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The Known but Unknown Pilot
| Article
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18762 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
2,700 Words |
| Author
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Adolph Caso
Adolph Caso is an author and lecturer. His latest book is To
America and Around the World--The Logs of Columbus and of
Magellan (Branden Publishing Company, Boston, 1990). |
Despite the number of books on Columbus coinciding with the quincentennial--all purporting to give us the real Columbus--the famous navigator remains elusive. Five hundred years after his journey many authors prefer to explore the fictitious rather than the historical Columbus.
The blurb on the dust jacket of Columbus: For Gold, God and Glory (In Search of the Real Christopher Columbus), by John Dyson (the author), Peter Christopher (the photographer), and Luis Miguel Coin Cuenca (the consultant), reminds one of glitzy movie reviews purporting to represent masterpieces that must be seen--the kind where the moviegoer either leaves before the end, or stays with the hope of enjoying at least the visuals. Visually, the book boasts coated paper throughout, full color pictures, coffee-table size, lengthy bibliography, almost a complete index, and easy-to-read chronology. As for content, it leaves a lot to be desired.
In another of this year's Columbus books, The Mysterious History of Columbus: An Exploration of the Man, the Myth, the Legacy, John Noble Wilford seems to have difficulty finding focus and describing the "mysterious" history. Wilford, a science writer for the New York Times, understands what he is up against in dealing with Columbus. He writes in his preface: "The familiarity of the story is deceptive, leaving the impression that it is firmly grounded in fact and that historians agree on those facts and their interpretation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of Columbus is frustratingly incomplete." This incompleteness lies in the observation that perceptions change "as does our understanding of the past. Accordingly," he adds, "the image of Columbus has changed through the years, sometimes as a result of new information but most often because of changes in the lenses though which we view him."
The unknown pilot
The title of Columbus: For Gold, God and Glory suggests that the book is about Columbus, but it is also about Luis Miguel Coin Cuenca, author John Dyson's chief collaborator. Coin, who defended his "weighty" secret map thesis and fifteen years of research "against eight of Spain's most eminent historians," also "supervised the construction of the Nina replica and was the captain on its 1990 voyage in the wake of Columbus." From the title one could expect the book to be about the first voyage of discovery; it also describes the building of an authentic replica of the Nina and the voyage retracing the "real" route of
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