Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989)

Bruce Chatwin was my kind of traveller. He seeked out the fringes, the outback, the edges of the world, and brought back accounts focusing on the right things: places, meetings and stories. In In Patagonia, he journeys back and forth across the most southern part of South America, by boat, by truck and by foot. He initially sets out to find a new sample of Mylodon skin, remains of a giant pre-historic sloth, that was once brought home to England by an ancestor of his and later lost in a show more mundane way – accidentally thrown away in a move. But Chatwin, being Chatwin, is in no immediate hurry to get to the cave of the Mylodon. He casually follows storylines and historical figures, meeting with the few people living in these very sparsely populated areas, letting himself be pointed in new directions. A pattern of dreamers and escapists is forming: outlaws, revolutionaries, adventurers, explorers, hermits, gold-diggers. And in contrast to those, the Indian cultures, ruthlessly destroyed and exterminated almost in passing.

The sense of place here is overwhelming, even though Chatwin isn’t stressing to build connections between his nearly hundred chapters. And the landscape he paints is both mental and physical. This is a book that evokes wanderlust in me, and makes me long for the weight of a worn backpack on my shoulders again (even if my travels were never as spectacular as this). show less

There are books for completists, and then there are books for Completists, and this is one of the latter kind. I've read pretty much everything that Chatwin ever produced - the only thing I have that I am yet to read is the Shakespeare biography. Collected here and annotated by both the biographer and Chatwin's wife are an assortment of letters written by Chatwin to friends and colleagues around the world. Reading them, one gets the sense of the writer at work - both in terms of how Chatwin show more discusses the difficult labours he went through to get each piece out, and how Chatwin refined his style and his stories through correspondence. Chatwin the person is often bizarrely absent - the letters have the whiff of a public performance, though there are moments of vulnerability, such as when, reading between the lines, an invitation sent to a male friend takes on a different colour entirely. What Chatwin's wife Elizabeth thought of all of this is hard to discern - I would love to read the book of her life. show less

My first read of Chatwin's writing, and this book turns out to have been his last. The essays are grouped under titles, such as "Friends", which includes Diana Vreeland. "Encounters" includes a wild memoir of being in Africa with Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski as they filmed a movie. He also writes of nomads, French fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet in Paris, and meeting a "wolf-boy" in India in 1978.
Reading Chatwin's essays is like getting an education about the world of the last 35 years show more of the 20th Century. He sought out the rare and unusual, often focusing on one person, or a small group, to tell the story of how they live. I'll look for more from him. show less

In what could work as a series of short stories, Bruce Chatwin writes tenderly about the countryside on the Welsh border. We meet the twins when they are 80, sleeping side by side in their parents old bed but then go back to when their own parents, Amos and Mary meet and follow time in a linear fashion. Amos and Mary are an unlikely couple. He is a land-less farm hand and she is gentle and well-read and travelled. And yet, they secure a tenancy and eventually buy the farm that sits on the show more border between Wales and England, looking over the two nations. The farm is the focus of all the action, such as it is. This is not a novel with a complex plot, this is life in rural Britain through the decades through the 20th century and a period of huge change. The twins are identical but have different characteristics and it is Benjamin who seems to need Lewis. After the death of their parents they divide the farm work between them. Lewis drives the tractor they eventually buy and Benjamin does the books and lambing. Around them are a collection of local characters. Most remarkable were the couple at The Rock, Old Tom (the Coffin) and Aggie Watson. This couple live in constant poverty and have no children of their own but bring up others. Eventually the only one left is Meg The Rock, who wears multiple green jumpers, each more holes than wool and she resembles moss and talks to the birds. Bruce Chatwin's descriptions are vivid of both people and the landscape and he builds a novel from segments, seen from the outside. It is actions that are described, rather than emotions and these remain muted. The chapter when the tenant farms are sold off by the estate to pay death duties was the most evocative to me. These individual farmers found common cause and worked in unison to ensure a fair price for the tenants, with the exception of one man who held a long-standing grudge and didn't play the game. It took Mary's tact and manners to resolve the situation. show less