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nomadism. These pieces, though frequently dense, are
some of the most rewarding, with Chatwin’s erudition
shining through. Chatwin links many divergent
nomadic cultures from around the world, highlighting
several similarities of development, and in time puts
forward a credible case for nomadism as equal to
the sedentary life that has become a universal norm.
If Chatwin is to be believed, civilisation just took a
wrong turn somewhere, and chose to plump for the
inferior option. This, he feels, also goes some way to
explain the Western disease: wanderlust.
When viewed in comparison to his own collection
of incidental work, What Am I Doing Here (1989),
Anatomy Of Restlessness pales. Chatwin amassed innumerable
fabulous pieces in what must be considered
the definitive compilation, and which really renders
this new book superfluous. The pieces range through
the intensely personal in ‘Your father’s eyes are blue
again’, the dramatic with ‘A coup – a story’ (though
Chatwin himself was caught up in the coup in Benin),
and the entrancing ‘On the yeti’s tracks’. These short
works, however, are just the tip of the iceberg, with this
book containing so much more.
Another remarkable quality of Chatwin’s writing
was his ability to capture a personality, and What Am
I Doing Here is filled with accounts of some the unusual
characters he met over the years. We meet Maria
Reiche, a gangly German mathematician who spends
BUY Bruce Chatwin books online from and
her days in the bleak environment of the Peruvian
Pampas, standing on a step-ladder in order to chart
the strange lines, often miles in length, carved into the
floor of this desert. We travel with Chatwin to Ghana to
see the film director Werner Herzog going mad (again)
whilst filming Chatwin’s novel, The Viceroy Of Quidah
(1980). We even get to trail around India with Bruce
and the photographer Eve Arnold who followed Indira
Gandhi’s election campaign shortly before her assassination
in the late 70s.
Another crucial aspect of Chatwin’s output addressed
in Anatomy Of Restlessness is his unfailing interest in
all forms of visual art. Chatwin’s aesthetic was that
which championed the primitive and the simplistic,
though, whilst at Sotheby’s he was employed as an ‘expert’
on Impressionism. Whilst interested in the theory
of art and collecting, he was also an artist of considerable
aplomb himself with his work being published in
the posthumous Photographs And Notebooks (1993),
with a coinciding exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall,
London. Here we are shown his remarkable eye for the
abstract that exists in all things. Sparse and controlled,
his photographs managed to trap the beauty that can
be found in the common and everyday. He crops boats
and walls in Mauritania, so releasing the power of their
dazzling colours and geometric forms. The prayer flags
of the Bodnath Stupa, Kathmandu, are framed so as to
cut crazy patterns in the sky.
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