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Feature [published August 1996]
Bruce Chatwin: In Search Of The Miraculous
Nick Clapson on the enduring enigma of Bruce Chatwin’s travel writing
Bruce Chatwin was a truly singular voice in British travel
writing, and whose silence is now all too apparent. Since
his untimely death in 1989 of what was described at the
time as a rare Chinese disease (but which was later admitted
to be AIDS), several collections of his previously
unpublished work have appeared. The latest of these is
Anatomy of Restlessness: Uncollected Writings. This
book, however, pays poor service to his name. Published
under the auspices of a ‘sourcebook’ of uncollected
work it draws together various pieces from magazines
and journals. The result is a misshapen assemblage that
hides gems amongst the weak and the substandard.
Chatwin’s writing at its best is both thrilling and
absorbing, capable of carrying the reader to untravelled
lands, and Chatwin was always the best of companions.
However, if Chatwin the writer was intriguing, Chatwin
the man was so much more. His rich life, pushed and
pulled by his demanding interests, was always present
in his work. That is not say that he was example of
that breed of traveller who batters you into submission
with endless anecdote heaped upon anecdote. Rather,
he introduces you to the sights of exotic lands, vast
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parties of characters, all set free to live an existence
untrammelled by the author’s irrepressible ego.
As the format of this new book suggests, Bruce
Chatwin’s writing was divisible into distinct categories
– whether it be art, his exploration of what he termed
“the nomadic alternative”, or fiction, written in a style
which was an assiduous blend of the real with the
imaginary. The autobiographical piece which opens
Anatomy Of Restlessness hints at some of the myths
that surround this man. By all accounts Chatwin left
his steady job writing for The Sunday Times with a
telegram enigmatically stating “Have gone to Patagonia”.
This, however, was not the first time that he had
made such a dramatic break from security. Previously,
he threw in his job as a director at Sotheby’s in order
to live with and study nomadic tribes in the Sudan, offering
the excuse that his doctor said that he needed to
view distant horizons in order to correct an eye defect
(a self-confessed psychosomatic illness). The product
of his sudden trip to Patagonia was the aptly titled In
Patagonia (1977).
This first book was most probably the driest of all
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