Word: torsvan
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When a skinny, secretive old man who called himself "Hal Groves" died in Mexico eight years ago, one' of literature's strangest paper chases came to an end. Services were held not for Groves but for "Traven Torsvan," a naturalized Mexican citizen. The dead man's widow acknowledged what had been widely suspected: that Torsvan, who had hidden his identity for 45 years, was indeed the reclusive novelist B. Traven. The author's broody, metallic style echoes that of Stephen Crane and Joseph Conrad. His once acclaimed books and short-story collections (The Treasure...
...posthumous identification soon led to other puzzles. Why, if he had been raised in the U.S. (as Torsvan hinted), was his written English so Germanic? Was Torsvan-Croves-Traven also, as rumored, a German-American anarchist and pamphleteer named Ret Marut, last seen under that name in Munich in 1919, facing a sentence of death...
...journal Der Ziegel-brenner (The Brickmaker), which raged against all human institutions. Because Marut seemed unaccountably free from wartime censorship, and because he managed to escape before being shot for his revolutionary activities, the rumor arose that he was protected by the German regime. Decades later in Mexico, Marut-Torsvan-Croves-Traven seems to have hinted mischievously that he was the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm and an American actress. What is so absurd about this roguish fancy is that it cannot be dismissed as so absurd; scandal has long been part of the royal German tradition...
...matter if he is the son of a Hohenzollern prince or anyone else? Write about his works. Write how he is against anything which is forced upon human beings, including Communism or Bolshevism." Hiding behind age and deafness, he stopped just short of admitting that he was Traven, Torsvan or Marut. Deference and fear that Groves might cut off the interviews apparently kept Stone from pressing hard for answers. The portrait drawn from such material is lively, affectionate and, inevitably, less than satisfying...
Died. Traven Torsvan, 79, known by his pen name, "B. Traven," reclusive author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and some 15 other novels; of a kidney disease; in Mexico City. Traven shrouded his life in such secrecy that no one could even be sure where he was born (among the theories: Chicago, San Francisco, Germany). "Of an artist or writer, one should never ask an autobiography," he once said, "because he is bound to lie. If a writer, who he is and what he is, cannot be recognized by his work, either his books are worthless...