The Search for Michael Rockefeller

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing travelogue, problematic journalism
Review: This book, written in the early seventies, details Argosy Magazine journalist Milt Machlin's investigation into the disappearance of the young Rockefeller family scion who vanished on an expedition to tribal New Guinea after his catamaran capsized and he tried to swim to shore. Machlin's involvement with the story began years after the event, when a seedy character came to his magazine's office with a wild tale about Rockefeller being kept captive as a living tribal fetish by a band of natives. The first part of the book is an account of Machlin's trip to New Guinea to investigate this lead. The second part is Machlin's attempt to reconstruct Rockefeller's fate, which Machlin believes differs from the official conclusion that he drowned before reaching shore.

I enjoyed Machlin's personal account of his journey much more than I believed his theories about Rockefeller's fate. Machlin is a gifted writer, and his account of his adventures in wild New Guinea is written with great verve and a gift for telling the most interesting details and anecdotes in the most interesting way. During his trip to the island on which Rockefeller had been reported to be alive, he joined a crocodile hunt, visited Guinean tribal villages, and learned much of a tribal culture that is both fascinatingly, and in many ways terrifyingly, alien. He mixes tales of his own adventures with anecdotes about the bush, like stories of giant crocodiles and octopuses, and tales of tribal feuds and cargo cultism. His clear, zesty writing and fascinating subject matter make his tale an enjoyable, engrossing read.

Then Machlin gets into his theory about Rockefeller's fate. The first part of the book establishes his bona fides -- knowledge of New Guinea and journalism. But when he tries to penetrate the mystery of what happened to Rockefeller after he left sight of his overturned catamaran, Machlin's journalism deserts him. He bases his conclusion on rumors -- stories that were second-hand or worse even before they came to him. Machlin has me convinced that the official story that Rockefeller drowned is unsupported by the evidence -- but from what I can tell, there is so little evidence that no conclusion is supported. We simply don't know what happened. But when it comes to historical mysteries, it takes a strong will to write a whole book on it and then admit the answer is "we can't know the answer; there's not enough evidence." Machlin's speculations are plausible, but just as unsupported as the explanation he derides.

So don't read The Search for Michael Rockefeller to get the last word on Rockefeller's disappearance. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it. If you read it for tall tales and travel stories about a wild and alien part of the world, you won't be disappointed.