Summary of Carl Hoffman's Savage Harvest

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The sea was warm, and Michael was able to swim five to ten miles off the coast of southwest New Guinea. He knew that the shore behind him receded quickly, and that the water was shallow. He should be able to stand when he was still a mile from shore.
#2 He was a Rockefeller, and he knew what was expected of him. He was responsible for doing good things, big things, and making something of himself. He wasn’t in a rush. He was swimming for his sister, for his best friend, for the Asmat people. He wasn’t afraid.
#3 In the early morning, as the sky began to light up, he was finally able to see the trees clearly. He was exhausted, but the dawn gave him some strength. He swam for hours, and then rested. He knew he would make it.
#4 They saw him, fifty of them, resting in eight long canoes along the mouth of the Ewta River. It was six in the morning. The sun was already rising, and the air was humid. The men were black-skinned, with strong features and high cheekbones. They had no fat, and they didn’t know sugar.

Sujets

• Histoire
• General officer
• General
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822501607
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Carl Hoffman's Savage Harvest
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The sea was warm, and Michael was able to swim five to ten miles off the coast of southwest New Guinea. He knew that the shore behind him receded quickly, and that the water was shallow. He should be able to stand when he was still a mile from shore.

#2

He was a Rockefeller, and he knew what was expected of him. He was responsible for doing good things, big things, and making something of himself. He wasn’t in a rush. He was swimming for his sister, for his best friend, for the Asmat people. He wasn’t afraid.

#3

In the early morning, as the sky began to light up, he was finally able to see the trees clearly. He was exhausted, but the dawn gave him some strength. He swam for hours, and then rested. He knew he would make it.

#4

They saw him, fifty of them, resting in eight long canoes along the mouth of the Ewta River. It was six in the morning. The sun was already rising, and the air was humid. The men were black-skinned, with strong features and high cheekbones. They had no fat, and they didn’t know sugar.

#5

The men rowed south on the Arafura Sea, towards the Ewta River. They turned into a barely perceptible cut in the shoreline, where the ocean was silvery over black mud. They dragged the white man out of the canoe and slapped him on his skull. This is my head! screamed Fin, as the others gathered around, shouting and taunting.

#6

The men ate the brains, and then wrapped the skull in banana leaves and tucked it into Fin’s canoe. They paddled back to their village.

#7

I was on a boat crossing the mouth of the Betsj River, off the southwest coast of New Guinea. The Arafura Sea is an ocean of fifteen-foot tides, epic shifts of water, and an invisible swelling that daily slides into this flat swamp. It inundates the land, which becomes a netherworld of water and trees.

#8

Asmat is a perfect place. It has everything you could possibly need, and it is a petri dish, teeming with shrimp, crabs, fish, clams, mussels, and snails. It is a place where crocodiles prowl the riverbanks, and jet-black iguanas sun on uprooted trees.

#9

I was fascinated by the story of Michael Rockefeller, who died in 1969 while exploring the highlands of the Great Baliem Valley in Dutch New Guinea. He had been there to collect primitive art, but he also wanted to see if there was anything Eden-like about the culture.

#10

The disappearance of Michael Rockefeller was a mystery, and mysteries by their nature are open wounds. We long to have answers, and the idea of vanishing is particularly unsettling.

#11

I found that there had been a series of investigations following the disappearance, but none of them had ever been made public. The Dutch government, Asmat-speaking missionaries on the ground, and Catholic Church authorities had been discussing the case for weeks.

#12

I went to visit the village of Asmat in Indonesia, where the people are isolated from the rest of the world. They never exchange words with me, only gestures. It is always like this when I visit a village on my first trip to Asmat.

#13

On February 20, 1957, in a city of concrete and steel six thousand times bigger than the largest hamlet in Asmat, a village big man named Nelson Rockefeller introduced the world to a new kind of seeing. The Museum of Primitive Art, which displayed objects from all over the world, was open to the public.

#14

The museum was the first of its kind in the world, and it was dedicated to primitive art. It was a bold proclamation, and the word choice was explicit. It was one thing for a Western artist to be inspired by the primitive, but it was another for the primitive objects themselves to be exhibited as works of art.

#15

The story of art is as much the story of the collectors who collect it. Nelson Rockefeller, for example, grew up surrounded by art, and he had a passion for primitive art.

#16

In the 1950s, the Museum of Modern Art held a photographic exhibit called The Family of Man. It showed the similarities between people everywhere, and how they all needed food, clothing, work, and sleep.

#17

When primitive art was moved from ethnographic curio to art in and of itself, it was no longer connected to its original meaning and purpose. People began acquiring inanimate objects, but they were also entering a world where spirits roamed and there were no boundaries between life and death, between the I and the Other.

#18

The opening night of the museum was a powerful event for Nelson Rockefeller, and it’s easy to imagine the pride he felt. Across thousands of miles, forces were being unleashed and connecting lines drawn.

#19

The Asmat were a tribe in Indonesia that lived in a complex world of spirits kept in balance by elaborate ceremonies and constant reciprocal violence. No death just happened. Every villager could see the spirits, and there were spirits in rattan and in the mangrove and sago trees.