Reviews for Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea

The average rating for Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-10-14 00:00:00 Jason Jung Published in 1962, Matthiessen's sixth book and third work of non-fiction, Under the Mountain Wall provided its readers an inside look at one of the last existing stone age cultures, the Kurelu people of the remote mountain valleys of New Guinea'fear stops me from investigating how many seasons of Survivor may have been set there since but at that time the larger world had barely noticed, let alone intruded on the Kurelu. Matthiessen's bold venture is to present what he witnessed and studied as if he and his colleagues are not present. He tries not to distract from the way of life he is capturing as an undiscussed eyewitness to tribal warfare, funeral ceremonies that include maiming young girls as part of their honoring the dead, long tramps through the mountain trails that risk ambush in search of feathers or plants for ceremonial use, treatment of wounded or sick individuals, cooking, farming, and celebrating small victories or life passages of one sort or another, and performing ritual activities to ensure the ghosts of their warriors haunt their enemies and not the reverse. As always, Matthisessen is an attentive and precise witness. Bird songs, plants, clouds and sky, insects and animals are described with a Spartan beauty. Rats, pigs, huts, cookfires, utensils and weapons, gardens, clothing, jewelry, decorative accessories, such as the horim, a flatteringly long gourd covering for a warrior's penis, and countless other details of Kurelu life and living are embedded in Matthiessen's trim narrative. There is something modestly Homeric in the accounts of fighting and preparations and followup to battle. How the warriors prepare themselves and their weapons, bluster and bluff, are motivated by primitive emotions of revenge, how fear or bravery can grip an individual or group, how they ridicule their rivals (allies and enemies), and cope with injury and death. At the book's very end there is a mention of a Waro village and that the Waro had come from the sky and had white skin and weapons that made a noise that echoed through the mountains and were building huts along the river. In this way, Matthiessen makes clear, as he did in the preface, that he and his team arrived just ahead of others and that what he describes would soon be changed forever. Under the Mountain Wall successfully excludes any direct or indirect references, after the preface, to the presence of the author or his colleagues or any artifacts of their 20th century culture that they may have brought in with them. But the ghosts of them, more so than the ghosts of any departed Kurelu warriors, do occasionally play ghost-like tricks on the reader's attention, provoking wonder: where was Matthiessen during this battle he describes so closely? Did he not distract one side or the other? Was he tempted to play god when the wounded are treated with rituals designed torn flesh or fevered bodies by chasing the harming spirits away? What did the Kurelu and their enemies make of these white people with their film equipment and its placement in their midst? These and other questions, like the flickering of lights or slamming of cabinet drawers or footsteps on a stairwell in a house empty of all but the reader, inevitably pop up as you read. Despite that occasional distraction, Matthiessen has effectively captured for the record (and apparently there is a corresponding film, Dead Birds, by Robert Gardner) a full and careful description of one of the final stone age cultures still in existence in the spring and summer of 1961, the last of the Old Frontier at the dawn of the New Frontier. Under the Mountain Wall is an invaluable account of a primitive, at times brutal, stone age people whose way of life was dependent on warfare and agriculture, where the rules of warfare make any killed human, whether armed warrior or unarmed woman or child, a cause of celebration, where medicine was magic, and where law was nakedly about power'stealing a neighbors pigs or raping his wife was punishable as a crime against honor only if the victim, the owner of the pigs or the husband of the wife, had the power to inflict the punishment. Under the Mountain Wall is both provocative and restrained, instigating comparisons that it doesn't itself make, between our world and the one described. It's an early pillar in a body of outstanding work that includes the Watson trilogy, Far Tortuga, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Tree Where Man Was Born, The Snow Leopard, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Wildlife in America, and others that make the case that despite a small handful of major honors, Matthiessen remains one of our most under-appreciated writers.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-06-21 00:00:00 Steven Bennett Written after spending two seasons in 1961 with the Kuerlu people in the Baliem Valley in Papua which is now part of Indonesia. In 1961 JFK became President of the USA, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, America's involvement in the Vietnam War started and Barbie got a boyfriend called Ken. Meanwhile the Stone Age people of Papua carry on their ancient practices. War or the risk of death from a raiding party is a daily occurrence but is not fought for land as there is enough for everyone. War is fought to prove a man's bravery and to take revenge on a previous death, rape or kidnapping. Young girls loss part of a finger as part of the grieving process when a relative dies. Men weave, work in the gardens and hunt. Women have many rights to chose who they marry or where they live. But they still have a tougher existence than the men where strength and bravery is the pathway to riches (pigs and wives). Matthiessen just tells their life as it happens. There is nothing about him or the expedition he is on. A lot is on the wars and fights, and the celebrations of victory or death that follows. He shows that people are just people - some are brave, some are vain, some are plain stupid and some are intelligent, caring and wise. Unfortunately these people and there way of life is sadly no more, and their wisdom in living in their environment has been lost.