Review 112: The Sophisticated Savage by Carla Seidl

The Sophisticated Savage
By Carla Seidl

Lulu.com
Copyright © 2009
214 Pages
$13.95 Softcover
$ 7.99 E-book
ISBN 977-0-578-01334-3

I can guarantee you’ve never read anything like The Sophisticated Savage. Part scholarly essay, part interview, and part soul-baring diary, Carla Seidl weaves a tale that is hard to put down. What you will likely discover is that you end up finding out much more about Seidl than you do about the title character. Whether you end up empathizing with her or shaking your head, you will be right inside her head during a fascinating time in her life.

While studying at Harvard, Seidl decided to take a sabbatical to teach English on the Galapagos islands. I had to hand it to her right there, at 19 I was nowhere near that adventurous so it was fun to live vicariously through someone who is. Quickly she meets Fredy, a transplant from the jungles of Ecuador. She is struck by his self assurance and he spins her away into his world when he pulls her onto the dance floor.

Fredy is many things. To the locals, he is known as Billabong because of the shirts he wears. To the tourists, he is a surfing instructor that always knows where the best waves are to be found. To Seidl he is an enigma, she finds herself both attracted to and repulsed by him. He spends much of his time putting the moves on her, feeding her lines, and she spends much of the book trying to determine what is real and what is fabrication.

The most thoroughly researched claim made by Fredy is that his Huorani ancestors were cannibals and as a child, he had tasted human flesh. Here is an example of Seidl researching the likelihood of this boast:

For my own purposes, trying to find mention of cannibalism among the Huorani, my hands came up empty. Blanco Villalta, for instance, in his 1970 book on cannibal rites in the Americas, describes cannibalistic traditions observed in Brazil, for example, among the Tupinambaes, the Tupiguaranies, and the Guaranies, and in North America, among the Algonquin, Athapascos, and Aztecs, but does not share any information about cannibalism in the region of Ecuador.

Much like Fredy both fascinates Seidl and drives her a little crazy, her book did the same for me. I chose this quote because it sums up both the good (the thorough research and documentation) and the bad (too many commas). After awhile you forget about the commas and enjoy Seidl’s book for what it is, a glimpse into a world most of us will find quite foreign while seeing behavior that is quite familiar. Here is another excerpt that is more typical of what you will find in the book:

Meanwhile, Fredy asks me to lend him a dollar so he can take a taxi to his surf spot, and then after dinner says he is going to buy a tabaco. I stop. How, I say, do you have money for cigarettes if you don’t have any for food? He says he has diez centavos, and I say, with that you can buy an egg, some bread, or a banana. He laughs, as though what I am saying is strange or funny.

Seidl goes so far as to ask Fredy to take her to his jungle home, to meet his tribe and spend time with his family. While they do trek back to the mainland and end up somewhere, they get only as far as meeting a cousin and seeing the town where Fredy lived before coming to the Galapagos. Eventually his claims of living in the jungle as a savage cannibal, the son of the king of the tribe starts to unravel and we see him for what he most likely is, a bit of a scam artist and womanizer from humble roots. And yet there is enough truth to his story that Seidl, and by extension we, can’t rule anything out completely.

There is much more to this book and I encourage you to discover it for yourself. It’s a travelogue, a look into tribal Ecuador, and a coming of age story rolled into one. You probably knew people like Fredy from your own past, people who were so fascinating that you always thought you’d like to write a book about them. To Carla Seidl’s credit, she did exactly that. She shares her adventure with us as she goes from Harvard undergrad to world wanderer. On the way she matures and discovers both passion and loss. When it is all said and done, we are left to wonder if the Sophisticated Savage is Fredy, or Seidl herself.