Along the River
that Flows Uphill -
from the Orinoco
to the Amazon
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Casiquiare
FARC
Yanomami
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Authors
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Richard Starks
Miriam Murcutt
Other books by authors
Lost in Tibet
Along the River that Flows Uphill - from the Orinoco to the Amazon
by Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt
Authors interview
The following interview with the authors of Along the River that Flows Uphill is based on Frequently Asked Questions they have fielded on researching and writing their book.
Question: What kind of book is Along the River that Flows Uphill?
Richard Starks: Well, first of all, it’s a travel book, but it's one with a difference. On one level it tells the story of a journey we took along a strange river in Venezuela called the Casiquiare. But at the same time, it draws on some of the principles of science, maths and reason to explore aspects of the risk that's inherent in adventure travel - and by extension the risks that are inherent in life.
Question: OK, so why the Casiquiare? What’s so strange about it?
Miriam Murcutt: It’s the only river in the world that manages to unite two other river systems - in this case, the Orinoco and the Amazon - that should be entirely separate. That shouldn’t be possible, because it appears to mean that the Casiquiare must flow up and over the watershed that divides them. Rivers aren’t meant to do that. They're not meant to flow uphill.
Question: So how did you first hear about this river?
Richard Starks: When I was a child, I was fascinated by exploration and explorers - men like Livingstone, Stanley, Burton, Speke, Fawcett, and a host of others. I read hundreds of books about exploration and travel, and in one of them, I came across this river, the Casiquiare. I couldn’t believe a river could flow over a watershed. It amazed me at the time, but then I forgot about it, until years later, I was in my local library randomly flipping through a book on South America, and I found a mention of it. That was enough to reawaken my interest.
Miriam Murcutt: At the time, Richard and I were sending out proposals for articles we wanted to write to various magazine editors, and we decided to approach Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society in London. We hoped it might commission an article on this river, and that, in fact, is what it did. That’s when we set out for Venezuela.
Richard Starks: We didn’t plan to write a book; we just planned to write the article for Geographical. We’d recently been in Tibet, because of the research we’d been doing for our first book, Lost in Tibet, and we thought a trip to a hot and humid tropical forest would be a suitable antidote to the Tibetan plateau. But then a few things happened - as they always do on journeys like this - and we thought we had enough material for a book as well as the article.
Miriam Murcutt: What happened was that we had a brush with FARC guerrillas - basically, they tried to kidnap us - and in a separate event, a Yanomami tribesman threatened to shoot us with a poisoned arrow.
Richard Starks: That led us to weigh up the risks versus the rewards of adventure travel. Just how much do you want to put on the line? How much do you want to risk? And after several months ruminating on the trip, we decided we had a good angle for a book.
Miriam Murcutt: As well as the enthusiasm to write it.
Question: Was all the research done for your trip? Or did you have to do more once you were back and decided to write a book?
Miriam Murcutt: Well, much of the research had been done on the trip. I kept a diary during our journey in which I recorded everything of interest that happened - the way we reacted to various events, the people we met,the conversations we had, the interviews we conducted, and so on.
Richard Starks: Then when we came back, we expanded on this with a lot more background reading on the history of the river - about how it was discovered and explored. We also found out more about the Yanomami Indians we encountered - particularly with regard to their reputation for violence. We weren’t sure how justified it was.
Miriam Murcutt: We also had another look at some films of the Yanomami that were taken by an American anthropologist, Napoleon Chagnon, and an ethnographic filmmaker, Timothy Asch. We’d seen these films before we set out, but it was interesting to see them after our return. They allowed us to contrast the Yanomami as they were in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the Yanomami that we encountered on our trip.
Question: How did you approach the writing of the book?
Miriam Murcutt: Well, maybe not the right way at first, as it took us several false starts before we settled on what we believe was the right approach.
Richard Starks: In some ways, we may have created difficulties for ourselves, because we were keen to write more than just a travelog. We thought the book should go beyond just the telling of a journey, so although the journey forms the backbone of the book and gives it structure, we take a few diversions along the way to touch on a wide range of issues, including the one of risk that we mentioned.
Question: So in what ways is the book more than a travelog?
Richard Starks: Well, in assessing the risk of adventure travel, we draw on some aspects of science and math that you would not normally expect to fiind in a more traditional travel book. Also, there are some moral issues we felt we needed to confront -particularly in relation to the Yanomami Indians and the violation of their rights by various people who’ve been there before us. This brought us face to face with some of the hot topics in anthropology, which we found interesting and worth exploring in our book.
Miriam Murcutt: Then, too, we met some missionaries who have been preaching and teaching among the Yanomami along the upper reaches of the Orinoco. Some people say their role has been beneficial, but increasingly it is viewed in a harsher light, with critics saying that the infiltration of Christianity is destroying the Yanomami culture and helping to sow the seeds of confusion and dissent. This comes up for discussion in the book, and so, too, do the missionary-versus-the-Yanomami views of creation.
Question: So how did you develop such a wide-ranging content for your book?
Miriam Murcutt: It wasn’t really a conscious effort. It just evolved. The various topics we address grew out of the interactions we had with the places and people along the river. That’s what happens when you travel. You expand the subjects you’re interested in, and start to see them in a different light, and invariably you discover things you never even expected to encounter. The book merely reflects that fact.
Richard Starks: As just one example, we were forced to come to terms with the violence that’s an integral part of Yanomami society. How should you judge it? By your own moral standards? Or by the code of the society within which it exists? If it’s the former, then you have to ask, by what rights should your standards prevail? And if it’s the latter, then you have to ask, are moral standards entirely relative - or is there an absolute right and wrong?
Question: How did you go about finding a publisher? Did you have one lined up before you wrote the book?
Miriam Murcutt: No. We wrote it first, which is perhaps not the best way of doing things, and then we looked for a publisher.
Richard Starks: Rightly or wrongly, we thought that the slightly quirky content of the book might appeal to British readers as much as North American ones, so we started our search for a publisher in the UK.
Miriam Murcutt: Haus Publishing was one of the companies we identified as a prospect - in part because it has a series of literary travel books, which it publishes under its Armchair Traveller imprint. These books are written by an erudite mix of authors we were more than happy to be associated with. Also, although the company is based in London, it has excellent distribution in the US and Canada, too. This means that through one publisher we have the opportunity to reach readers in both the British and the North American markets.
Question: What would you most like your readers to get out of your book?
Richard Starks: Well, most of all, I’d like to think that they find it to be ‘a good read’ - in other words, a book that entertains and perhaps amuses. I’d like them to finish the book and say to themselves, ‘I enjoyed that’. If they're encouraged to think a little about some of the topics we address, well, that’s fine. But most of all, I’d like them to be entertained.
Miriam Murcutt: Yes, good entertainment. That’s what we hope the book will be. Part of that might be the chance to read about the culture of the Yanomami, and the strange life they lead in the Orinoco and Amazon jungle; and part of it might be about the Casiquiare - and whether or not it really does flow uphill.
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Richard Starks
and Miriam Murcutt
