Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989)

Very interesting read, fascinating, and quite wonderful. Chatwin interweaves his journey to observe a territorial issue between aboriginal tribes and a proposed train line, with thoughts, science, history, myth, lore, of all peoples origins in song. Life is a songline in which we doing ourselves, and all the things, into existence. Really interesting segue into the theories of human violence (innately offensive, defensive? A result of population and/or resources only—counter intuitively the less a people has the less violent they are, fascinating stuff). Personable and full of the quality I most love in humans and my limited ideas of "aboriginals": a sense of joy.… (mer)

Un clásico de la literatura de viajes que parte de las entrañas familiares del autor para convertirse en la búsqueda de los vestigios de una historia insólita.
Todos necesitan del acicate de una busca para vivir; para el viajero ese acicate reside en cualquier sueño», decía Bruce Chatwin. Aquí la excusa para el sueño y para el viaje es un trozo de piel de diez centímetros cuadrados entregado a su abuela como regalo de bodas por un primo marino, exiliado en los confi nes del Imperio Británico. La historia familiar tenía la piel por la de un brontosaurio, aunque era de color rojo y estaba cubierta de pelo. Bruce Chatwin parte tras la
pista de una piel similar y encuentra los vestigios de siglos de historia y las insólitas huellas de personajes improbables.

Exiliados y excéntricos de toda especie, vagabundos y descendientes de vagabundos, hombres y mujeres encallados en el tiempo dan una extraordinaria vivacidad a este libro espléndido, a este clásico de hoy.… (mer)

This really is a book to get lost in, and it has had an immense influence overseas in popularising Aboriginal Australian culture. (Rory Stewart, for instance, recalls this book as the one that made English travel writing "cool".) A rambling yarn, tangents upon tangents, unpleasant viewpoints and hopeful ideas mingling together like dyes being poured into a vat.

The situation is more complex now - some would say problematic but I'd argue that's going too far. Chatwin's time in Australia was fairly brief, his subjects sometimes ironic or perhaps even outright false (to be fair, he acknowledges this), and his attempt to understand an issue that Australians themselves were still grappling with in the 1980s was always going to be deeply flawed. Still, it has its place in the history, and its rather basic overview of one particular aspect of Aboriginal life - even if it is drawn without any shadow or nuance - is an intriguing viewpoint on Australia from an outsider.… (mer)

Hmmm. Didnt know what to expect from my first "Bruce Chatwin", but this wasnt it. Lots of little snippits - most chapters less than 2 pages long - I got very little idea of Patagonia as a place, there seemed to be very little focus or a line being followed.[return][return]Plenty of characters but couldnt tell how they related to each other (if at all) or how they related to Chatwin. Most interesting things were the longer chapters, such as those on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who spent several years in Patagonia before disappearing off into the sunset… (mer)