The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure By Carl Hoffman
This book was beautifully written, exciting, informative, and at times, quite profound. It's a real page turner of a non fiction book, and I highly recommend it to those who might want to learn more about a part of the world we rarely read about.
It's really two books, though: one is about Bruno Manser, a young man who is passionate about living in the ancient ways and preserving ways of life of the tribal people of Borneo that are rapidly disappearing as the forests are increasingly logged. Bruno leaves behind his life as a herder in Switzerland and lives his life among the Dayan (a peaceful, nomadic tribe), learning their language, wearing a loincloth and becoming an adept hunter with handmade poison blow darts. Bruno's story is incredible, so harrowing and sad and unbelievable. One of the passages in this book, in which Bruno has a terrible snakebite and must cut off part of his own necrotic leg muscle, was as horrific as any horror novel I've ever read. Bruno's story is an amazing one, but it really brings up the big questions. He devoted his life to protecting the Borneo rainforest, leading the Dayan in mass protests that ultimately held off logging in their area (for a while, ultimately, sadly, the rainforests of Borneo are nearly gone). The Malaysian government saw Bruno as enemy #1 and hunted him for years, arguing that he was holding back progress and the tribes deserve to be brought into modernity. They deserve easier lives (life in the jungles was anything but easy, as the author demonstrates when he visits Bruno's haunts- you constantly had to hunt for food, the weather presented challenges for keeping warm, and all manner of biting creatures awaited, day and night), they deserve education, electricity, housing, etc. The government accused Bruno of forcing the people into remaining in extreme hardship. He didn't see it that way, and I don't think I do either. It's definitely food for thought. This half of the book was so interesting and well written, and I kind of wish it was the whole book.
The other part of the book is about Michael Palmieri, a man who calls himself a buccaneer, and comes to Southeast Asia to exploit it- trekking days through the forest and finding extremely rare and precious pieces of tribal art, then selling them to the West for immense amounts of money. He made quite a name and a living for himself over 6 decades of doing this in Bali and Borneo, and as the author notes, is an expert in Bornean tribal art and spotting fakes. While Michael's story is also pretty interesting, especially his early days tramping through Southeast Asia in the late 60s during the height of the hippy movement, I couldn't really get into it because it just felt so grossly exploitative in comparison to Bruno. While there were some harrowing passages in these pages, I didn't feel any affinity for someone who suffers through the forest to steal the rich heritage of people who are already losing everything they have. The tribes of Borneo lost their livelihoods, their homes, their culture, just everything, in a matter of like 15 years. The Venn diagram of these two lives had little overlap; there is one line of the book where they actually meet, and I would've liked more than that, to see what they really thought of each other or how they interacted. Personally, though, I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it were just a story about Bruno and left Michael's story out entirely. Carl Hoffman The Last Wild Men of Borneo is a wonderful double biography (one of my favorite genres!) It follows in the footsteps of two Western men who went to Borneo around the same time. While they did pass by each other once in Kuching; for the most part they were on parallel paths, which Hoffman describes as being almost mirror images of each other.
The first man is Bruno Manser. You’ve heard the expression “Fact is stranger than fiction?” Well, that term was invented for cases like that of Swiss environmentalist, Bruno Manser’s life story. Arriving in Borneo in the mid-80s, within a year, he was living with one of the most elusive tribes in the highlands, the Penan. The cover of the book has a photograph of Manser that I did not realize was a white man until I was nearly finished reading. Dressed in a loincloth and carrying a poison arrow quiver and blowpipe, his hair has been cut in the Dayak fashion, and he is shown squatting on a rock near the river’s edge. It is a touching photograph of a man who gave his life to fight for the rights of the indigenous peoples of the highlands. Hoffman described the events of his life and then tries to make sense of his disappearance. He does this through a thorough investigation into archives and by conducting countless interviews.
The other subject of Hoffman’s book is tribal art dealer and collector Michael Palmieri. In another story that reads more like a Hollywood movie, we follow Palmieri from his surfing days in LA deep into the rainforest of Borneo; where he has fled after dodging the draft and traveling overland from Paris to Goa, by way of Kabul. In Indonesia, he buys a longboat and—you guessed it—heads upriver to buy artifacts. This is where Hoffman’s book really shines. Because the rainforest is not just being threatened by loggers and palm oil corporations, as it turns out the cultural treasures of the Dayak are being plundered as well. In what seems to be a typical story, we follow Palmieri upriver where he bargains for masterpieces. In one case, he gets his hands on a priceless wood statue, which he somehow manages to trade for a Swiss Army knife. He would then sell this statue for an enormous sum of money to a dealer, who then sold it to the Dallas Museum of Art. In the book, we watch this happen again and again. Priceless work of sacred art is purchased for laughably small amounts of money, sometimes traded for a generator or even stolen right out of graves.
The tribal art market is worth over $100 million dollars today. And now we have a vanishing Borneo—from its animals to its ancient forests, to its peoples and cultural heritage.
Hoffman also explored this in his wonderful Savage Harvest. In both books, he goes into unexpected depth looking into what he calls the Western hunger for Eastern Solace. In this book, he does this in Bali, where he is living. I wasn't crazy about this since I think he exploits the ladies who do yoga in unfair ways, talking of basically how empty their lives are and how the expats use Balinese ritual and yoga by cherry picking, what works for them and what doesn't. I do think there is something of cultural appropriation but I wish he didn't talk about their plastic surgery and empty chatter since it isn't very nice, is it? I am sure they didn't expect this from agreeing to go on a date with him! He was a lot more likable when he questioned his own western hunger for eastern solace in describing his very secular upbringing, where he felt alienated from Judaism and hungered for ritual and transcendence... And he rightly points out in this book that if these Westerners really embraced Balinese culture, they would find it as demanding as the Catholic liturgy. He talks about Dayak who converted to Christianity and gave the main reason for their conversion being that Christianity is so much easier... this all is saying that maybe somethings in life are not consumer choices. Or maybe everything is a consumer choice and we can just do whatever the hell we want-? His four test cases are himself, Michael Rockefeller, who was there to consume tribal art and Palmieri--both who were very exploitive in their bargaining with the people they were buying (stealing basically) this art from...and then Manser is a tougher case, as he truly was trying to be the voice that this tribe so desperately needed in the face of their entire land being ruined.
Manser became a real thorn in the side of Mahatir, and even more the Sarawak minister who ran the logging companies and was a billionaire. In a letter that Mahatir unbelievably wrote to Manser, Mahatir asks, So, you think these people don't have a right to hospitals and education? You think they should live in the stone age to suit your fantasies? And who are you to talk? It's true as well... and yet, just like in the case of the people who lost their sacred art--cultural patrimony really, as we are talking of very culturally significant art works that were bought for nothing, making enormous profits!
Anyway, I am a big fan of this author. A national geographic contributing editor, he finds riveting stories that should be or could be Hollywood movies and he tells them as such--but then goes into great depth. Great writer. Great detective work. Sensitive handling of issues!
Carl Hoffman This wonderful book takes you back in time. Two men, unconnected, delve into the world of a jungle tribe called Dayak. One totally submerges into it, the other finds a fortune there. It also tells the tale of civilization encroaching on these nomads of a time not long past. A peoples self sufficient and at one with nature, living without any modern conveniences, happy in this environment, and tough as nails. This story flows, and is educational, and enjoyable. Carl Hoffman I received a free copy of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway.
The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure is the dual biography of American art dealer Michael Palmieri and Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser with the prime focus on their lives in Borneo. The chapters alternate between the two.
Both Palmieri and Manser sought to escape their lives in their homelands, and Borneo is where they eventually arrived to spend large portions of their lives. Palmieri represents the capitalist impulse of the West, in that he starts as a trader and becomes an art dealer buying cheap to sell at a substantial profit. Manser is more fueled by his ego to see what he can survive, searching to find the Penan people the last people to live a traditional rain forest based lifestyle. As Borneo becomes more modernized these lifestyle comes under threat by logging.
The alternating narratives are a little jarring at first, and it quickly becomes apparent the Palmieri sections are largely focused on the present while Manser chapters work chronologically.
The setting is the most detailed character, and suffers the most of the time period covered by the book. As the narrative continues Manser's life becomes less laudable and Palmieri's always embraces the worst aspects of capitalism.
A fairly quick read good for anyone interested in travel, environmentalism, or the white man's burden. Carl Hoffman Listened to the audio (as usual).
The reader had a unique cadence to his voice, that while not unpleasant, I found a bit distracting.
I was expecting a bit more out of this book. There are a number of interesting parts, such as antiquities dealing (something I know little about) and about Bruno Manser's survival adventures. The writing style is also very solid I think. But I didn't quite connect to the book as a whole and found that the dual narratives didn't work for me. I couldn't quite finish it either since I got a bit lost with it. Perhaps it was also the reader and if I had read the print I might have rated it higher. So two stars -- it was ok. Carl Hoffman
Two modern adventurers sought a treasure possessed by the legendary “Wild Men of Borneo.” One found riches. The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization—or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected murder. Lured by these mysteries, New York Times bestselling author Carl Hoffman journeyed to find the truth, discovering that nothing is as it seems in the world’s last Eden, where the lines between sinner and saint blur into one.
In 1984, Swiss traveler Bruno Manser joined an expedition to the Mulu caves on Borneo, the planet’s third largest island. There he slipped into the forest interior to make contact with the Penan, an indigenous tribe of peace-loving nomads living among the Dayak people, the fabled “Headhunters of Borneo.” Bruno lived for years with the Penan, gaining acceptance as a member of the tribe. However, when commercial logging began devouring the Penan’s homeland, Bruno led the tribe against these outside forces, earning him status as an enemy of the state, but also worldwide fame as an environmental hero. He escaped captivity under gunfire twice, but the strain took a psychological toll. Then, in 2000, Bruno disappeared without a trace. Had he become a madman, a hermit, or a martyr?
American Michael Palmieri is, in many ways, Bruno’s opposite. Evading the Vietnam War, the Californian wandered the world, finally settling in Bali in the 1970s. From there, he staged expeditions into the Bornean jungle to acquire astonishing art and artifacts from the Dayaks. He would become one of the world’s most successful tribal-art field collectors, supplying sacred works to prestigious museums and wealthy private collectors. And yet suspicion shadowed this self-styled buccaneer who made his living extracting the treasure of the Dayak: Was he preserving or exploiting native culture?
As Carl Hoffman unravels the deepening riddle of Bruno’s disappearance and seeks answers to the questions surrounding both men, it becomes clear saint and sinner are not so easily defined and Michael and Bruno are, in a sense, two parts of one whole: each spent his life in pursuit of the sacred fire of indigenous people. The Last Wild Men of Borneo is the product of Hoffman’s extensive travels to the region, guided by Penan through jungle paths traveled by Bruno and by Palmieri himself up rivers to remote villages. Hoffman also draws on exclusive interviews with Manser’s family and colleagues, and rare access to his letters and journals. Here is a peerless adventure propelled by the entwined lives of two singular, enigmatic men whose stories reveal both the grandeur and the precarious fate of the wildest place on earth. The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure
This hasn't been a good reading month. This book is not what the title led me to believe. I thought, Oh good....cultural....indigenous....survival, but no...it isn't that at all. It is about white men who go to Borneo for treasure and end up living there as they loot the treasure and sell it off. And then one of them goes missing. This was a book about them, not the Wild Men of Borneo. There were too many references likening them to Tarzan. I think Tarzan is cool....but this was not that. I really didn't like this one. So 1 star. Carl Hoffman Excellent book, but man - a lot to unpack here.
This is basically a story of the destruction of Borneo - its physical destruction, as its irreplaceable rainforests are cut down and sold off, only to be replaced by monoculture palm oil plantations; but also the cultural and spiritual destruction of its remaining aboriginal peoples, whose heritage is also being collected and sold off to foreign interests.
I'm still not sure if telling this bigger story of the indigenous tribes of Borneo (and similarly, of the indigenous peoples of New Guinea through his earlier book, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art) through the specific tales of several EXTREMELY white interlopers is racially insensitive or a stroke of narrative genius, but for me, this ultimately worked.
For the first three-quarters of the book, Michael Palmieri comes off as a charming, roguish but ultimately morally compromised (or is he?) tribal art collector who consistently rips off the Pinan and Dayak peoples (at one point, purchasing one of his greatest finds for a single Swiss Army knife). And yet…if he had not moved so much indigenous art out of Borneo when he did, would it have instead been destroyed during the indiscriminate burning and other razing of so much virgin forest by Malaysia's own rapacious timber and palm oil industries?
(FIRST NOTE: Despite the Malaysian government never looking good in this book - particularly its mercurial and thin-skinned [but apparently indestructible] Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed - the real, consistent villain of this story is Sarawak's Chief Minister Abdhul Taib Mahmud, who served in that position for an unimaginable 33 years from 1981-2014, and then became Governor of Sarawak, a position he continues to hold today. Taib's personal fortune is estimated at over $15 billion, most of which was accumulated as a direct result of the exploitation and appropriation of Sarawak's natural resources.)
(SECOND NOTE: And yes colonial powers and foreign invaders have always taken advantage of their conquered lands and peoples - just think of Napoleon in Egypt, or Hitler...well, anywhere - but that isn't limited to we Westerners. To this day, Beijing blames Chiang Kai-shek of stealing many of China's most valuable treasures, most of which reside today in Taipei's National Palace Museum. But how many of those would have been otherwise destroyed by China's Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution? And how much of Tibet's cultural heritage could have been saved if someone like Palmieri had been able to remove it prior to the Chinese invasion - and subsequent devastation - of Tibet? And certainly, Sarawak's new Malay Muslim rulers held/hold Borneo's Orang Ulu* in even lower regard than did their former British rulers, as well as the original White Rajahs before them, and as such have showed zero interest in preserving their unique cultural heritage.)
At the other extreme from Palmieri is Bruno Manser, a zealous, idealistic, but ultimately unrealistic supporter of the Pinan's rights to their own land and culture in Borneo. Manser ultimately paid for his efforts with his life, disappearing in the rainforest in 2000…and then suffering the additional posthumous tragedy of being featured on the cover of TIME magazine just one week before Sept 11, 2001** - at which point his well-argued concerns took a distant last place behind…well, basically everything at that point, at least for a long while.
Hoffman does a good job throughout in laying out the essential conundrum of white efforts to save rainforests and indigenous peoples throughout the world: To Westerners, Bruno (and in his own way, Palmieri - my addition)) was a selfless savior and the Penan the quintessence of noble savages. To the Malaysian government they were a primitive embarrassment who needed to be saved from their own primitiveness (a process that not incidentally meant enormous profits for Malaysia's elites).
And therein lies the rub. If Borneo's development did indeed aid the local peoples, then that may indeed be a good thing. Colorful as their forest life appears to we outsiders, who among them wouldn't appreciate education, medicine, electricity, etc., etc.? But ultimately, those local benefits were few and far between - while the real profits went to an increasingly corrupt Malaysian kleptocracy,*** foreign art collectors, and buyers of tropical hardwoods around the world (but particularly in China and Japan).
Anyway - as I said, a lot to unpack. On a personal level, it made me take an on-going look at my own travels and acquisitions. Certainly I was more than a mere tourist, but never really surpassed the still-low bar of expat; while I lived in Malaysia/Singapore for seven years, and Taiwan for another 18, I never really tried to become a part of either culture, and always assumed I would someday go home to the U.S. (with my container full of slowly-acquired antiques, artifacts and souvenirs).
Anyway anyway - enough said. Excellent, eye-opening and thought-provoking book; I only suggest you read it close to both Google and Google Maps, so that you search for exotic places, terms and people like Batu Lawi, hampatongs, Mutang Urud, Lubuk Antu, Pontianak (which I had always confused with Balikpapang - silly me), etc.
* Orang Ulu - people of the interior. Malaysia is full of orangs - Orang Asli (native or original people, the aborigines of peninsular Malaysia); Orang Laut (people of the sea); Orang Kuala (people of the river); Orang Putih (white people or Caucasians); and - most famous of all - Orang Utan, (people of the forest, or our beloved - and highly endangered, again due to Borneo's unstoppable loggers - orangutans).
** PERSONAL NOTE: As mentioned above, I lived in Malaysia from 1998-2002 (and all things considered, loved it there - beautiful country, great people, just generally politically messed-up), when much of the Bruno affair was unfolding. However, I was only vaguely aware of it, and then only through the pro-government and deeply one-sided reporting of New Straits Times journalist James Ritchie, who also comes off very poorly in this book. And of course, the 03 Sept 2001 issue of TIME magazine was mysteriously absent from Malaysia's magazine racks that week...
*** Ah, kleptocracy. While Taib continues to go not only unpunished, but also greatly rewarded, for his rapaciousness, it's worth noting that Malaysia's former Prime Minister Najib Razak just began serving a 12-year sentence for corruption, and his wife was herself sentenced to 10 years just THREE DAYS AGO (i.e., 01 Sept 2022). However, this shouldn't really be interpretted as an encouraging sign; like much of Malaysian politics (see the 1998 and 2015 convictions of Anwar Ibrahim - Mahathir's deputy PM and main challenger - on sodomy charges), this was as much politically motivated as any true search for justice. (BTW, who do you think succeeded Najib as Prime Minister? A then-92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad. What are the odds??)
(Answer: actually, knowing UMNO pretty good...) Carl Hoffman Read almost exactly half and then DNF except for seeing all the photos and their trailers and skim reading the last few chapters of Bruno.
This just seems all over the place. I could not connect to their hedonism and habits. (Not the Borneo but our 2 principle players.) Nor their heavily slanted propensities to their own wishes and agenda as opposed to the wishes/ purposes of the indigenous people. Non-fiction I find the most excellent when it is focused far more upon a specific subject matter along a factual or scientific or orderly continuum. For me this was lacking here despite the writing flow (prose form) being at least 3 stars. At times the characters seem slippery, slimy. Like con men propensities married to their ecological motives and egos primarily.
I would much more appreciate a ethnological study of those Borneo people straight on from THEIR own eyes. Carl Hoffman This book was stone cold brilliant. Beautiful. Sad. Joyful. Incredibly thoughtful. Perfectly constructed. It would take a review as long as this book to cover its many facets. It is a travel book of the first order, a history of Borneo and its indigenous peoples, a study of human nature, a meditation on meaning, culture, the natural world, memory. That just scratches the surface. Carl Hoffman Great read if you are interested in Borneo and the cultural relationships that go on there. The book talks about 2 different people and how their personalities influenced their decision in going to Borneo and what they did there. One of them Bruno is presented as an adventurous albeit a little selfish person who was never happy living in a structured society and once he makes his way to Borneo he finally finds what he was looking for but at a price. The other character had a different approach and he was more of an ambitious character and while his life is also complex and interesting he also makes it to Borneo but he sees it as more of a business opportunity. Carl Hoffman
