Product Description: Evocative descriptions, notes on the history of the region, and remarkable anecdotes from a remote and starkly beautiful part of the world.
"A travel book to stand on the shelf with Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, and Paul Theroux." --The New York Times Book Review
Amazon.com Review: Fascinated by Patagonia since an early childhood lust for Grandma's scrap of hairy Giant Sloth skin, Chatwin's also intrigued by odd miners and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy in Cholila. In 1977 the London Observer called it "a brilliant travel book," and while Chatwin's no longer alive (he died in 1989), his book still glows. From Rio Negro to the southernmost town of Ushuaia, Chatwin depicts all in writing as spare as the Patagonian desert itself, and as vibrant as the purple clouds off Last Hope Sound.
Slow as a sloth When a book lacks tension and features extensive quoting, it's bound to be boring. This book is boring, and the main reason is that it lacks a narrative thread, other than "been there, saw somebody, told me a long and winding story about somebody who was here some day". All trips are inner trips, but in this case I would say Chatwin looked inside himself, found not a lot, and decided instead to cut and paste from old stories from down south.
A Romatic tale of Patagonia Chatwin's account of his journey across Patagonia in the late 1970's certainly is embellished with all the qualities of a good English romantic. His tale begins with a memory from his childhood about a piece skin that was in the procession of his grandmother. She told him that is belonged to a Brontosaurus and came from the distant land of Patagonia in the south of Argentina. It turns out that the piece of skin in question actually belonged to a Mylodon, an ancient Giant Sloth native to Patagonia, and Chatwin received his fair share of belittlement from his schoolmasters for claiming it came from a dinosaur. Still, he held a special revere for the skin though and hoped to become its caretaker one day. Unfortunately the skin was tossed out after his grandmother passed away. He never lost his fascination with the distant and mysterious land of Patagonia though and always hoped to secure a piece of Mylodon skin for himself one day.
Fast-forward about 25 years and we pick up Chatwin's story as he arrives in Argentina, finally fulfilling his dream to visit Patagonia. His journey takes him all over modern Patagonia, if one can use the word modern in regards to the region, bouncing from town to town in search of old legends and odd tales. He investigates the haunts of the last known days of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, visits the beaches the Darwin visited during his famous voyage aboard the Beagle, even visits the famous Mylodon cave where the archaic animal's remains were discovered.
Chatwin tells a remarkable tale and brings a nice mingling of history, myth, travel and local flavor all into one narrative. At several points he takes time to digress on several side stories that have a connection to the place he is visiting or a story that he is in the progress of rooting out. In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, one gets the felling that all that Chatwin writes is not the stone cold truth. Certainly some areas are embellished to facilitate the flow of the narrative. Due to this it is hard to separate fact from fiction, but in a work such as this it is not especially important. Chatwin conveys the magic and mystery of the land that has for so long held a special place in his mind. He gives us a glimpse of what Patagonia has meant and stood for for generation after generation of seekers and travelers.
Brilliant work It's rare to encounter such subtle humor as one finds here; the book is not only an adept sketch of life at the bottom of the world, it's a screamingly, if subtly, funny throughout. I borrowed it from the library, read it, and was so entertained and impressed that I sought out and purchased a copy. Simply a terrific book.
More interesting than informative. Depending on what you look for in a "travel" book you may or may not like this. If you're looking for history, natural history, or political developments, this is not the book for you. It is not comprehensive in any way.
If you're looking for entertaining reading set in an interesting location with snippets of odd information this book would be entertaining. Of travel authors I have read, this author most closely resembles Theroux, but without the curmudgeonly judging. Like Theroux, his facts may or may not be correct but he doesn't claim to be writing a textbook, just some stuff that happened to him in this place.
Mercifully, Chatwin spares us deep philosphical introspections so prevalent in much modern "travel" writing.
I read it and enjoyed it and recommend it.
Brilliant hodge-podge! Often deemed 'a classic' of travel literature, Bruce Chatwin's claim to fame, 'In Patagonia,' defies classification. Anyone looking for a straightforward account of Southern Argentina and Chile would best be advised to check elsewhere. But those who hunger for literary experiences that enchant, engage and fascinate without end, pick up this book ASAP!
As an ardent Chatwinophile, I expected to be bowled over with rich prose and endless mountains of the most esoteric information, the standard Chatwin fare. I wasn't disappointed. 'In Patagonia' is a brilliant hodge-podge of history, anthropology, ethnography and good old-fashioned yarn-spinning. And if anybody can tell a story, Chatwin is the one. Each page overflows with gripping descriptions of the strange mixture of peoples who make up this forgotten land. You're led through communities of Welsh Methodists, Lithuanian eccentrics and Spanish anarchists, all exiles to this bleak land of sagebrush and glaciers. Chatwin's clean and sparing style 'paints' each character, each anecdote with sharp, jarring colors. Your imagination is thrown into overdrive as each story jumps off the page and buries itself in your mind. Glacial winds chafe the face, the din of a thousand penguins deafens and the bitter smile of the Patagonian exile tugs at the heart.
Chatwin's style was his genius and his downfall. As was said of Emerson, Chatwin 'doesn't give the reader enough to chew on.' Sparse, clear and always adorned with odd facts and exotic images, Chatwin's sentences are those of the journalist turned artist. The sheer volume of fact and anecdote threatens to swallow the reader up...detailed diary accounts of Darwin's voyage...eyewitness renderings of Butch Cassidy's exile days...an intricate explanation of the local Yamana tribe's linguistic world...How to make sense of it all and complete the picture of Patagonia and its people? Difficult work at best. You are thrown so much and from so many angles, it's best to just sit back and simply be overwhelmed. So, arm-chair travellers and connoisseurs of fine prose, follow this nomad of nomads into an amazing world of stark beauty and even starker lives.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
