B. von Traven

We know virtually nothing about him (we get his posts via email); and what we think we know is wrong.

Some say he’s a novelist. He’s almost certainly of German descent. Alleged friends (he provided a brief list) say that he is in the habit of shouting, “I think this is a pile of shit!”, which he occasionally screams in German. At other times, he simply mutters “merde,” though friends say that he isn’t French and that he certainly doesn’t “act French.”

He is rumored to be an anarchist, politically—a philosophy he reportedly “saw” one day upon opening his eyes and observing Orange County as he lay inexplicably in the dry, hot bed of Santiago Creek.

Some say that the real B. von Traven died off of the coast of Baja in 1974 when a yacht named “Shooting Star,” carrying several OC residents (including OC Supervisor Ronald Caspers), mysteriously sank without a trace. If so the current “B. von Traven” is an imposter.

On the other hand, if one is to believe one persistent rumor (told to us by a prominent journalist at the OC Register), von Traven survived the sinking, washed up on the coast of Mexico, started a quiet life there (he is known by the natives as "El Gringo"), and has permitted the fiction of his demise for reasons unknown.

It is possible that he lives or lived in Ojinaga. Alternatively, he died there during a clash between Federales and Zapotec Indians in the mid-70s.

Evidently, he helped write the screenplay for the critically savaged film Death Ship. He seems to be close to the Hollywood Huston family (Walter, John, Angelica), and is said to share with the existing Hustons a fascination with “Black Dahlia murder” conspiracy theories.

Some say he was born in Anaheim, in an apartment attached to a motel near Disneyland. (There are dark rumors of illegality involving prostitution. Supposedly, there is a record of this in the OC Register, but nothing has been found.)

At times he has gone by the name “Rhet”—perhaps during a period of obsession with Vivien Leigh and Topol. He appears to have many Hollywood connections. He is said to have owned one of the last “Lassies” and the “great, great, grandson of ‘Rin-Tin-Tin.’”

Despite his ancestry, he is said to resemble a “300-pound Samoan,” or perhaps a Mexican, also 300-pounds.

There’s some evidence that he is related to a German brick-burner and carpenter named Otto Maximilian Bauer, who was born in Böblingen, Germany in 1909, but who moved to Canada after the war and then to Anaheim in 1960, using the curious name “B. Hauptmann.” (Bauer died at least ten years ago.)

Von Traven has sent us photographs of Bauer as a young man in Germany (c. 1929), apparently wearing the uniform of the Communist Party.

Von Traven has agreed to write for Dissent but only on the understanding that he will not report anything concerning the South Orange County Community College District.

Note: some of this information was supplied to us by von Traven’s associate, Hal Croves.