InsideOut Interview: David Grann

by Owen Lipstein May/June 2009



David Grann has described himself as the world’s least-likely explorer. How, then, did this staff writer for The New Yorker find himself retracing the steps of legendary vanished explorer Col. Percy Fawcett through the Amazon?



It happened the same way that Fawcett had spent nearly 20 years searching deep in the jungle for a place he called, somewhat obscurely, the city of “Z,” and the same way search party after search party had disappeared, looking either for Fawcett or his mythological city: It happened by way of obsession.



Although he is a middle-aged writer who has trouble with his night vision, Grann managed to accomplish what few before him had: He returned to tell the story. When we spoke about his new book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (Doubleday, 2009), he shared a few of his jungle tales.



Owen Lipstein: How did you come to retrace the steps of Percy Harrison Fawcett through the jungle?



David Grann: I was doing another story for The New Yorker on the death of a leading [Sir Arthur] Conan Doyle scholar. And in the course of that research, I had come across a reference [to] Fawcett that had helped inspire [Conan] Doyle’s novel The Lost World.
I was curious, so I plugged Fawcett’s name into a lot of newspaper databases, and up came all these crazy headlines—like, you know, Fawcett Party Disappears Into The Unknown, and Another Fawcett Search Party Vanishes. I had never heard of Fawcett up until that point. I began looking into it, and the story had all these tantalizing components: death, and obsession, and obsessed explorers.
First, you had the mystery of this legendary explorer who had disappeared, and of what had happened to him. Then you had the secondary mystery of what had happened to all these other people who had searched for Fawcett. Then you had the third mystery, which is the most interesting to me, and the most important, which was the mystery of whether this ancient civilization could really have existed in the Amazon.



OL: Why was it believed that an advanced civilization could not have existed in the Amazon?



DG: It was believed that the Amazon was really a kind of a paradise, a place that despite all its flora and fauna, was really inimical to human life. It wasn’t just the predators or the diseases or the mosquitoes that transport those diseases. It was also the fact that the rains and the floods bleached the soil of nutrients; it was impossible to grow enough crops, and have enough agriculture to sustain a large enough population, which is a precursor to any kind of complex society with divisions of labor and political hierarchy.
That was really the prevailing theory for most of the 20th century, and when Fawcett had pieced together his theory that the Amazon might’ve contained an advanced civilization, most of the scientific community dismissed him.
It’s only in recent years, when archeologists began to go in using various kinds of high-tech gadgets, [such as] satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar, that they’re beginning to find the evidence of ancient ruins and settlements, and concluding that, in fact, the Amazon had once been home to a much larger population than had ever been imagined, and a much more complex society than had ever been imagined.



OL: On his final expedition into the Amazon to look for this ancient civilization, Fawcett actually took his son with him.



DG: Yes. Fawcett began exploring the Amazon in 1906. And for nearly the next two decades, he explored this massive region, which is about the size of the continental United States, and began to gather all these clues that led him to believe there really [had been] an advanced civilization: He found shards of pottery. He listened to tribal legend. And by 1925, he had set out to find this place that he called simply, and rather cryptically, the city of “Z.”
And he brought with him on that trip just two people. He brought with him his older son Jack, who was 21-years-old at the time, and who had his 22nd birthday in the jungle; and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimmell. And even though Jack and Raleigh didn’t have any previous exploring experience, Fawcett believed they were ideal for the mission: They were tough and loyal, and because they were so close, unlikely, in the difficult conditions of the jungle, to do what was so common on these expeditions, which was to mutiny.
Jack really worshipped his father, and really wanted to be like him, but in many ways, really didn’t have experience. Because Fawcett was so obsessed with his quest, I don’t think he thought a great deal about the possible consequences to his son. He also had a sense of invulnerability, a kind of mythic sense about himself, of almost being invincible, and because he had survived so many times in the jungle, I think he believed that nothing could touch him, or touch his son. And of course, they both vanished on that expedition.



OL: You make reference in your book to another father who brought his son. Theodore Roosevelt traveled down what was then called the “River of Doubt” [now the Rio Roosevelt] on the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition [1913-1914]—and brought his son Kermit on that venture, too.



DG: Roosevelt did. There were many expeditions that went out searching for Fawcett, or for the city of “Z,” and one of the more recent ones, in 1996, was led by this Brazilian financier and adventurer, who also brought his son, who was 16 years old at the time. They were kidnapped by a tribe in that expedition, and held in captivity for several days before escaping. And Sir Walter Raleigh, who had also looked for El Dorado [“the golden one,” or City of Gold] and preceded Fawcett by several centuries, also brought his son with him when he searched for El Dorado, and his son died on that trip.
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a letter to the boy’s mother and his wife, saying, “My brains are broken,” which was an expression of utter despair.



OL: You know, it seems like an awful lot of the great novels, from Heart of Darkness to Huckleberry Finn, are about people traveling up or down a river, in some cases finding an end, in others, getting lost. Here, we’re celebrating the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson, who looked in error for the Northwest Passage to India on the river now named for him. Can you shed any more light on that?



DG: I think on a practical level, rivers were the easiest way of transport for explorers to move into regions. In many areas such as the Amazon, it’s much harder to cross land and forest, and areas where, if they’re unexplored, there may be inhabitants that are wary of intruders. So rivers have long served explorers as kind of the easier way to get in.
And in the case of the Amazon, finding food was always a problem. Many explorers would starve in the jungle. If you had boats that could go by river, you could transport more supplies and carry more food. It was also easier to flee. So rivers have always kind of provided a way into unknown land.
I also think on a more metaphorical level, and in terms of literature, they also kind of serve as this image of a pathway into the unknown. They kind of wander into areas that were, in the case of the Amazon back then, or to people who were exploring them—blank on a map.



OL: As you mentioned, explorers faced problems finding food. It’s counterintuitive to think that you can starve in the Amazon, but you can. How is that?



DG: This is one of the things that surprised me. Our image of the jungle is of this incredibly bountiful place. It’s enormous, and we think of it as having more kinds of flora, fauna and animals than anywhere else in the world. And to a large extent, that’s true.
But even on land, if you’re a newcomer to the jungle and you’re unaccustomed to it, the predators and the animals who have been there for so long are much more adept at adapting to their condition, and at eluding [predators]. Even someone like Fawcett, who was a world-class hunter, would go into these forest regions and would struggle to be able to find any animals to hunt.
While some of the rivers have many fish, there are other rivers which have a certain compound that leeches into them from the plants, and it really serves as a pollutant—almost like acid rain. And so, in parts of these rivers where Fawcett explored, he was unable to find any fish. On that expedition, he brought nine men. And five, more than half of his men, died of starvation.



OL: You’re a professional writer; when you began this story, you were already accustomed to researching the horror and the mystery of these professional explorers. But how did you come to trek into the jungle yourself?



DG: When I began my research on this story, it really began much more as a biographical quest, and that was more suited towards my physical abilities, which are, essentially: searching through libraries and archives, digging through letters and diaries.
Eventually [in the course of my research], I had gone to Cardiff, Wales, where I had tracked down Fawcett’s grand-daughter. At one point she had said to me, “Well, do you really want to know what happened to my grandfather?”
I said, “Well, sure, you know, if at all possible.” And she had led me into this back room where she had this old chest. She opened it up, and inside were all these books. The bindings were breaking apart, they were covered with dust and mud, and they were bound with these ribbons. I asked her what they were.
She said, “Those are my grandfather’s secret diaries and log books.” And she allowed me to go through them, combing for clues.
In the course of going through those, I discovered the direction that Fawcett had gone looking for this advanced civilization; he had always been extremely cryptic about where he was actually going in the jungle, because he was afraid that one of his rivals might beat him to his discovery.
It was at that point, where I was in possession of that information, that I decided to do something very out-of-character, and head into the jungle myself. I still remember telling my wife—we had a little boy, at the time—and kind of explaining it to her.
She looked at me and said, “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
In many ways, this book explores the notion of obsession. I had always thought of myself as a disinterested reporter, someone who didn’t do foolish things. I cover[ed] what other people did when they were obsessed. But in the course of this research, I became very much consumed by this story, and by the clues I had gathered.



OL: What did you find?



DG: I went into the jungle, heading into the Xingu area, in the Brazilian Amazon, where Fawcett disappeared. Even today, parts of the Amazon are unknown: The Brazilian government estimates that in some parts of the Brazilian jungle, about 60 tribes remain un-contacted. The Xingu area, which is today an Indian reservation, is about the size of Belgium; it’s the largest swath of territory that remains under indigenous control.
So, the first thing I needed to do was to find a capable guide who could help me make contact with the tribes, so I could enter these areas. Of course, this wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do—most of the guides who I originally contacted essentially said that I was out of my mind. But eventually, I did find someone.
We followed Fawcett’s trail as precisely as possible. I [had] brought his letters with me. At one point in the trip, he was describing the ordeal of packing through the jungle—jungle so thick that at one point, he got separated from his two younger companions, Jack and Raleigh. While I’m reading these, and looking out [at that same landscape], there’s actually nothing there [now]. In that area, all the forests have been deforested, or were being transformed into soybean farms. So I was quite shocked at how different the world looked.
But as we headed further north, the jungle really resumed and the conditions became very similar to what Fawcett had experienced, with very dense jungle and poisonous snakes. We ate piranha. And we tried to stay with many of the same tribes that Fawcett did.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things was staying with the Bakairi Indians. When we got there, they all said we had to meet this one woman. And they brought her to us. She was an elderly lady. She didn’t know her precise age, but she was about 100 years old. She had been a young girl when Fawcett had come through. And she still had memories of Fawcett, and could offer us great details about the expedition.
So, along the way going in, there were these kind of wonderful discoveries. I should just add that the lowest moment, and the moment where I had the greatest sense of what Fawcett’s experiences were like, was when I did get lost in the jungle for a period.



OL: What was that experience like?



DG: Well, it was my most terrifying moment. I had gotten separated from my guide and was trying to find him, and trying to find an indigenous settlement, and was unable to. And I began to just kind of walk; the jungle becomes so thick that you really have no sense of direction. I originally set out on what I felt was a path, but it became submerged in water from floods. I really had no sense of any way out.
That was the moment where I really had some sense of the consequences of these expeditions—that there really are consequences. Like I said, I had a little boy at the time. I remember at one point, after I had been lost awhile, becoming very angry with myself and at Fawcett. I just remember cursing Fawcett, both for myself, and for all these other people that perished.



OL: We know you didn’t vanish, like so many of your predecessors, but how long were you lost?


DG: Several hours.