Categorizing Bruce Chatwin as a writer of travel books (books of travel a bit closer to the mark) is as inadequate as labeling M.F.K. Fisher a cookbook author. Both sui generis in their field, with wide ranging interests and POV, Chatwin upturning the genre on his first (best?) book, IN PATAGONIA, which combines storytelling, history, science and philosophy, ranging from personal to site specific. Werner Herzog’s tribute/memorial film does a good job introducing him*, but Chatwin died young in 1989, which limits Herzog’s personal insight to the last seven years of his life, leaving earlier details covered as a fairly standard cut-and-paste job with a few surviving talking heads (wife, subjects, fellow academics) to fill in the gaps. It still paints a fairly complete non-hagiographic picture, but you can tell Herzog remains frustrated at getting so close to Chatwin only toward the end of his life. What he does miss capturing is the sheer impact Chatwin must have had on travels to undeveloped lands (by Western standards) on the tribes and nomadic peoples who must have wondered who this fairy tale prince of a figure was (think David McCallum in his Illya Kuryakin days) and why he was interested in their customs and stories. It must have opened (or closed) many doors for him. Yet, what came out, in novels and novelistic non-fiction, has yet to find a true successor.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: Published in 1977, IN PATAGONIA is the logical starting point.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Herzog’s COBRA VERDE/’87 (not seen here) is based on Chatwin’s historical novel The Viceroy of Ouidah (not read here).
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