grim reaper lets Macario die before the rich man can burn him on the pyre. Takes his life. Macario Dies happy.

B. Traven had his eyes fully open to opression from capitalists and slavers. He disappeared into Mexico and never came back. His work makes clear that he rejected the "American Christian way" and heaped scorn on it. Well, I'm with him.
This work tells the story of a little settlement close to the pumphouse belonging to the railroad, where a little boy stumbles on bridge and drowns during the Saturday night fiesta, so that nobody notices he has disappeared for a while. All the inhabitants of the settlement, and the villagers from far around, come to help the mother and father with their grief and the burial. It is told with the pen of an artist, whose eyes saw such beauty in the simplest, and poorest, but richest, of lives.

You definitely wouldn't like this book if you're a republican or a libertarian, because Traven lays out how capitalists use their power over their workers to get rich off the poorest and enrich their families and friends. Traven uses his talents and publishing platform to expose the Capitalists and the Catholic Church in their shameful oppression of the lowest economic class in Mexico.
But this is also a love story and a description of the beautiful scenery and the Animals and plants of Chiapas.

What happens when it's World War I and countries are being divided up, and you are not in the city you belong to because you are serving on a ship? What happens if the ship you work on took off in the middle of the night while you were sleeping in Port? Now, both of you have no papers to prove where you belong, and no country will let you stay. You get on a "Death Ship. This is a ship that no longer makes$ for its owners and so needs to be sunk for the insurance it will bring in. This book is about two"drags": coal shovelers/Ash haulers/furnace and boiler stickers for whom this devilish work is the only thing left for sailors with no papers. B. Traven is an amazing author who I don't blame at all for hiding from the human race in Mexico.

Amazing story; I read this in one day. B. Traven knows his Mexico and its Indians. His story is one that shows who is in charge when uppity humans think they are in charge:Mother Earth.

387-1

20/3-Καταπληκτικό γουέστερν , ανυπομονώ να το δω ως ταινία. Ματαιότης ματαιοτήτων . Για τα λεφτά γίνονται τα πιο απίθανα πράγματα . ΄Ομως η τύχη καμιά φορά σε κάνει ανέλπιστα ευτυχισμένο και χωρίς αυτά.

This was the 1st Traven bk I read. He's most known for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" wch was made into a film by John Houston starring Humphrey Bogart. "The Death Ship" starts out humorously enuf as a comedy-of-errors: sailor gets separated from ship, doesn't have papers, etc. However, the real content of the bk is a critique of a world full of borders & capitalist corruption. There aren't any spoilers in this little review. I'll just say that the situation goes from bad to worse until the comedy has turned into clear-cut tragedy. Traven's one of the best political novelists I've ever read.

Ahh.. What a pleasure it is to give this bk a good review! The 1st bk I read of Traven's was probably "The Death Ship" - wch details the slow decay of a sailor's life as a result of facets of 'modern' life that the author & I abhor in common - like nationalistic borders & parasitic capitalism (is there any other kind?). I loved "The Death Ship" but it started out humorous & turned increasingly grim as the bk made its point clearer & clearer. Then I think I read 2 of the 6 "Jungle Novels" wch, according to a short description in the back of this bk, "describe the conditions of peonage and debt slavery under which the Indians suffered in Díaz's time." [ie: before the Mexican Revolution] These were extremely insightful political novels, as was "The Death Ship", & also GRIM - almost 'unbearable'. As such, even though I considered Traven to be a great political writer, I hesitated to read more - my mood is often too depressing as is.

SO, I read this anyway. & it was akin to "The Death Ship" in its sarcastic, philosophical, & subtle humour - BUT, the protaganist has a sortof 'easier' time of it & the Mexican Revolution is shown as being somewhat triumphant. It was a relief. I assume that it was historically accurate when it depicts greedy restaurant owners as being successfully forced into cooperation w/ unions BY THE POLICE! What a time that must've been!

Now, I've lumped this together w/ Tom Collins' great Australian cattle-driver novel "Such Is Life" by putting it on my "working-class-intellectuals" bookshelf. From me, that's an honor. Whether Traven's actual life trajectory deserves this or not I don't know. I've read sparse, & perhaps conflicting, bios about him. This bk's afterword claims:

"The mysterious B. Traven (1890-1969) was born in Chicago, spent his youth in Germany as an itinerant actor and revolutionary journalist, became a seaman on tramp steamers, settled in Mexico in the early 1920s, and began recording his experiences in novels and stories."

That rings 'true' - but then so do conflicting claims! Whatever the case, Traven writes like he's been there. Damn, he even makes reference to Baltimore row-homes! Making me wonder whether he'd ever been THERE. If he had, that perks my interest even more. To make Traven even more akin to Collins, there's even a cattle herding. It's all interesting, politically astute, sad, funny, & there's even some uplifting triumph for workers! &, unlike Collins, he wrote many bks! HOORAY FOR B. TRAVEN!

"The Cotton Pickers", by the by, was also called "DER WOBBLY", & was either Traven's 1st or 2nd novel. To make the plot even thicker, one supposedly unsubstantiated theory has it that Traven might've been Arthur Craven - the dadaist/boxer who's reputed to've disappeared off the coast of Mexico in a small boat. Wdn't THAT be a trip.

This will be a relatively straightforward review. What "The Bridge in the Jungle" is and what it isn't. In the spirit of saving the best for last, I'll start with what it isn't. It isn't "high literature ". It isn't fast paced or sexy. Nor is it violent or magical. If you're still tuned in, I'll share what it is. It is a simple, honest and intimate portrayal of the lives and challenges of a remote village in a Central American jungle. Through the lens of a personal and communal tragedy we see lives as they are. The tale is very focused but also universal. The narrator, though an outsider, tells the story in a humble and respectful manner. The book doesn't judge, it reveals.

The author, as you no doubt know by this point, wrote many novels including "The Treasure of Sierra Madre". This book was also made into an admittedly less well known movie.

Bueno. Cuento revolucionario.

Novela de tema legendario -ilustra la forma en que el oro corrompe el ama de los hombres-. El tesoro de la Sierra Madre (1927) cuenta la historia de tres vagabundos norteamericanos que en los primeros años del siglo llegan a México en busca de un medio para hacer dinero, y a los que el azar pone en la pista de un tesoro cuya posesión los envolverá en una disputa moral.

Hard to believe this was written in 1935. Good adventure story about gold warping the minds of prospectors. Worth a read and watch the movie too.

Die Condor Oil Co., ein US-amerikanischer Konzern, bohrt im Mexiko der 1920er nach Erdöl. Das Unternehmen hat ein Auge auf die Hazienda "La Rosa Blanca" geworfen. Bei der namensgebenden Hazienda handelt es sich um eine von Indianern betriebene Farm im zentralmexikanischen Hochland, auf der die industrielle Revolution noch nicht Einzug gehalten hat und auf der der landwirtschaftliche Anbau, Ernte und Zusammenleben ihrer Bewohner noch von jahrhundertelanger Tradition und Riten bestimmt ist. Die Condor Oil Co. versucht nun, sich dieses Stück Land einzuverleiben.

B. Travens Roman ist vor allem eine beißende Kritik des US-amerikanischen Heuschrecken-Kapitalismus. Traven analysiert und beschreibt in seinem Werk vor allem die ausbeuterischen und rücksichtlosen Machenschaften der frühen globalen Konzerne im Vorfeld der großen Depression. Er prangert die Dekadenz der Herrschenden und die Machtlosigkeit der armen Bevölkerung an. Doch Travens Kapitalismuskritik mutet in manchen Zügen zu naiv an, die von ihm augenscheinlich gelieferten Hintergründe, Zusammenhänge und Kritikpunkte sind zu einfach gestrickt. Hinzu kommt, dass die von ihm betriebene Schwarz-Weiß-Malerei die Realität zu banal erscheinen lässt.

Etwas auf der Strecke bleibt auch die Darstellung des Widerparts; nämlich die Beschreibung vermeintlich rückständigen Landlebens. Diesbezüglich verschwendet Traven viel Potential zu Gunsten der im Werk dominanten Kapitalismuskritik.

Historia ocurrida en un pueblo de México alrededor de 1920 donde un niño llamado Carlitos muere ahogado al caer de un puente al río, sin que nadie se dé cuenta debido a que estaban con la atención en un baile que tenía todo el pueblo.
La forma en la que encuentran su cuerpo con una vela encendida sujeta a una tablita y dejada a la deriva en el río, se detiene precisamente donde está el cuerpo.

3 men decided to try their luck gold prospecting but the land is full of bandits trying to relieve them of their find. There is a simplicity to the writing style but this in no way detracts from the authors ability todescribe the hardships and difficulties of the time.

Andres and his family and everyone he knows is forced further and further into debt peonage with no hope of relief. He is a rational actor in an irrational economic structure filled with people who self-justify their cruelty and deviousness with appeals to reason and order.

One striking aspect in the book is the effect of innumeracy and illiteracy and the way that both are used as weapons of class warfare meant to enslave.

This book is heavy on exposition and stage-setting and light on plot. And the romance gets very saccharine and devotional (dependant?) very quickly.

purchased at 2018 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair

The four previous books in this series were bleak and hopeless, writhing around in the misery of the laborers and the disgusting opportunism of those who steal their surplus value. The initial hundred or so pages of this book are even worse. The excesses of indignity, the violence, the stupidity and the preposterously unjust Porfiriato ruling class culminate and are no longer able to wring any further coin from the bodies of the indigenous people who slave under them in the mahogany plantations.

From the beginning of the book we can see this situation cannot continue. The expectation to produce two tons of mahogany which already exceeds the capacity of the people performing the labor doubles, and the punishments for not meeting the quota get more severe. The laborers receiving the punishments numb to them, and then they fight back.

"There's no need to be a great prophet to be able to say that everything's on the verge of bursting. If the old President's throne shakes and falls, the whole of this republic will go up in flames. And, as for long years nobody has learned to think, because thinking is forbidden, things will go on burning until we have all been consumed."

"If they had been reasoning men they would never have rebelled. Uprisings, mutinies, revolutions, are always irrational in themselves because they come to disturb the agreeable somnolence that goes by the names of peace and order."

There seems to be some confusion as to whether the author believes the essentialized traits of the natives that he describes throughout the course of this series. Traven describes the manner in which the natives are seen by the Porfiriato, and the manner in which they come to see themselves as colonized and helpless people. They buck this essentialized nature first and foremost with their rebellion. And any Spaniard who attempts to rely on this passivity, stupidity, and humbleness to regain control of their subjects literally get their heads smashed in for believing the lies they tell themselves.