> B. Traven has always been one of my favorites. The one I'd really like
> to see filmed is "The Black Ship". It is about seamen trapped on a death
> ship - one that through careless maintenance, and probably deliberate
> sabatoge for the sake of insurance will kill them all. It is about the
> "globalization" of the early 20th century, which has a lot in common
> with the "globalization" of today. Read the old Houston Chronicle series
> "Lost at Sea" for the race to the botoom that has impoverished and
> killed many sailors; you could definitely take the basic plot, and
> update it with a fishing or freight vessel operating under a 21st
> century flag of convenience. In the modern version, I'd skip the
> insurance scam - and just stick to business as usual killing everyone -
> substitutiong modern abuses for the one in the Traven novel. (Though
> they are horribly similar.) Fascinating character studies - as all the
> people from the captain on down stick to their jobs and their slots
> knowing or suspecting that it will kill them - and yet never even
> considering collective action - simply landing the ship somewhere and
> abandoning it to do something els. Given that B. Traven was active in
> the IWW - the omission of even considering this possiblity has to be
> deliberate. It may have been Travens exploration of hte mystery of the
> rarity of revolution; no answers of course - but given that we don't
> have such answers today it would have been rather much to expect.
The "Death Ship" is one of my favorite novels and I include it on my short list of anarchist seafaring novels (the other one being The Sharks
by Jens Bjørneboe)
That novel is also relevant to today for another reason: the main character on the death ship was forced into the job by virtue of being a man without a country. The early part of the novel deals with his fruitless efforts to get legitimate identity papers, a theme that is all so relevant in this ear of borders and "homeland security." As I understand it, the situation in Europe after WW I was chaotic and the states were trying ti implement more stringent border controls that hadn't existed prior to the Great War.
Chuck0