The rugged explorer who disappears into untrammelled lands with little more than a compass and a dream is an anachronism on the scale of the conquistador.
Today's explorers are no longer those brash, obsessive, charismatic men of yore, but the neurologists, geneticists and software engineers among us. The maps with the blank spaces begging to be filled are no longer maps of forbidding wildernesses, but schemata of the human brain, the genome and the Web.
But while this may be Western civilization's gain, for this reader it is almost certainly Western literature's loss.
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, Doubleday, 339 pages, $32
Thankfully, for those of us who secretly live and breath for the swashbuckling adventure tale, every now and then a book comes along that renews our faith in the epic quest narrative, its ability to inform and enlighten even as it feeds our most primal need for dramatic amusement. The Lost City of Z, by New Yorker staff writer David Grann, succeeds tremendously in these pursuits, even though its very subject matter heralds the death of the grand old era of geographic exploration that inspired so many gripping yarns.
In 1925, at a time when much of the physical world's “veil of enchantment” had already been lifted by the burgeoning science of cartography, famed English explorer Percy Fawcett set off into one of the planet's last uncharted regions, the Amazon rain forest of western Brazil. The veteran adventurer, accompanied by his son and his son's best friend, had been driven into that “green hell” for the umpteenth time by an obsession that had long defined his life: Fawcett believed, after years of secret investigation, that somewhere beneath the vast Amazonian canopy lay the ruins of a once-mighty civilization, a place he referred to in his journals simply as Z.
For more than a month, Fawcett sent back enthralling missives via Indian runners, which were reprinted for a captivated public in newspapers around the world. Then the missives suddenly stopped, and the expedition was never heard from again.
Grann serendipitously uncovers hidden clues as to the real whereabouts of the legendary Z
Fawcett's fate has been the subject of wild speculation ever since. Did he and his companions die of starvation or pestilence? Were they murdered, torn limb from limb, by Indian cannibals? Or did they actually find Z, a variant on the legend of El Dorado, and simply couldn't bear to leave?
For years after the disappearance, search parties would set off into the depths of the jungle, determined to uncover the truth. The few who returned did so empty-handed. Many more were swallowed, much as their quarry had been, by the unforgiving wilds just east of the Bolivian border. By one estimate, more than 100 so-called Fawcett Freaks have perished trying to solve the mystery behind one of “the most celebrated vanishing acts of modern times.”
In The Lost City of Z, Grann becomes a Fawcett Freak himself and puts the riddle satisfyingly to rest. Out of shape, nearing 40 and suffering from a degenerative eye condition, he nonetheless takes out an additional insurance policy on his life, leaves his young family behind in New York and embarks on his own obsessive journey of discovery into the heart of the Brazilian Amazon.
Meanwhile, Grann pieces together Fawcett's life and work, from the military barracks in Ceylon through the First World War and on to his vaunted career as an expedition leader in remotest South America. Along the way, he provides a tantalizing glimpse into the innermost workings of the esteemed Royal Geographical Society during its heyday.
