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A review by sophronisba
Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman
2.0
Do you remember how, in early seasons of Survivor, the finale would show Jeff Probst traveling breathlessly to the jungle to deliver the final votes to the CBS studio? This book is the narrative equivalent of that sequence, except with cannibals.
The author is clearly very proud of his research and spends long paragraphs telling of his travels and his meetings with Asmat tribe members. I would have preferred to know more about Michael Rockefeller and his interest in Native art. But the author is not interested in Rockefeller's life, only his death, and his death is only a puzzle to be solved in (the author hopes) the creepiest way possible. (It's hard not to picture the author reciting the essentials of his theory around a campfire, with a flashlight illuminating his face.)
Of course, the author reaches the conclusion that cannibals ate Rockefeller. That is the conclusion he wanted to reach all along. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for this conclusion, but the author has fallen in love with his theory and he is determined to hold onto it. I don't believe a word of it -- Occam's Razor suggests that Rockefeller drowned -- and when reading this book, I often wondered whether some of the Asmats with whom the author spoke were pranking him.
In short, Michael Rockefeller deserved much better than this. Savage Harvest is not a good book, and I cannot recommend it to anyone who is not Jeff Probst. I suspect that Jeff Probst, however, would thoroughly enjoy it.
The author is clearly very proud of his research and spends long paragraphs telling of his travels and his meetings with Asmat tribe members. I would have preferred to know more about Michael Rockefeller and his interest in Native art. But the author is not interested in Rockefeller's life, only his death, and his death is only a puzzle to be solved in (the author hopes) the creepiest way possible. (It's hard not to picture the author reciting the essentials of his theory around a campfire, with a flashlight illuminating his face.)
Of course, the author reaches the conclusion that cannibals ate Rockefeller. That is the conclusion he wanted to reach all along. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for this conclusion, but the author has fallen in love with his theory and he is determined to hold onto it. I don't believe a word of it -- Occam's Razor suggests that Rockefeller drowned -- and when reading this book, I often wondered whether some of the Asmats with whom the author spoke were pranking him.
In short, Michael Rockefeller deserved much better than this. Savage Harvest is not a good book, and I cannot recommend it to anyone who is not Jeff Probst. I suspect that Jeff Probst, however, would thoroughly enjoy it.