Total Number of Ratings: 9
Murmur - Episode #21 - Murmur Book Club - Lost City of Z
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 11:27 PM
outing for the Murmur Book Club, Paul Montgomery and Josh Christie journey into the Amazon to discuss David Grann's The Lost City of Z, a tale of archaeological obsession. In 1925 Percy Fawcett, his son Jack, and a team of explorers and porters embarked on an expedition into the rain forest to locate a mythic lost city. They never returned. After nearly a century and dozens of rescue missions, we're no closer to solving the mystery. But that doesn't stop intrepid reporter David Grann from writing a gripping yarn about Fawcett's lifelong obsession as well as his own modern expedition into the Green Hell. It's a badass history lesson even for those who tend to thumb their noses at nonfiction.
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Time: 00:33:40
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Outstanding show, guys. You hit a lot of great points about the book. Thanks again to Paul for picking it.
I've been pondering the balance between the old and new narrative, and I think it's the history major in me that wishes we could just get a researched historical book (including the modern day research and interviews, don't get me wrong), without nearly so much authorial pondering. I'm more interested in Fawcett's story -- and in Z's -- than in Grann's pondering about it. I'd prefer the narrator more invisible, but on some level that's just a matter of taste. And no doubt about it, there were some interesting insights and discoveries in the modern day section, so I'm not going to be too grudging.
I think my favorite "character" in the story was Fawcett's *other* son, the one who didn't fit with his father's expectations and didn't go on the journey and spent the rest of his life feeling left behind.
Oh, and the feeling I mentioned of not being sure that it was truth or fiction -- I do tend to run into that a lot (I had to stop in the middle of a "This American Life" podcast yesterday to look up whether this hedge fund they were talking about could actually exist, though in my defense, it is April) -- but this book brought it out more than most. Interesting sidenote -- if I read or hear something presented as fact in a work of fiction, I almost never think to question it. For instance, I have no idea what they actually call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris, but I know what I believe.