Basic Information : Synopsis : Characters : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References
Basic Information:
Author: David Grann
Edition: eBook from
the Mountain View Public Library
Publisher: Vintage
Books
ISBN: 0385513534
(ISBN13: 9780385513531)
Start Date: July 30,
2018
Read Date: August 5,
2018
352 pages
Genre: History,
Biography, Archeology,Amazon
Language Warning:
Low
Rated Overall: 4
out of 5
History: 4 out of 5-there is some question about Fawcett's role in the exploration of the Amazon. For a different perspective than David Grann's, see John Hemmings article in The Spectator
Religion:
Spiritualism
Synopsis (Caution: Spoiler Alert-Jump to Thoughts):
In 1925, Percy
Harrison Fawcett set out to find a lost city in the Amazon jungle. He
never came back. David Grann sets out to gather background and maybe
a little light on the city called “Z” by Fawcett and Fawcett’s
disappearance. Z also was referenced by the Spanish conquistadors as
El Dorado.
Grann traces both
Fawcett’s quest for this city through many explorations, starting
with the beginnings of his thirst for adventure in Ceylon. It ends
with his disappearance in 1925. Many expeditions have sought the
mystery of what happened to Fawcett.
Grann does not go
into the jungle looking for Fawcett, but more to understand what he
faced and to gather background. If possible to find people who have
had contact with Fawcett. But throughout the book, he interweaves
Fawcett’s story with his own.
Cast of Characters:
Percy Harrison
Fawcett-Main person, explorer
Jack Fawcett-Percy
Harrison Fawcett’s son. Explorer
Brian Fawcett-Percy
Harrison Fawcett’s son who did not go on final expedition. Railroad
executive in Peru
Raleigh Rimell-Jack
Fawcett’s best friend. Member of the last expedition.
Nina Fawcett-Percy
Harrison Fawcett ‘s wife
David Grann-Author
of book, but also tries to understand clues left behind by Percy
Harrison Fawcett
Dr. Alexander
Hamilton Rice-Fawcett’s main rival in trying to find Z. A rich
American which used modern methods of archeology and technology to
try to accomplish the goals of his expeditions.
James
Lynch-Brazilian Banker. Searched for Fawcett in 1996
Keltie-high official
in the British Royal Geographical Society. Supporter of Fawcett
Thoughts:
Like any good
treasure, a map is needed, one marked with an X, or on this case, a
Z.
Purpose of book was
to record
how generations of scientists and adventures became fatally obsessed
with solving the whereabouts of the lost City of Z.
We shall return
Z was Fawcett’s
code letter for the Spanish’s El Dorado
Fawcett felt that
the only way to accomplish finding Z was through the use of a small
group, instead of large numbers which needed more logistics and
supplies. On his last expedition, he only took three people: himself,
his son, and his son’s best friend.
The vanishing
More people have
disappeared looking for Fawcett than have disappeared looking for El
Dorado
James Lynch became
part of the people who would look for Fawcett.
There is an estimate
that there are 60 tribes in the Amazon who have never been contacted
by outside civilization.
The search begins
The term
“counterfeit paradise” is used throughout the book. Basically
what is being saying is the Amazon looks lush like it has a lot which
could sustain a population. But under the canopy, the soil is
nutrient deficient, so not much edible grows. Also game is not in
abundance. So there is not much to keep explorers going. The term
“counterfeit paradise” was coined by Betty Meggers of the
Smithsonian.
Grann is single
minded when working on a story, letting go of much of his life in the
pursuit of it.
Blank spots on
the map
Today, we take for
granted that every place on earth has a spot on a map. But as late as
World War II, much of the Amazon region was unknown. People like
Fawcett and Rice were instrumental in getting down on a piece of
paper where rivers and the like were.
Explorers are
not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society.
Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely
because they have a streak of unsociability and a need to remove
themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow
men.
From Galton’s Art
of Travel.
Some may also say that about outdoors people as well.
Into the Amazon
So sad that people
enslave and treat so barbaric others. I think that if you do not
believe someone is human or I should say fully human, then it is easy
to descend into that kind of mentality. Isn’t that what happens
with genocide? Be careful what we say about others. Also understand
that fundamentally they have the image of God in them. What we do to
a person we are doing to God. CS Lewis points out that even with
animals, if we do not honor them as part of creation, then we will
start that descent into mistreating humans.
The Amazon is
against people more than anywhere else. Reading about the various
fish, snakes, frogs, insects makes you wonder how anybody survives.
Sort of like Jumanji in real life.
Fawcett’s approach
to the Indians was non-violent. He had ordered his men not to fire
their rifles at them. At times he approached the Indians and was at
their mercy, bringing gifts. That seemed to work. But it required
strong courage as it would have been very much in the nature of
things for an Indian to blow a poison dart into him without notice.
The secret papers
Grann meets
Fawcett’s granddaughter who is 51 years old. Fawcett disappeared in
1926\5. This was written in 2005/6. So that would mean the
granddaughter would have been born about 25 years after Fawcett
disappeared. Yet the granddaughter talks as if she knew Fawcett/
Also why does the
granddaughter trust Grann enough to let him look at Fawcett’s
papers which she kept under lock and key? Something seems to be
missing from this telling. Also she told him that Fawcett purposely
mislead people about the starting point of his search for Z. But she
was willing to tell Grann. Why?
In the hands of
the gods
To Fawcett,
inactivity was a prison. Pity the person who cannot sit still as well
as the person who cannot move. It draws to my mind what the Bible
says: Be
still and know that I am Lord.
But there are also places where God sends people out to do His work.
To know when to move and when to stay.
He would not let his
wife go on expeditions. But Nina encouraged their daughter to become
strong and aggressive so that she could be prepared to go on
expedition.
A biologist who
traveled with Fawcett noted that I
thought that I would get many valuable natural history noted but my
experience is that when undergoing severe physical labor the mind is
not all active. … one has no time to miss anything save food or
sleep or rest. In short one becomes little more than a rational
animal.
When backpacking, I experience a little bit of this-not to this
extent. I think I should be able to write the great thoughts when we
take a break or stop at night. But in the end, I just want to do
nothing.
Is it better that
one might die so that the rest be saved? This is the issue with
Murray. He was so far gone, could he recover? He was slowing
everybody else down so that it was possible none would get out alive.
Fawcett takes the course of trying to find an outpost where he could
lay Murray down there and let him recover.
The case for Z
The Guarayo’s knew
how to live in the jungle. They had mastered how to obtain food and
how to maintain the equilibrium with its environment. They understood
that poison could kill you, but a small amount may dull the pain of a
toothache.
Fawcett when meeting
a new group of Indians would disarm rather than take up a defensive
position. He would drop is belt to show he was unarmed or put his
hands above his head. The response was to drop the hostility and act
much more like negotiating partners.
He was able to show
that the Indians could sustain a large population, and thus have had
a critical mass enough to build an empire.
Mental maze of
race-the
problem where you observe on thing, but believe another thing about
race. Such as the Indians are savages, but observe that they can be
pretty sophisticated in how they approach a problem, such as food
gathering. In Fawcett’s day it was believed that the lighter the
pigment of skin, the more intelligence a race could be. But that did
not seem to hold true.
ElDorado
El Dorado means the
golden man
It seems like the
Amazon re-pays people for their own barbarity. Soldiers turn to
cannibalism but do not return from the jungle. The Spanish enslave
4000 Inca’s and force them into the Amazon, none of these return.
But the Spanish almost none return either.
The whole world
is mad
Fawcett became
convinced there was remnants of an ancient civilization in the Amazon
based upon interviews, documents, and pottery fragments. He was
narrowing down locations of where El Dorado was based upon this
information. He was also pretty secretive about where he thought it
was and even referred to the location/city as Z.
A scientific
obsession
An unexpected clue
Have no fear
The last eyewitness
Dead or alive
The colonel's bones
The other world
Z.
Have
no fear
In
several places, Grann uses the term priestly
when one of the Fawcett’s are in training. I wonder what part of
priestly functions Grann is referring to? Abstention from sexual
relations? Saying mass? Self flagellation? Then the question is why
does Grann use that term?
Success
is the breeding grounds for failure. When you are highly successful,
there tends to be a sense that you cannot fail. Is this the root of
Fawcett’s demise? Grann wrote that Fawcett
was confident-after all, he had always succeeded where others failed.
This is punctuated with Fawcett’s final note to his wife, Upi
need have no fear of any failure.
The
last eyewitness
Grann
talks about coming across a series of stone pillars. The illusion he
soon discovers is that even though they look like remnants of a lost
civilization, in reality they are weathered stone. It is easy to be
deceive ourselves about what we are seeing.
When
a resource is plentiful, it is easy to think it is inexhaustible. The
rain forests which Fawcett saw along the Manso River looks more like
the lands of Nebraska. In man’s drive to exploit, we also exploit
our fellow man. Grann talks about the Amazon being one of the biggest
concentration of slave labor. On the other hand, the jungle consumed
Rio Novo, one of the last places Fawcett was seen and a very large
ranch. Only the brick work remained as ruins on the ground.
Several
spin off’s have been made of the disappearance of Fawcett. Bob Hope
and Bing Cosby did Road
to Zanzibar.
Also one of the Indiana
Jones
spin off novels has Fawcett in it.
Grann
meets an old woman who lives at an outpost, the last which Fawcett
visits. She would have been about 12 years old and had seen the
party. She asks a perceptive question: What
is it that these white people did? Why is it so important for their
tribe to find them?
Dead
or alive
and The
colonel's bones
In
these two chapters Grann explores thoughts about why and how Fawcett
died. They ranged from starvation to being killed by Indians to being
held hostage or as slaves to Ending his life as a chief among the
Indians. Most of the theories and the explorers who put out the
theories have been discredited.
Grann
goes upstream to the Xingu Indian Reservation with the Kalapalo
Indians. These Indians at one time were the deadliest, bloodthirsty
Indians in the area. Now they are more wise to the ways of
capitalism. A chief says that he will show Grann Fawcett’s bones.
Instead, he said that the bones people took were his grandfathers.
Then he told a story which had been passed down how three white men
came through their village. When they left, they saw his fire/smoke
for four days. Then no more. They were heading east.
Z
Grann
visits an archaeologist named Michael Heckenberger at the Kuikuro
village. This village showed a great deal of cultural sophistication
with moats and symmetrical villages and farming. The question is, is
this Z? Unknown, but it was the complex culture which Fawcett was
looking for, but not the El Dorado of the Spanish desire. Fawcett
came close to here, but Heckenberger understands why he did not find
this city. Unless you are right on it and can see the whole area, it
is hard it discern that there was a city here.
Evaluation:
David Grann is
not outdoors material, but he still gave an effort to understand the
conditions which Percy Harrison Fawcett did his expeditions under.
Consequently, he can describe some of the conditions which Fawcett
faced upon his expeditions in the Amazon jungle.
The Lost City of
Z
provides the reader background on Fawcett. His strengths and
weaknesses are exposed, along with his desires. It also provided me
with the understanding that as much as I enjoy the outdoors, the
Amazon is not the place for me.
This book is a
worthwhile read. Quick and easy, but compelling, even though you
already know the answer of what happened to Fawcett on his final
expedition.
Notes from my book group:
From LitLovers
1. What inspired
Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett's obsessive search for Z...what evidence
led him to believe the city was more than legend?
2. How does Grann
portray Fawcett? What kind of a man was he? Would you describe him as
a victim of his own obsession...as a romantic...a fool bent on his
own destruction...a rational man of science...?
3. What are some of
the legends that have surrounded Fawcett himself? To what do you
attribute his place in popular culture over the years—and what does
it say, both about Fawcett and ourselves, that he has maintained a
hold on our collective imagination?
4. How did Fawcett
differ from his rival, Alexander Hamilton Rice—especially in the
approach to exploration? Were the two men evenly matched in skill and
technology...or not? In what way did Rice, perhaps, represent the
future of modern exploration?
5. What draws David
Grann into the search for Fawcett—what initially sparks the
author's fascination? Consider Grann's own difficulty in the Amazon,
especially for a man who delights in air conditioning and fast food.
Finally, what new information does Grann contribute to solving the
mystery surrounding Fawcett's disappearance?
6. Where does Grann
stand with regard to the existence of Z? What conclusions does he
reach? Where do you stand?
7. What are some of
the more surprising, even shocking, accounts of jungle exploration
you found in this work?
8. Does this book
remind you of other stories of those obsessed with adventure or other
cultures: The
Man Who Loved China...or
Bill Bryson's misguided but humorous adventure on the Appalachian
Trail? Any resemblance to fictional works ... say, Conrad's Heart
of Darkness...or
Garcia Marquez's One
Hundred Years of Solitude?
9. Brad Pitt has
brought production rights to the book. So, will he play Grann...or
Fawcett?
1. Books about
explorers, adventurers, and extreme risk-takers like Jon Krakauer’s
Eiger
Dreams
and Into
the Wild,
Caroline Alexander’s The
Endurance,
Joe Simpson’s Touching
the Void,
Nathaniel Philbrick’s In
the Heart of the Sea,
Sebastian Junger’s A
Perfect Storm,
and many others, have become extremely popular in recent years. What
are the appeals of such books? What qualities does The
Lost City of Z share
with books of this kind? In what ways does it differ from them?
2. After time away
from the jungle, Fawcett wrote: “Inexplicably—amazingly—I knew
I loved that hell. Its fiendish grasp had captured me, and I wanted
to see it again” [p. 116]. What drove Fawcett to plunge himself
again and again into the dangers of the Amazon? What is the main
force that drives him—obsession with finding the lost city, desire
to prove himself against his competitors, a need to escape the
confines of civilization, a spiritual quest?
3. In what ways is
Fawcett a symbolic figure? What values does he embody? In what ways
does he represent many of both the best and worst qualities of the
British Empire?
4. Grann notes that
some anthropologists and historians consider Fawcett’s view of the
Indians enlightened for his era while others saw him as unable to
transcend the prevailing racism of his own culture. How does he
regard the Indians he encounters? How does he treat them?
5. How do Fawcett’s
expeditions affect his wife Nina? How does she see her role in
relation to him? In what ways does she succumb to his obsessions?
6. In what ways does
The
Lost City of Z
challenge conventional views of the Amazon? What does it suggest
about the current state of archeological research in the region?
7. What are some of
the most fascinating and/or dreadful features of the Amazon jungle
revealed in The
Lost City of Z?
How has the jungle been changed since Europeans first made contact
with it?
8. What does The
Lost City of Z
reveal about the power of obsession? In what ways does Fawcett’s
obsession draw others into its deadly gravitational pull?
9. By what means
does Grann maintain such a high level of suspense throughout the
book? What does the interweaving of his own story—the story of his
search for the truth about what happened to Fawcett and the story of
his writing of the book itself—add to the total effect of The
Lost City of Z?
10. After witnessing
the mass carnage of World War I, Fawcett exclaims: “Civilization!
Ye gods! To see what one has seen the word is an absurdity. It has
been an insane explosion of the lowest human emotions” [p. 189]. In
what ways does The
Lost City of Z
call into question conventional notions of civilization? What does it
suggest about the supposed differences between advanced and primitive
cultures?
11. What are Percy
Harrison’s Fawcett’s most admirable qualities? What aspects of
his character prove most troubling? Was James Murray right in
accusing Fawcett of all but murdering him? [p. 139].
12. Near the end of
the book, Grann writes about how biographers are often driven mad by
the inability to fully comprehend their subjects. Of his own quest he
says: “The finished story of Fawcett seemed to reside eternally
beyond the horizon: a hidden metropolis of words and paragraphs, my
own Z” [p. 303]. How well does Grann succeed in discovering and
revealing the truth of Percy Fawcett?
13. Does Grann’s
meeting with the anthropologist Michael Heckenberger in Kurikulo
village confirm Fawcett’s belief in a lost ancient civilization? Is
Fawcett’s search vindicated at last?
New Words:
- Camdiru (7): also known as cañero, toothpick fish, or vampire fish, is a species of parasitic freshwater catfish in the family Trichomycteridae native to the Amazon Basin where it is found in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
- Craniometer (14): a device for measuring the external dimensions of the skull.
- Jezail (17): a simple, cost-efficient and often handmade muzzle-loading long arm commonly used in British India, Central Asia and parts of the Middle East in the past.
- Autopsis (20): Greek “seeing with one’s own eyes,”
- Denouement (21):the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
Book References:
- The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Othello by William Shakespeare
- A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
- Exploration Fawcett letters of Percy Fawcett, edited by Brian Fawcett
- 1491 by Charles Mann
- The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky
- The Victorians by A.N. Wilson
- King Solomon Mines by Henry Rider Haggard
- Swallowed by an Earthquake by Edward Fawcett
- The Secret of the Desert by Edward Fawcett
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- Hints to Travelers by
- The Amazon by Robin Furneaux
- Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox-as found in one of Fawcett’s diaries
- The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
- Hartman the Anarchist by Edward Fawcett
- The Doom of the Great City by Edward Fawcett
- Antarctica Days by James Murray and ___
- On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- Notes and Queries of Anthropology from the RGS
- The Land of Mist by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Man Hunting in the Jungle by Dyott
- The Ecology of Power by Michael Heckenberger
- First Line: I pulled the map from my back pocket.
- Last Line: For a moment, I could see this vanished world as if it were right in front of me. Z.
- A God forsaken hole … best seen with the eyes closed. Chp Have no fear
- We shall return
- The vanishing
- The search begins
- Buried treasure
- Blank spots on the map
- The disciple
- Freeze-dried icecream and adrenaline socks
- Into the Amazon
- The secret papers
- The green hell
- Dead Horse Camp
- In the hands of the gods
- Ransom
- The case for Z
- El Dorado
- The locked box
- The whole world is mad
- A scientific obsession
- An unexpected clue
- Have no fear
- The last eyewitness
- Dead or alive
- The colonel's bones
- The other world
- Z.
References:
- Author's Web Site
- Wikipedia-Book
- Wikipedia-Author
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- New York Times Review
- The Spectator article by John Hemming, an Amazon explorer, he gives a different account of Fawcett than what Grann does. Also talks about the jungle in a different way
- Wikipedia-Kuhikugu
- The New Yorker article
- The Washington Post review
