Part mystery, part fictional biography, part travelogue, part
ethnological study, this intriguing tale draws the reader into its
onion-like structure. A Peruvian scholar has set himself several
academic tasks to be accomplished in Florence, Italy, where he has
traveled for a respite from his homeland. While there the narrator
discovers a gallery exhibiting photographs of the same Amazonian tribe,
the Machiguenga, that he had visited years earlier and never forgotten.
One photograph fascinates him, driving him to decipher the story of the
storyteller depicted in shadow.
As the narrator traces the history of his college friend, Saul Zuratas, who has not been heard from since he allegedly emigrated to Israel many years earlier, the reader is reminded of Joseph Conrad's narrator Marlow, who recounts the tale of his friend Kurtz, who also disappears into the jungle. The novel explores the evolution of an individual from contemporary Latin American urban life to tribal life in the jungle, as he becomes so obsessed by the tribe that in time he undergoes a conversion.
Gradually he changes from his role as an ethnologist studying Machiguenga culture and passionately supporting its preservation to a role as one of the tribes's central figures, a "talker." Issues of cultural and environmental integrity, of what is "primitive" versus "advanced," and of what modern society truly offers in a setting in which the environment and its inhabitants have successfully coexisted for thousands of years, are treated with great intelligence and sensitivity.
The narrator as a writer envies his friend's ability to spin tales, wondering at the mystery of transformation from the Spanish native tongue and civilization to the "crackling" language of the Machiguengas and their pagan, animistic belief system. In his youth Zarutas condemns the missionaries, holding that the imposition of their beliefs upon the Indians only produces a nation of zombies. Interestingly, he later recounts the Christian story to "his" people in their own language, terminology, and frame of reference.
Vargas also treats issues of disfigurement: individual, ethnic, and environmental, as well as the related issues of alienation and acceptance, of being an outsider. The audience is given much to consider and marvel at through the spellbinding artistry of the storyteller.
The Storyteller hypnotized me with its rhythmic myths of the Machinguenga storytellers. I was captivated with the imagined scene of gathering around a fire with a group of entranced people listening to the calming lilt of the voice of the storyteller and the comfortingly familiar (to them) stories of Tasurinchi. I could really imagine what it would be like to feel that this was important in their lives. The storyteller was like a medicine man or a shaman whose words were like a healing balm for a people who felt misplaced in the world as it was becoming for them. Mascarita had the soul of a storyteller because he perhaps carried an unconscious identification with his ancestors who wandered as nomads in the desert; a people with no permanent home. For this and many other reasons, he understood what it meant to have no solid ground on which to stand.
Is it better for an anthropologist, as one who studies other cultures, to keep an academic distance from the people who are his subjects? How far should participant observation be taken? Saul Zuratas took it all the way. He abandoned the modern world and joined with a culture that was trying to avoid being assimilated into the world of zombies. The Machinguenga is a culture that is deeply imbued with meaning in every area. Globalization says that progress is king. If a `traditional' culture is impacted by global culture, that is just part of life. Do we hold `traditional' cultures back by wanting them to stay frozen in the past? Or are we `helping' them by bringing them up-to-date with our modern world? I sometimes think it is a battle of meaning versus modernization. Can the two be compatible?
Book review by Brian A.
As the narrator traces the history of his college friend, Saul Zuratas, who has not been heard from since he allegedly emigrated to Israel many years earlier, the reader is reminded of Joseph Conrad's narrator Marlow, who recounts the tale of his friend Kurtz, who also disappears into the jungle. The novel explores the evolution of an individual from contemporary Latin American urban life to tribal life in the jungle, as he becomes so obsessed by the tribe that in time he undergoes a conversion.
Gradually he changes from his role as an ethnologist studying Machiguenga culture and passionately supporting its preservation to a role as one of the tribes's central figures, a "talker." Issues of cultural and environmental integrity, of what is "primitive" versus "advanced," and of what modern society truly offers in a setting in which the environment and its inhabitants have successfully coexisted for thousands of years, are treated with great intelligence and sensitivity.
The narrator as a writer envies his friend's ability to spin tales, wondering at the mystery of transformation from the Spanish native tongue and civilization to the "crackling" language of the Machiguengas and their pagan, animistic belief system. In his youth Zarutas condemns the missionaries, holding that the imposition of their beliefs upon the Indians only produces a nation of zombies. Interestingly, he later recounts the Christian story to "his" people in their own language, terminology, and frame of reference.
Vargas also treats issues of disfigurement: individual, ethnic, and environmental, as well as the related issues of alienation and acceptance, of being an outsider. The audience is given much to consider and marvel at through the spellbinding artistry of the storyteller.
The Storyteller hypnotized me with its rhythmic myths of the Machinguenga storytellers. I was captivated with the imagined scene of gathering around a fire with a group of entranced people listening to the calming lilt of the voice of the storyteller and the comfortingly familiar (to them) stories of Tasurinchi. I could really imagine what it would be like to feel that this was important in their lives. The storyteller was like a medicine man or a shaman whose words were like a healing balm for a people who felt misplaced in the world as it was becoming for them. Mascarita had the soul of a storyteller because he perhaps carried an unconscious identification with his ancestors who wandered as nomads in the desert; a people with no permanent home. For this and many other reasons, he understood what it meant to have no solid ground on which to stand.
Is it better for an anthropologist, as one who studies other cultures, to keep an academic distance from the people who are his subjects? How far should participant observation be taken? Saul Zuratas took it all the way. He abandoned the modern world and joined with a culture that was trying to avoid being assimilated into the world of zombies. The Machinguenga is a culture that is deeply imbued with meaning in every area. Globalization says that progress is king. If a `traditional' culture is impacted by global culture, that is just part of life. Do we hold `traditional' cultures back by wanting them to stay frozen in the past? Or are we `helping' them by bringing them up-to-date with our modern world? I sometimes think it is a battle of meaning versus modernization. Can the two be compatible?
Book review by Brian A.
