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Jungle Novels #6
General from the Jungle
With General from the Jungle , the sixth and last of B. Traven's legendary Jungle Novels, Ivan R Dee completes the republication of this multivolume fictional epic of the birth of the Mexican Revolution. In General , a masterpiece on guerrilla warfare, Traven tells the story of Juan Mendez, perhaps the youngest and greatest of the Indian rebel chieftains, who leads an ill-equipped and hungry band against the government forces. With brilliance and cunning, Mendez brutally attacks the federally protected fincas. The book is filled with marvelously drawn characters, yet the true hero is the army itself―illiterate, uneducated, and poor, but resourceful and dangerous. Beyond his great storytelling, Traven's work has a special resonance today because of recent uprisings in the Chiapas highlands of southern Mexico, the very locale of his writings.
285 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
3 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
B. Traven
115 books253 followersB. Traven was the pen name of a German novelist, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. A rare certainty is that B. Traven lived much of his life in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including his best-known work, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), which was adapted as the Academy Award nominated film of the same name in 1948.
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. Most agree, that Traven was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924. There are also reasons to believe that Marut/Traven's real name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern day Świebodzin in Poland. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism, betraying the socialist and even anarchist sympathies of the writer. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926 and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927, in 1948 filmed by John Huston, and the so-called Jungle Novels, also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany), a group of six novels (including The Carreta, Government), published in the years 1930-1939, set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. B. Traven's novels and short stories became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the war; they were also translated into many languages. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German first and their English editions appeared later; nevertheless the author always claimed that the English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations. This claim is not taken seriously.
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. Most agree, that Traven was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924. There are also reasons to believe that Marut/Traven's real name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern day Świebodzin in Poland. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism, betraying the socialist and even anarchist sympathies of the writer. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926 and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927, in 1948 filmed by John Huston, and the so-called Jungle Novels, also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany), a group of six novels (including The Carreta, Government), published in the years 1930-1939, set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. B. Traven's novels and short stories became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the war; they were also translated into many languages. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German first and their English editions appeared later; nevertheless the author always claimed that the English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations. This claim is not taken seriously.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 6, 2016
I'm leaving Goodreads, don't want to be a content provider for Amazon. This review is now available on LibraryThing, user name CSRodgers.
October 1, 2021
El Caudillo | Monterías
Folk songs, jingles, political and patriotic phrases,
birds of the jungle,
axes and machetes—
about twelve sporting rifles.
Thugs and strike breakers. The careening revolutionary thirst of the Red Indian.
The Professor: “Let’s win the revolution first and destroy our enemies. Then will be the time to discuss what’s to be done. Much talk before hand is wasted time and energy which we have greater need of for our more immediate tasks.”
What did systems, new or old, matter to the rebels?
…
Tierra sin capataces y sin amos—
You are now the masters of this finca—
To have the free and unrestricted disposal of such a large number of ragged, verminous, cowed and totally defenceless prisoners would have rejoiced the heart of the sexually degenerate, spiritually defiled, uniformed invertebrates such as Central Europe produces so cheaply and in such great quantities. Dictators who feels safe and happy only when surrounded solely by slaves are content—for entirely understandable reasons—to rely for acclaim and support upon abject minions. With free men capable of feeling even a glimmer of dignity, they wouldn’t remain sitting on their thrones a week. It was not so in olden days, but in modern times protection comes from the meanest and most miserable henchmen and guardroom parasites, those human dregs, immature and snot-nosed, who, because they have no individuality, no spark of personality, can feel themselves alive only because they are permitted to don a uniform cap. These uniform caps transform a human cipher into a semi-being, but as soon as this semi-being is without his uniform cap, he immediately reveals himself for what he really is: an idiotically distorted, crookedly conceived cipher.
…
Hymn. Heralded no saviour.
It was a hymn of praise
announcing the arrival of a new mankind.
In praise of heroes.
Such as only a dictatorship, an autocracy
could have produced.
The hymn of the autocracy is auto-destructive.
…
That’s why I’m now general of the muchachos, who aren’t cowardly wretches such as let themselves be hit in the face without defending themselves. What I think of your chief, you know now. And if your commander isn’t here within four days to have himself slaughtered by us lousy, filthy Indian swine, then he won’t find me here anymore. For I shall march in a wide detour around Balun Canan and make for Shimojol. That’s a nice, rich little town too, where we’ll have plenty of fun. Then on to Huninquibal, and after that I’ll take Yalanchen, then Tsobtajal, then Acayan, then Nihich, and finally Socton. And after that the attack on Tullum, where we’ll visit the governor, provided he hasn’t departed to attend a wedding. Perhaps we may change our plans. But I’m only telling you all this so that you know that I’ve no need to go to La Peña Alta, where the trap’s been laid. That’s all you have to tell your chief. And if you forget a word, we’ll get you again and the other half of your ears will come off.
…
Intelligent men are unable to hold appointments for six months…
One doesn’t speak of victory at a shoot, only of the size of the bag.
Folk songs, jingles, political and patriotic phrases,
birds of the jungle,
axes and machetes—
about twelve sporting rifles.
Thugs and strike breakers. The careening revolutionary thirst of the Red Indian.
The Professor: “Let’s win the revolution first and destroy our enemies. Then will be the time to discuss what’s to be done. Much talk before hand is wasted time and energy which we have greater need of for our more immediate tasks.”
What did systems, new or old, matter to the rebels?
…
Tierra sin capataces y sin amos—
You are now the masters of this finca—
To have the free and unrestricted disposal of such a large number of ragged, verminous, cowed and totally defenceless prisoners would have rejoiced the heart of the sexually degenerate, spiritually defiled, uniformed invertebrates such as Central Europe produces so cheaply and in such great quantities. Dictators who feels safe and happy only when surrounded solely by slaves are content—for entirely understandable reasons—to rely for acclaim and support upon abject minions. With free men capable of feeling even a glimmer of dignity, they wouldn’t remain sitting on their thrones a week. It was not so in olden days, but in modern times protection comes from the meanest and most miserable henchmen and guardroom parasites, those human dregs, immature and snot-nosed, who, because they have no individuality, no spark of personality, can feel themselves alive only because they are permitted to don a uniform cap. These uniform caps transform a human cipher into a semi-being, but as soon as this semi-being is without his uniform cap, he immediately reveals himself for what he really is: an idiotically distorted, crookedly conceived cipher.
…
Hymn. Heralded no saviour.
It was a hymn of praise
announcing the arrival of a new mankind.
In praise of heroes.
Such as only a dictatorship, an autocracy
could have produced.
The hymn of the autocracy is auto-destructive.
…
That’s why I’m now general of the muchachos, who aren’t cowardly wretches such as let themselves be hit in the face without defending themselves. What I think of your chief, you know now. And if your commander isn’t here within four days to have himself slaughtered by us lousy, filthy Indian swine, then he won’t find me here anymore. For I shall march in a wide detour around Balun Canan and make for Shimojol. That’s a nice, rich little town too, where we’ll have plenty of fun. Then on to Huninquibal, and after that I’ll take Yalanchen, then Tsobtajal, then Acayan, then Nihich, and finally Socton. And after that the attack on Tullum, where we’ll visit the governor, provided he hasn’t departed to attend a wedding. Perhaps we may change our plans. But I’m only telling you all this so that you know that I’ve no need to go to La Peña Alta, where the trap’s been laid. That’s all you have to tell your chief. And if you forget a word, we’ll get you again and the other half of your ears will come off.
…
Intelligent men are unable to hold appointments for six months…
One doesn’t speak of victory at a shoot, only of the size of the bag.
Read
January 21, 2021All good things come to an end, they say, but the end is not always good. I will write little about B.Traven’s sixth and final novel of his Jungle cycle. With them I spent three years, in Mexico’s monterias, at the dawn of the twentieth century. I learned a lot. B.Traven has kept alive the rebel in me. He has been a constant reminder of the working class conditions, a beacon of the other history, the one unwritten by those who did not win. He is a voice, he is what a voice needs to be: clear, strong, stalwart, unrepentant. To these qualities he owes to still be heard today. History is never what we are told. History is what we tell ourselves. History is what we write. The way we write history is the way we decide to shine.
When B.Traven undertakes the Jungle cycle, the Mexican revolution is twenty years old. Its political chessboard is packed with revolutionary leaders, complicated with sporadic interference from the US who fear that their southern neighbour might fall into the Bolshevik basket. 1930’s Mexico was the haven B.Traven had been aspiring to all his life. The Jungle cycle is, as much as a voice of the revolutions, a song to the Mexican peasants who wrested their country from Porfirio Diaz’s stranglehold into working class-based democracy.
But B.Traven never mingles in politics. Of the most famous revolutionaries, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, names that still resonate today, he speaks not. Of the US interventions he speaks not. Of Mexico City he speaks not. His Jungle novels are set and remain in the southern jungles, even at the conclusion of their cycle. The peasant army defeats the federal soldiers near Balun Canan in the Chiapas. From there, they go nowhere. They stay where they are, uninterested in a national destiny. They set up their own camp, which grows to become a medium-size village. It remains hidden, like any true paradise. This is what The General From The Jungle is: the story of a paradise. Not a lost paradise, not the hunt for a hidden paradise, not the return to an original paradise: it is the building of an anarchist paradise.
B.Traven is not at ease with the victors, even when victors are on his side. He knows too well how history turns against itself, how victory brings power and power lets corruption set in. His paradise is superficial and artificial. There are none of anarchy’s harsh realities that a writer like Ursula Le Guin exposes. B.Traven’s anarchist paradise is childish and pure, like his 21-year-old general. The General From The Jungle is not a good ending to a harsh cycle forged in such a down-to-earth, realistic style. It stands awkward, pure utopia at the end of a dire, angry documentary. In that, it sets a dream.
When B.Traven undertakes the Jungle cycle, the Mexican revolution is twenty years old. Its political chessboard is packed with revolutionary leaders, complicated with sporadic interference from the US who fear that their southern neighbour might fall into the Bolshevik basket. 1930’s Mexico was the haven B.Traven had been aspiring to all his life. The Jungle cycle is, as much as a voice of the revolutions, a song to the Mexican peasants who wrested their country from Porfirio Diaz’s stranglehold into working class-based democracy.
But B.Traven never mingles in politics. Of the most famous revolutionaries, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, names that still resonate today, he speaks not. Of the US interventions he speaks not. Of Mexico City he speaks not. His Jungle novels are set and remain in the southern jungles, even at the conclusion of their cycle. The peasant army defeats the federal soldiers near Balun Canan in the Chiapas. From there, they go nowhere. They stay where they are, uninterested in a national destiny. They set up their own camp, which grows to become a medium-size village. It remains hidden, like any true paradise. This is what The General From The Jungle is: the story of a paradise. Not a lost paradise, not the hunt for a hidden paradise, not the return to an original paradise: it is the building of an anarchist paradise.
B.Traven is not at ease with the victors, even when victors are on his side. He knows too well how history turns against itself, how victory brings power and power lets corruption set in. His paradise is superficial and artificial. There are none of anarchy’s harsh realities that a writer like Ursula Le Guin exposes. B.Traven’s anarchist paradise is childish and pure, like his 21-year-old general. The General From The Jungle is not a good ending to a harsh cycle forged in such a down-to-earth, realistic style. It stands awkward, pure utopia at the end of a dire, angry documentary. In that, it sets a dream.
February 17, 2018
The final book in Traven's series of 'Jungle' novels brings events to an unexpected but satisfying conclusion. Traven also finally does what I'd been hoping he'd do, which was to muddy the waters a bit and stop portraying all of the rebels as heroes and all of their oppressors as unmitigatedly evil. Many of the strongest passages in this book are those dealing with the fat General and his hapless lieutenant who are sent to quash the rebellion being led by the 'general from the jungle'. Though not flawless, it's been a highly rewarding reading experience to work through all six books consecutively and I'm happy to say that the last one does not disappoint.
April 8, 2022
This book is about a never-named Latin American nation's Indian rebellion against a 40-year dictatorship. It's almost entirely descriptions of the strategies, tricks, battles and losses of the courageous, mostly machete and knife-wielding Indians fighting their way to a revolution for Land and Freedom.
I'm not really sure of the purpose of the book. Perhaps because it is the conclusion of a series. Mostly, you get the experience of hanging out with and listening to the thoughts of those courageous peasant Indians who are gathered with supreme loyalty under one of their inspiring fellows; a man who had made it up to sergeant in the nation's military, but who now, to them, is General.
I'm not really sure of the purpose of the book. Perhaps because it is the conclusion of a series. Mostly, you get the experience of hanging out with and listening to the thoughts of those courageous peasant Indians who are gathered with supreme loyalty under one of their inspiring fellows; a man who had made it up to sergeant in the nation's military, but who now, to them, is General.
December 16, 2019
Иако, и покрај сета муистерија околу себе, Б.Травен се смета за еден од одличните автори на овој жанр, за мене лично книгата ми беше премногу млака. И, покрај сета генијалност и бечна правда со која го осипал главниот јунак, Генералот, сепак, на негова сметка останатите ликови, особено оние кои се војници, офицери, федералеси, руралеси во служба на диктаторот се прувеличено изведени во идиоти и неспособни. Инаку, книгата е лесна за читање и примамлива, јас ја имав несреќата, по грешка да го прочитам последнит дел од серијалот сосавен од 6 книги, но набрзо ќе ја исправам грешката.
November 3, 2018
An amazing adventurous conclusion to an epic 6 novel tale of resistance and hope. Savvy without being cynical, Traven is a joy to read. Great analysis and compelling action, Traven ties the numerous characters and storylines from the earlier Jungle novels together into a romping novel of revenge and justice.
July 18, 2018
Traven writes adventure stories full of heart, action, humanity and a superb understanding of human psychology. His anger and righteousness mixed with his distrust of large human endeavours still stands the test of time.
April 15, 2020
Terre et liberté !
May 6, 2021
Awesome Book!!
Read
May 25, 2021So glad i reread these books. The impact is even greater now that i have a deeper understanding of history and i am older.
July 8, 2023
Read for school. Kinda boring. I felt that there was a lot of talking and not a lot of action
May 4, 2014
Excelente título, magnífico. Comparando con otras obras de Traven que he podido leer este sin duda un título muy representativo de la claridad crítica política que siempre logra retratar; injusticia, rebeldía y lucha de clases son algunos de los temas que se pueden tomar como principales de este título y congruentes con el resto de la obra de Traven.
Recomendado a todos aquellos que llevamos un bicho de amor por la justicia en un terraplén de injusticias históricas y diarias :)
Recomendado a todos aquellos que llevamos un bicho de amor por la justicia en un terraplén de injusticias históricas y diarias :)
April 27, 2011
A satisfying novel that (horror of horrors!) takes liberties with its material and its depiction of reality. I get the feeling it would make a great counterpoint or counterpart to Conrad's Nostromo. Don't be turned off because it's part of a series - this book stands up just fine by itself.
November 1, 2020
Rereading the series of his 6 great novels depicting the origins of the Mexican Revolution. This is the final one and maybe the least optimistic but still vivid and inspiring. The author has much to say on the nature of dictatorships and revolutions against them that rings true today.
December 17, 2015
The great Jungle Novels!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews