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B. Traven was long a cult figure by the time I stumbled onto
his legendary adventure novels about Mexico when I traveled
the gringo trail in the 70s. It seemed everyone on the road
in those days had a copy of
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre stuffed into their backpack
along with a Spanish-English phrase book.
Why were B. Traven's books required reading for anyone traveling
south? First of all, most of Traven's 14 novels, written between
1926 to 1952, were set in Mexico. His themes paralleled what
was happening in that country during those traumatic, revolutionary
times.
Traven's tales were part adventure, part historical fact,
couched in fiction, all taking place south of the border in
a land very different from what we've grown accustomed to up
north. Secondly, his Mexico was a place where abandoned gold
mines, bandits and lawlessness still existed. His Mexico was
peppered with anarchy and rebellion. His Mexico had spice.
MAN OF MYSTERY
Best known to American audiences because of the 1948 film,
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Traven most likely would have
remained unknown to Americans if John Huston hadn't turned this
novel about greed and gold into a silver screen classic starring
Humphrey Bogart as down-on-his-luck prospector Fred C. Dobbs.
Two scenes in the film most of us won't forget are Bogart going
mad, and one of cinema's immortal lines, "Badges? We don't need
no stinkin'badges!" shouted by Mexican bandits on horseback
imitating federales, who are trying to conBogart and Walter
Huston into surrendering their position and their gold.
Truth be known, by the 1930s, Traven's work was published
everywhere else in the world but England and the States, in
dozens of languages, but not a word was printed in English until
New York publisher Alfred Knopf republished The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre in 1935. This novel was originally published
in German in 1927. Not until the 1960s was the body of Traven's
work published in the U.S. Today, Traven's books have been translated
into 30 languages, sold more than 25 million copies, and are
required reading in Mexico's schools.
Traven's work evokes the grit and reality of Mexico because
he spent 35 years of his life there, watching his adopted country
adjust and adapt to a string of dictators, presidents and revolutions.
His tales dish out depth and emotion, with a sizeable serving
of the oppression of the lower classes thrown in.
His epics read as though inspired by true life stories he
may have heard while sitting at some outback cantina in a dusty
little pueblo anywhere in Mexico; or maybe he drew on his own
Mexican experience, slices of his own life, that occurred while
living there until his death in 1969.
Or his supposed death . . .
TRUE IDENTITY
At this point, I must explain that B. Traven was just as much
a character as those he created in his novels. The jury is still
out on his true identity, as B. Traven was a pen name only. As
recently as ten years ago, at an international conference on the
author at Penn State, scholars still debated what the "B" stood
for, and if he was German, English or American.
Traven's biographers consider several possible identities:
Either he was born in Chicago
March 5, 1890, to Swedish parents, and spent his youth in Germany
where he started writing anarchist literature under the pen
name Ret Marut, moving to Mexico in the 20s. Or he was Otto
Feige, born to a German pottery worker. After traveling widely
in his youth, he worked as a manual laborer and actor, and then
edited an anarchist journal in Germany before heading off to
Mexico. In the most bizarre scenario, presented by author and
professor Michael L. Baumann, Traven was neither Marut nor Feige.
Baumann suggests, in his 1997 book, Mr. Traven, I Presume, that
Traven could have usurped the real Traven's identity, and continued
on with this man's work, as his books published in Germany were
written in two distinct handwritings and full of "Americanisms."
Baumann also asserts that given what background was known of
Traven, he should have been a much older man than the corpse
claimed to be his after his 1969 death in Mexico.
John Huston, in his biography, adds a question mark to the
Traven identity search, also. While filming The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre. Huston invited the author to come to the set,
but the author declined, sending instead his "agent" Hal Croves.
Croves was "a small, thin man with a long nose" and carried
a letter for Huston explaining Traven could not show up, but
Croves would answer all pertinent questions.
"Croves had a slight accent," Huston wrote. "It didn't sound
German to me, but certainly European. I thought he might very
well be Traven but out of delicacy, I didn 't ask." It wasn't
until after Traven's death in 1969, when pictures of the author
were published, that Huston confirmed Croves was, in fact, B.
Traven.
On Mexican government immigration documents from the 1930s,
Traven claimed to have entered Mexico through Ciudad Juárez
in 1914. He settled first in either Tampico or Chiapas -- there
are mixed accounts on this -- writing stories he sent to German
publishers under the name B. Traven. His first published book
was The Death Ship, a story of an American sailor who loses
his birth certificate and with it his identity and is forced
to take a job shoveling coal on a ship destined to go down for
insurance money.
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