It sure is a new year and there are plenty of new books to appreciate, with more coming soon. But it’s also a time to look back on some literary treasures from the past.
One of these gems is Lebi’s “Sierra Madre Treasure”. When the most honest rewards are at hand.
Traven, pseudonym, was most likely a German radical whose politics led to a death sentence before he escaped, eventually making his way to Mexico, where he set this book, as well as his six “Jungle” novels.
In “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” also made famous by a John Huston film starring Humphrey Bogart, Dobbs, an American slumper in the Mexican interior tries to solve “that old problem” that plagues many depressions: “How can I get some money?” right Now?”
After some begged to pay for the meal, he lit up for the oil fields and was promised work, but in every camp he heard the same news: “No work, and the prospects are far from promising.” That is until he meets Pat McCormick, a conniving American drifter who promises steady work rigging oil camps.
But when McCormick hardens him, Dobbs returns to town where he and his buddy meet Curtin Howard, an old gold-talking prospector in the mountainous Sierra Madre. However, Howard also knows the dangers of treasure hunting, and explains how gold can make a man rich, but can also mean, “You can’t tell right from wrong. You can no longer see clearly what is good and bad. You lose your judgment.”
However, hoping to get rich, Dobbs and Curtin Howard follow as the trio take off into the mountains to dig for gold. Howard’s warnings soon confirm the chaos as the men discover some gold, but they turn on each other, fighting off robbers, and struggling to discern a way forward.
“Treasure of the Sierra Madre” is at its root a cautionary tale, showing how the ancient siren’s song of riches can blur that line between right and wrong.
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Another pearl of the past is Sanora Babb’s “Unknown Names”. Completed in the mid-1930s, Babb’s story about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl came to fruition when John Steinbeck published his book The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. Steinbeck eventually won a Nobel Prize, while Babb’s story wasn’t published until 2004.
Babb’s story follows a tale similar to Steinbeck’s, although it draws less attention to itself, and some reports suggest that Steinbeck drew in part on Babb’s research interviewing hard-working farmers driven to distraction and disillusionment with a lack of resources and expectations in the Dust Bowl years.
In her story, set deep in the hill country of Oklahoma, Milt Dunn and his family make a living farming, hoping for more, even though “in this drought country” they were lucky to have “enough harvest to live without getting pinched.”
However, like Steinbeck’s Joads, Dunne discovered that good intentions could not sow grain. Soon after losing their farm, lighting up for California’s promise of abundance, and nearly giving in to the hard work that was “stopping vegetable work” in the region’s “terrible desert heat,” they realize that it’s not just the environment that has turned against them, but that those with so much aren’t. friends for the needy.
Yes, there are plenty of good new books to look forward to this year, but this is also a great time to look back for old treasures, too.
Good read.