Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989)

1. Bruce Chatwin(1940-1989) In Patagonia 1977. NY: Penguin, 1979

2. Contemporary Literary Criticism: • English travel writer, journalist, essayist • Semiautobiographical works “combine cultural investigations with philosophic pursuits” • Uses “obscure and dramatic landscapes where his physical journeys become metaphysical quests” • “fascination with nomadic cultures: reflected in works that argue against the pessimism, ethnocentricity, and materialism of modern Western civilization”

3. Background • Started working for Sothebys, but temporarily lost his vision • Doctors said: go look at long horizons • He left for the Sahara • Soon starts writing “a letter from the end of the world,” which turns into In Patagonia • Critics called it “an imaginative rejuvenation of the travel genre” • Wins 1978 Hawthornden Prize • Wins 1979 E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

4. In Patagonia • Enhances facts with fictional elements • Depicts a world scattered with misfits, refugees, bandits • His Patagonia is a “cultural mosaic” • Alistair Reid: praised Chatwin for taking armchair travelers to a “fabled land” • Andrew Harvey: “Perfect and most famous of most recent travel books”

6. Con’t • Andrew Harvey: He dares us to be obsessive and irregular, each book being a “feast of style and form” as he explores “inner wildness” • John Lanchester: Chatwin has a knack for the out of the ordinary, “the offbeat and the out-of-the-way” • In Patagonia = “a kind of cubist travel book” • The “familiar exoticism of travel writing” becomes “a bleaker and more melancholy foreignness”

7. In sum • Wrote few books, yet each is considered a masterpiece: • Non-fiction: In Patagonia, The Viceroy of Ouidah(about a Brazilian slave trader) • Fiction: On the Black Hill (about twins on a Welsh farm), The Songlines(Australian aborigines), and Utz (the nature of materialism, a life “usurped by possessions.”) • Also What Am I Doing Here (essays) and Far Journeys (notes and photographs) • Critics often consider Songlines a kind of continuation of In Patagonia

8. Hook • In his grandmother’s dining room is a piece of a brontosaurus from Patagonia, so naturally he wants to go there some day • His grandmother’s cousin, a sailor, had seen it sticking out of the ice when he was on an expedition. • Actually it turned out to be a piece of a Giant Sloth from Patagonia, but Chatwin still wants to go

10. Buenos Aires • Looks beyond the ordinary, searching for anomalies • “The history of Buenos Aires is written in its telephone directory. Pompey Romanov, Emilio Rommel, Crespina D.Z. de Rose, LadislaoRadziwil, and Marta Callman de Rothschild—five names taken at random among the Rs- told a story of exile, disillusion and anxiety behind the lace curtains.” (4)

11. Class As he arrives: “The rich were closing their apartments for the summer… The very rich would go to Punta del Este in Uruguay, where they stood less chance of being kidnapped. Some of the rich, the sporting ones anyway, said summer was a closed season for kidnaps. The guerillas also rented holiday villas, or went to Switzerland to ski.” (4)

12. Colorful Characters • Heads south to Bahia Blanca and meets lots of odd characters everywhere he goes. • Sheepherder: “Do you know what we pray for down here? Pray for sadistically? Bad winter in Europe. Makes the price of wool go up.” (11) • Meets people who seem out of place, people from other countries who somehow wind up in Chile/Argentina.

14. . • Goes to the Davies’ farm. Mrs. Ivor Davies: parents from Genoa. She spends her time dreaming of Venice and The Bridge of Sighs. • “When she said the word sospiri, she said it so loudly and insistently that you knew she was pining for Italy.” (28) • There’s also an assortment of Brits and Welsh, and somehow they’ve all ended up here.

16. El maestro • His friend tells him to go to see the poet called “el maestro.” • “The poet lived along a lonely stretch of river, in overgrown orchards of apricots, alone in a two-roomed hut. He had been a teacher of literature in Buenos Aires. He came down to Patagonia forty years back and stayed.” (29) • “Patagonia!” he cried. “She is a hard mistress. She casts her spell. An enchantress! She folds you in her arms and never lets go.”

17. But then… • Chatwin draws into a narrative within the narrative, and one that he keeps dancing around, about another “interesting character….”

19. An American from Utah • “He was alone that first winter. But he liked reading and borrowed books from an English neighbour.” (42) • “Writing did not come easily to him, yet he did find time to write to a friend back home.” • Letter: “I suppose you have thought lon before that I had forgotten you (or was dead)… • It will probably surprise you to hear from me away down in this country but US was too small for me the last two years I was there.

20. Letter to Mrs. Davies con’t • “I was restless. I wanted to see more of the world. I had seen all of the US that I thought was good.” • “All the land east of here is prairie and deserts, very good for stock, but I am a long way from civilization.” • “Here it is 1600 miles to Buenos Aires and over 400 miles to the nearest Rail Road or Sea Port.” (43)

21. . • ..another of my Uncles died and left $30,000 to our little family of three..” • “I visited the best cities and best parts of South A. till I got here. • And this part of the country looked so good that I located, and I think for good, for I like the place better every day.” • “The only thing lacking is a cook, for I am still living in Single Cussideness and sometimes I feel very lonely for I am alone all day..

22. Con’t • .. And my neighbors don’t amount to anything, besides the only language spoken in this country is Spanish, and I don’t speak it well enough to converse on the latest scandals so dear to the hearts of all nations, and without which conversations are very stale, but the country is first class.”

23. Note: • “The dead Uncle was the Wild Bunch Gang’s robbery of the First National Bank at Winnemucca Nevada, on Sept 16th, 1900. • “The writer was Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy…” (44) • Oldest of 11, he rebelled under “the straitjacket of Mormonism” • He dreamed of being a cowboy and, in dime novels, read the ongoing saga of Jesse James.” (44)

24. . • At 18, he decides that cattle companies and banks are natural enemies “and convinced himself that right lay the wrong side of the law.” • Tells his mother he’s going to work in a mine; instead rustles cattle with a young outlaw Mike Cassidy. • “Bob Parker took the name Cassidy and rode into a new life of wide horizons and the scent of horse leather. (Butch was the name of a borrowed gun.)” • “He’s a driver, horse-wrangler, robber, leader of men. Gets two years in the Wyoming State Penn for stealing a horse he hadn’t stolen, valued at $5. Afterwards, never trusts the law.” (45)

25. . • “The Wild Bunch performed the string of perfect hold-ups that kept lawmen, Pinkerton detectives and the railroad in perpetual jitters.” (46) • Never kills anyone and disapproves of his “associates”’ ways, but his pleas for amnesty go unheard • Sucked into a life of crime, depends on the art of a quick getaway—which means expensive horses • As they close in on him, he has to chose between a stiff sentence—or Argentina-- where he expects to find “lawless freedom.” • His last two US hold-ups: he’s raising money for his journey

26. Meanwhile • Makes the acquaintance of the Sundance Kid and his girlfriend, Etta Place. • They go around together as a “family of three.” • Fall of 1901, they sail together for Buenos Aires • Buy acres of land in a rough camp • A Pinkerton detective tracks them to the area but is scared to go to Patagonia, which is reportedly full of snakes and jungles • For 5 years, they live without interference

27. The Saga Continues • By now it seems like a Western! • The Pinkerton Agency warned the Buenos Aires police but thought it would be a matter of time before the “family” turned to crime • And, their accomplice Harvey Logan turns up • In fact, they “were addicted to the art of the hold-up, without which life itself became a bore.” (48) • After Logan kills a bank manager, they scatter into the Cordillera

28. Endings? • Etta turns up in Denver years later • Butch Cassidy and Sundance go to Bolivia • Classic account of their death in San Vicente, following another robbery, appears in Elk’s Magazine in 1930 (impossible odds, lots of dead bodies, knowing Sundance is mortally wounded, Butch kills him and then himself….) • Probably didn’t happen like that • The Bolivian president investigates, exhumes corpses, concludes…. The story is a fabrication • Which, of course, is just what the outlaws wanted

29. The Historian • Chatwin is completely caught up in this story and goes around trying to find out more versions: • “All along the Southern Andes you hear stories of the bandolerosnorteamericanos.” (51) • In some accounts they go into town, make friends with the townspeople, figure out where the most money is, make a quick robbery and quicker getaway • In another they are betrayed by the husband of one of Sundance’s lovers, and shot by soldiers • The truth… maybe only the pampas know!

31. Meanwhile • Chatwin details adventures in Rio Pico meeting a Swiss woman who married a Swede, a Russian doctor who married a Pole after being captured by Nazis in West Germany, and Germans who had converted their corner of Patagonia into a German village • Chatwin asks the Germans about the bandoleros: “They were gentlemen. They were friends of my family and my uncles buried them.” (63) (This is after they’re betrayed by an Indian.)

32. Another Final Version • In this version, 80 Frontier Police, criminals as well, finally tracked them down, shot them, and cut off their heads, since an agency in NY had promised 5,000 for each one. • But their “graves” at Rio Pico are questionable: some say that Sundance is buried there with another member of the gang while Butch went back to Utah • Basically, everyone loves these outlaws!

33. Technique • In terms of the narrative, each new bit of information about Butch Cassidy and sidekick simply leads to another story that leads to another story • Chatwin met plenty of people who claimed to have known them. Or…. Did they? • He’s sucked into these stories as he keeps trying to sort out what might be the truth. • Conclusion? Butch’s own sister claims he went back to Utah!

35. Continuation • As Chatwin keeps hitchhiking and walking around, meets more and more people: Spaniards, Lithuanians, Englishmen, Scotsmen, peasants, farmers, old-timers: the narrative is a rich mosaic of all these people • Everywhere he runs into this strange conglomeration of peoples, languages, traditions

36. Puerto Deseado • The port town resembles the mish-mash in the rest of the country: • “The town is distinguished for a Salesian College that incorporates every architectural style from the Monastery of St Gall to a multi-storey car-park; a Gruta de Lourdes; and a railway station in the form and proportion of a big Scottish country house.” (86)

38. . • “I stayed at the Estacion de Biologia Marina with a party of scientists who dug enthusiastically for sandworms and squabbled about the Latin names of seaweed.” (86) • “The resident ornithologist, a severe young man, was studying the migration of the Jackass Penguin. We talked late into the night, arguing whether or not we, too, have journeys mapped out in our central nervous systems; it seemed the only way to account for our insane restlessness.”

39. Captain John Davis • Launches into another history sequence about the famous navigator from Devon • Sets off on a ship called Desire for what is later called the Falklands • On shore the men forage for fruit and vegetables; when they find penguins they kill and salt them • After Indians and Portuguese attack, they have to go out to sea, but the penguins are full of worms • All but the captain and a ship’s boy are too sick to stand and work • Finally they reach Berehaven, but by then Davis’s wife has taken up with a “sleek paramour” (89)

42. Legacy • “But the restlessness got [Davis] in the end. He went with the Earl of Essex to the Azores; then to the East Indies, as pilot for the Zeelanders. He died aboard the English ship, Tyger, in the Straits of Malacca in 1605. He had been too trusting of some Japanese pirates and made the mistake of asking them for a meal.” • Two centuries later: Coleridgewrites “The Ancient Mariner,” which was probably fueled by Davis’ account

43. Comparisons • Davis and the Mariner had equally bad trips, are avenged by the birds they’ve killed, drift through the tropics, and have to endure the curses of dying men: • The many men so beautiful! • And they all dead did lie: • And a thousand, thousand slimy things • Lived on and so did I.

44. Coleridge • The poet is a man after Chatwin’s heart: • “Coleridge himself was a ‘night-wandering man,’ a stranger at his own birthplace, a drifter round rooming-houses, unable to sink roots anywhere. He had a bad case of what Baudelaire called ‘The Great Malady: Horror of One’s Home.” (90) • “Hence his identification with other blighted wanderers: Cain, The Wandering Jew, or the horizon-struck navigators of the 16th century. For the Mariner was [Coleridge] himself.”

46. Origins • When Magellan lands at San Julian in 1520, he sees a giant Tehuelche Indian who was naked and dancing • Magellan called him “Patagon,” meaning Bigfoot. This is usually accepted as the origin of the term: pata means “paw” or “foot” in Spanish (95) • But how to explain the suffix? In Greek “patagos” means a roaring of teeth, but… • Primaleon of Greece had been published some seven years before Magellan sailed

47. Primaleon • In this book of chivalry, Knight Primaleon sails to an island and meets awful people who eat raw flesh. • Farther into the island is a monster called the Grand Patagon. Primaleon controls the beast with the help of his lions and carts him back to Polonia to add to his royal collection; in the meantime Princess Zephira has easily tamed him.

48. The Tempest • 90 years later, Shakespeare’s Tempest is first performed • Caliban has an uncanny resemblance to Patagon • They’re both monsters that are half human • Described as having dog heads • Love white princesses • Chatwin has roped us into another history by making connections we might have overlooked

49. Tierra del Fuego • More myths and legends make the area come alive • Dante puts his Hill of Purgatory here • Donne refers to the area in his deathbed stanzas • The region is replete with albatrosses, calling to mind: • Instead of the Cross, the Albatross • About my neck was hung