The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: A Novel by B Traven

I love B Traven’s work, the 6 novels of the jungle series are unusual and terrific in their vivid illustration of the exploitation of labor in virtual slave conditions and the power in the human spirit to keep going and struggling.
I finally got around to reading Treasure. It took me so long simply because it is the most well known. It is well know, at least the title, because of the 1948 Oscar winning film John Huston adaptation starring Humphry Bogart and Walter Huston. It’s a fine adventure movie for sure. Of course I should have known that the novel would be so much more than this adventure movie which is essentially about greed and the lust for sand that can be exchanged for wealth.
Well, the novel is so much more. Even though it came earlier than the jungle series books it is pure Traven for sure. The mixture of boy adventure gold mining tale with Traven’s sort of Left anarchism social and political philosophy and admiration for the indigenous people of the region worked just fine for me. It is a wonderful book.
The action is interrupted a few times during the course of the story, as the characters tell tales of legionary  previous mines. One of these stories that Howard tells before they begin their mining adventure goes on for 30 pages.
Huston’s Oscar winning script for the movie stayed fairly close to the plot of the novel with some obvious movieish simplification changes.
There is no other medium that can get inside the heads of the characters like a novel can. That is why I love to read.