Customer Reviews

The mystery of B. Traven

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This is a must-read for anyone interested in the "mystery" of the identity of B. Traven and especially the meta-mystery and the history of the mystery. The book - which is print-on-demand (but is still well made) - is a collection of materials compiled together. Since the materials are poorly edited and repetitive at times, I presume they are Stone's articles for Ramparts - but the volume nowhere gives their origin. The book is a narrative derived from the last and only authorized interviews that Hal Croves gave. The content, alas, is not what one would have hoped for. As I read the book, I kept wondering why a magazine would send an interviewer who spoke no German and had no scholarly understanding of German literature to interview a German author. As a result of this, many of her questions and presuppositions were poorly informed (when I later read Jonah Raskin's book, I understood what Croves' wife meant when she said that Stone would have gotten more if she had just asked the right questions). The newer materials are similarly off-basis - rather than summarizing and addressing the scholarship in the intervening 20 years, Stone puts forth more rumors and romantic dreams. After reading the book, I wondered whether Stone - like Croves' wife - was more interested in proliferating the mysteries than in solving them.