Homage to Patagonia

In Patagonia By Bruce Chatwin Summit Books, 205 pp., $8.95 Astonishing people live in Patagonia, the stretch of land at the tip of South America, and extraordinary things have happened there, quite apart from Magellan’s and Darwin’s voyages. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid took refuge there when things got too hot for them in the Old West; they were welcomed by the Patagonians and are still talked about. Bones of the mylodon, the extinct Giant Ground Sloth, were discovered by a deserter from the Prussian army. A Russian woman with artificial legs subscribes to and reads all the writings of the Russian dissidents. Kosher butchers flown in from Israel prepare meat for that country in Tierra del Fuego, the very tip of the continent, which is also the home of the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. Nuns on an outing to a lonely cave filled with fossil debris sing hymns to the Virgin. Six ex-students from Teheran and a black man from Bolivia bring the message of Bahai to a village founded by Welsh sheepranchers where no one speaks English any more. A boy of Italian-German descent plays “the last music Chopin is writing” as the wind whistles in the street. The mad widow of a Swede (her husband built her a perfect Swedish cottage) paints trompe l’oeil curtains to remind her of her youtn in the music halls.

All this is just a taste of the scenes and people Bruce Chatwin, a young Englishman with the looks of a brooding schoolboy, captures with wit, respect, and exactitude, having wandered (on foot, on horseback, and by motor) through the “uttermost part of the earth.” This book, his first, belongs with the books of the great travel writers —Freya Stark, Lawrence Durrell, Lord Kinross, Paul Theroux. It is written in a very original style, with no unnecessary words to distract from the sharp focus of the writer’s eye.

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Nika Hazelton

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In Patagonia By Bruce Chatwin Summit Books, 205 pp., $8.95 Astonishing people live in Patagonia, the stretch of land at the tip of South America, and extraordinary things have happened there, quite apart from Magellan’s and Darwin’s voyages. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid took refuge there when things got too hot for them in the Old West; they were welcomed by the Patagonians and are still talked about. Bones of the mylodon, the extinct Giant Ground Sloth, were discovered by a deserter from the Prussian army. A Russian woman with artificial legs subscribes to and reads all the writings of the Russian dissidents. Kosher butchers flown in from Israel prepare meat for that country in Tierra del Fuego, the very tip of the continent, which is also the home of the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. Nuns on an outing to a lonely cave filled with fossil debris sing hymns to the Virgin. Six ex-students from Teheran and a black man from Bolivia bring the message of Bahai to a village founded by Welsh sheepranchers where no one speaks English any more. A boy of Italian-German descent plays “the last music Chopin is writing” as the wind whistles in the street. The mad widow of a Swede (her husband built her a perfect Swedish cottage) paints trompe l’oeil curtains to remind her of her youtn in the music halls.

All this is just a taste of the scenes and people Bruce Chatwin, a young Englishman with the looks of a brooding schoolboy, captures with wit, respect, and exactitude, having wandered (on foot, on horseback, and by motor) through the “uttermost part of the earth.” This book, his first, belongs with the books of the great travel writers —Freya Stark, Lawrence Durrell, Lord Kinross, Paul Theroux. It is written in a very original style, with no unnecessary words to distract from the sharp focus of the writer’s eye.