Heart of Sharpness: Travel writer's long-lost work given new life by Kingston author

Posted Jan 19, 2012 By Hollie Pratt-Campbell

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EMC News - Seventy-eight years later, a long-lost travel narrative detailing American author and journalist Emily Hahn's adventures in Congo - which included a shocking encounter with a real-life Mr. Kurtz figure - will at last see the light of day thanks to the efforts of a Kingston writer.

"In a nutshell, she went to the Congo looking for adventure," says Ken Cuthbertson, the man who made it all come together. "And she found more adventure than you'd ever think."

The book, called Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North, was not able to be published in its true form when it originally came out in 1933 due to the controversial nature of some of the material. Specifically, while in the Congo, Hahn stayed for a time with an American anthropologist, Patrick Putman.

"Putman, as Emily Hahn told me, 'went native,'" says Cuthbertson. "He started to go crazy, had six or seven black wives, and was kind of ruling his own little area of the Congo like he was the lord of it."

At one point, Hahn visited Putman's compound and found one of the wives on the front lawn, beaten and chained to a fence with a dog collar around her neck. When Hahn approached Putman about the incident, he warned her to be careful or she would be next.

"She wrote about it in the book, and Putman's family was scandalized by it," explains Cuthbertson. "They said if the book got published (they would sue her), and the father, who was a prominent doctor, (threatened to kill himself)."

Hahn thus took the incident out of the book, and changed the structure significantly before it was published.

"She needed the money, so that's why she couldn't stick to her guns and say 'no I'm going to publish the book anyway,'" says Cuthbertson.

As a result of this and other factors, Congo Solo did not receive the recognition it likely would have otherwise.

"It didn't really sell because it was the height of the depression," notes Cuthbertson. "And the book was pretty disorganized. If you read the original, it doesn't really make any sense."

Cuthbertson was made aware of the true story over a decade ago while writing a biography on Hahn, and had the idea to re-publish the Congo Solo in its original form.

"I read the book, (and I) had access to all Hahn's diaries, papers and letters. Plus I had talked to her so I knew what she had changed and where she had changed it."

However, publishers showed little interest in the project until almost 10 years later, when McGill-Queen's Press decided to publish it.

"It's sort of a time capsule," Cuthbertson says, remarking on how rare it is to have a woman's perspective on such a journey from those times.

He adds that the book is also very timely for several reasons. Women's travel literature, for example, has become something of a hot genre in recent years, in addition, problems being faced in the Congo today, such as mass killings and the exploiting of natural resources, are remarkably similar to what was going on in Hahn's day under the oppressive Belgian colonists.

"And Emily Hahn as a character I think has a lot of resonance nowadays for women, particularly young women," says Cuthbertson.

"She was somebody who lived her life on her own terms. At the time people told her 'my god, you can't go to Africa - you're a white woman and you're single' and all the rest of it...but she did."

Cuthbertson also hopes that the book will make more readers aware of who Hahn was, and inspire them to check out more of the prolific author's 52 books and numerous articles and stories, most of which were written for New Yorker magazine.

"She considered herself a writer who wrote to make a living," he says. "That's probably part of the reason why she hasn't been as highly regarded by critics, and hasn't been 'discovered' - which is not merited because she was an exceptional writer."

You can purchase a copy of Congo Solo locally at Indigo and Novel Idea. The book is also available online from Chapters, Amazon and McGill-Queen's Press.

hpratt-campbell@theemc.ca




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