The Death Ship
Page 38
Traven’s other major work is his series of six novels collectively known as ‘The Jungle Novels’. These brilliantly illustrate the development of the social forces that eventually lead to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Mexico was still a young post-revolutionary state when Traven began this work in the 30s, only 25 or so years after the Revolution. He was obviously commenting also on the Mexico of his time and the failures of the Revolution to alter the continued poverty of its peasants and workers.
The Jungle Novels are all complete stories in themselves but progress through describing the pre-revolutionary social structures and miserable conditions of exploitation existing in the country. The books describe the horrific slave conditions suffered by plantation workers and loggers in particular; Traven takes the reader through the process of exploitation as it transforms into rebellion and finally explodes in revolution.
This steady stream of books and the mystery of the author’s identity inevitably attracted some media attention. Now settled in Mexico City (he married in 1957), after WWII his global book sales expanded greatly in many translations. Curiosity also increased and Traven was tracked down by a couple of journalists. He denied everything and fled from their cameras and questions. But they discovered little more than that there was a man who appeared to be the author living in Mexico City.
It was not until after ‘B. Traven’ died in 1969 that the rest of the world even began to get close to the true identity of the man. He had instructed his wife to admit to the world after his death that he was indeed the same anarchist Ret Marut who had escaped from his captors and fled the defeat of the Bavarian Council Republic in 1919. In the late 1970s Will Wyatt, a BBC producer, made a TV documentary about Traven and wrote a book based on his research. He presented what seemed to many convincing evidence that Traven/Marut was in fact one Otto Feige, born into a working class family in the small town of Schweibus. The town was originally in Germany but as a result of WWI became part of Poland, renamed Swiebodzin.
Otto Feige was one of several names Traven had offered to police while being questioned in London in 1923, prior to leaving for Mexico. Wyatt had searched files and records for these names and traced an Otto Feige to the town. He found the elderly brother and sister of Otto, who confirmed from their family history and photos that Marut/Traven was their brother, who had disappeared as a youth after scandalising the town with his involvement in radical politics. He was last heard of when a letter arrived some time after WWI informing them that he was about to be expelled from England; this was presumably in 1923, when ‘Ret Marut’ left London on the journey that ended upon his arrival in Mexico the next year. The evidence Traven had provided to the UK and US authorities — names, occupations etc. - tallied with the facts of the family background of Otto Feige. It was also confirmed that Otto Feige’s father had worked in a factory that made coal brickettes for use as fuel — a likely source for the name of Ret Marut’s anarchist paper, ‘Der Zeigelbrenner’ — i.e. ‘The Brickburner’ or ‘Brickmaker’. The Feige family also related that shortly after Otto had written from London telling of his troubles with the authorities, his mother had received a visit from the police enquiring if she had a son named Otto. They were presumably checking out Marut/Feige’s story on behalf of the London and US authorities. Scared that this was in relation to Otto’s radical politics and his being held in London, she denied his existence for fear of bringing trouble on the family. The family later found her sobbing with fear and shame. That was the last the family heard of Otto until Wyatt and his BBC film crew appeared 50 years later.
A later biographer, K.S. Guthke, has disputed the Otto Feige conclusion as the final word on the matter, as have some other Travenologists. They claim Wyatt has not definitely proved his case and that it is possible that Marut/Traven - though he must have been very familiar with the town of Schweibus, Feige and his family — could simply have adopted Feige’s identity.
To this writer, Wyatt’s case and the photographic evidence seem convincing. But whatever the truth, the books remain to be enjoyed and to inspire — a rare case of literary expression being of equal quality to its radical political content. To judge him only in literary terms is to miss his point; nevertheless, unlike much literature attempting to convey a political ‘message’, Traven is a pleasure to read. B. Traven was a great storyteller, and also — that true rarity — a great political novelist. But he knew his books were only effective if they inspired reflection and engagement with the world in the reader. As Traven said (while masquerading as ‘Hal Croves’) “Life is worth more than any book one can write”.
RM
Biographies:
The Man Who Was B. Traven; Will Wyatt, Johnathan Cape, London, 1980.
B. Traven – The Life Behind The Legends; Karl S. Guthke, Lawrence Hill Books, 1991.
The Man Nobody Knows: The Life and Legacy of B. Traven; Roy Pateman, University Press of America, 2005.
Taken from :
http://libcom.org/library/b-traven-anti-biography
Appendix B - Further sources of information about B. Traven
The B Traven section of the libertarian communist website libcom.org, from which the above article is taken, has a large number of texts relating to B Traven as well as some texts written by him:
http://libcom.org/tags/b-traven
For a very detailed overview of B Traven’s work and an impressive list of books, films and TV programmes relating to the man and his work, see the website of the International B. Traven Association:
www.btraven.com
If you want to find more of his novels pirated in electronic form… Well, you’ll just have to keep looking to see where they turn up, or produce some yourself!