An anthropologist before the national success of LAUGHING BOY turned him to the field of fiction, OLIVER LA FARGE has always retained an eager and vigilant interest in his first love, the Mayan culture, and the mysteries about it which still remain to be solved.
Novelist and anthropologist, who graduated from Groton in 1920 and from Harvard in 1924, OLIVER LA FARGE had taken part in three archacological expeditions to Arizona and in others to Mexico and Guatemala before settling down to write his first novel. Laughing Boy, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. Since 1933 he has taken a leading interest in Indian affairs; and more recently, during his residence in New Mexico, he has taught and lectured on the two subjects dearest to him — anthropology and English.
OLIVER LA FARGE came to his ivriling by way of archaeology. He had began to publish his short stories while an undergraduate at Harvard’ but it was on his expeditions to Arizona’ Mexico, and Guatemala that his sympathy for the native Indian found depth and substance. His first novel, Laughing Boy, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 and marked him at once as an artist and an authority in his field. During the tear, he served in the Air Transport Command, and his history of that resourceful outfit is one of the best of the war books.