W.B. Seabrook’s vision of Haiti still resonates
Eighty years ago an adventurer in a parallel epoch arrived in Haiti with the intent to document his impressions unbiased by the polarizing attitudes of his day. W.B. Seabrook is a little known member of the lost generation. While Hemingway was making his literary mark in Paris, the epicenter of Western civilization, Seabrook explored colonialism’s collateral damage; Arabia, Haiti and Africa, with a passion for the occult that led him well beyond the pale of acceptable taste. One could craft a respectable resume for this gifted writer, a war hero gassed at Verdun and recipient of the Croix de Guerre, a New York Times reporter, contributing writer to Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair as well as author of eleven books. Yet a full reporting reveals a man immersed in life’s extremes however measured. He indulged in cannibalism, sexual adventurism, and his books address witchcraft, Satanism, sorcery, and voodoo as well as a harrowing personal recount of his extended stay in a mental institution.
In the 1920’s Seabrook inculcated himself in Haiti’s culture at the time when this ‘free republic’ was under military rule of the United States. He travelled easily between the American power elite who lived as princes in the impoverished country, the black and mulatto aristocracy stymied under the thumb of Washington D.C., and the country peasants whom he…
