Thank you for the clarification as my response to your
original statement was based on the sweeping dismissal of
Traven's work. I don't disagree with your assessment of THE
DEATH SHIP. It features some scenes of great power but as a
novel, it is a mess. It was the first work published by
Traven and it may share many of the faults of a first
novel.
The novel is important to understanding Traven as it is a cry
of rage by a stateless person trapped in a limbo of hell.
Traven, after an career as an actor and then revolutionary
editor/publisher had been an official of the brief Bavarian
republic after World War I. Following its overthrow, he was
captured and sentenced to death. He managed to escape but had
no papers and so could not travel and enter countries
legally. He was turned away from Canada and Britain. There is
a wonderful mug shot of him taken in London in 1923. It was
about this time he began to claim American citizenship.
Afterall, had he been deported to Germany, he would quite
possibly be executed.
Interesting to the Traven researcher but THE DEATH SHIP is
very flawed when viewed as a novel. Also, I would guess you
are probably right that the early translations are of poor
quality.
As for the John Houston movie "The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre" it is quite faithful to the novel--at least as
faithful as his adaptation of Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON.
The characters are there as are most of the scenes and the
dramatic arc of the story.
Traven, in his common disquise as the author's agent Hal
Croves, served as a technical advisor on the film. As I
recall from Houston's memoir, he had his doubts that Croves
was Traven.
One odd story that IIRC came from the Houston memoir, is that
on location every actor and significant crew member underwent
an initiation which ended up the the person stripped and his
balls painted some color or another. All fought but
eventually submitted to the inevitable. Croves fought so
violently that eventually, they had to back off and let him
go. The sense from the memoir is that he wasn't being a good
sport about it. From my reading of Traven, he always valued
and maintained his dignity and would never understand or
submit to this sort of locker room stunt.
I'll be interested in what you think of the novel.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "E. Borgers"
<webeurop@...> wrote:
>
> My previous mail was ambiguous, I admit
it.
> In fact I was speaking only of the novel Death
Ship.
> I have tried to read another novel by Traven (long
long ago),
but I do not recall which one.
> Anyway, to answer Richard and Sonny : no, I never
red THE
TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, as my experience with "Death
Ship" was not very good (maybe the translation I had was
lousy, which is very possible as it was something translated
before 1940 and most probably hacked as well - I discovered
the translations/versions problems only a few years ago). In
fact I stayed also away from the TREASURE after this
experience, afraid of discovering a bad novel compared to the
film masterpiece by John Huston- film I saw many many times
since end of the fifties. I admire this film and IMO the
first 20 minutes of it is a lesson in cinema making, wherein
everything contributes to an astounding result:
cinematography, editing (montage), dialogue, timing, rhythm,
lighting, actors.
>
> But after what Richard told us about the real
quality of the
novel TREASURE… I will try to find an English translation of
it, or a recent one in French (if this exists).
>
> E.Borgers
> POLAR NOIR
> http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
>
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