Brazilian Adventure
by
[Scribner’s, $2.75]
MEN whose business, be it the gathering of scientific data, or the search for oil or good banana land, or whatsoever, takes them regularly on those trips into little-known or unknown territory which are commonly known as ‘explorations’ become painfully weary of the exaggerations and self-advertisement in which the Dyotts, the Mitchell-Hedges, and other front-page explorers indulge. Without belittling the difficulties and unpleasantnesses of their work, they will mostly admit that they have engaged in it because they choose to, and return to it for the same reason. Overstressed adventure, hardships sent out by radio, cause a rising of the gorge.
To all these men, and anyone else with an awakened sense of the ‘phony,’ Fleming’s Brazilian Adventure will come as great relief. It stands with While Waters and Black as a delightful and interesting debunking, and at the same time a sound narrative of real charm. The humor is occasionally forced — or, perhaps, too obvious and slightly flat. Sometimes the effort to raise a laugh fails to succeed. But this is the exception, not the rule. The difficulties and hardships are honestly described, but kept in their true proportion. The expedition is clearly visualized. The country is made vivid. Slowly the reader finds that this cheerful narrator is making him see and feel the expedition, the river, the jungle, the open bush, the Indians.
Excitement, depression; success, failure; the human elements of pride, humor, caution, disappointment, courage, irritability, companionship, which make up the subjective essence of an expedition, are remarkably well described. Fleming says he is going to be subjective, and he is. He also says he is going to be truthful, and any reader with some slight, experience of tropical exploration will, I think, be convinced that he is so, in unusually high degree.
With an occasionally excessive use of bathos, a little forced humor which is at its worst in the first quarter of the book, the final result is none the less an excellent narrative, a document in human nature and description of a way of life which anyone should enjoy. The characters of his companions might have been better realized; but he has done a remarkable job on the fantastic Major Pingle. The long, slow race over a thousand miles of river with which the book closes is genuinely exciting reading. One shares the exasperation of the delays, the painfully drawn-out tension of what might be described as a crawling race, without the thing ever becoming too long, too detailed, to hold the interest. It is a mighty good job. With just a touch less determination to inject humor at all costs, Brazilian Adventure would be a model book for all explorers to emulate. But then, so honest and untheatrical an attitude would ruin the front-page news.
OLIVER LA FARGE