“In Patagonia was in a category of its own. It was clearly not a novel, but it flirted with fiction. A collage of histories, sketches, myths and memories, with short scenes glinting towards each other, without judgment, conclusion or, often, links. Chatwin said he was trying to make a cubist portrait. It is paradoxical, in content and in style. The syntax is snappy but the vocabulary is orchidaceous. It holds back from intimate revelation”
— Susannah Clap from The Guardian
Chatwin was a British journalist who traveled through Patagonia, staying in the residents’ homes and learning their stories while tracing an artifact of a prehistoric creature from a relative. In Patagonia depicts snapshots of their lives and their history through tales of murder, isolation, and self-sufficiency. The vignettes of their lives as well as the lasting mystery of thieves create an imagery of a new “Wild West,” and through the Wild West imagery, the notion that Patagonia is the last remaining wilderness of the world.
“Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia was a bible among South American backpackers. People quoted it as if recalling their own impressions, and took its stories as historical fact despite the book’s lyricism. The author’s poor Spanish was overlooked, as was the book’s political backdrop: the dark days of state-sponsored terrorism following the death of Juan Perón. Blonde boy-wonder Bruce was the only guide worth having…
In divulging Patagonia’s myths it placed the region on everyone’s imaginative map. But the author was also adept at self-mythologising and chose to give little account of his actual travels – the roads he used and the transport that got him around during his four-month sojourn. Chatwin simply appears in places, rather like a genie. This gives the book its brisk pace but confounds any sense of time or space, a curious effect given the vastness of Patagonia.”
— Chris Moss from The Telegraph
Further Readings
Clapp, Susannah. “‘Dazzling and Worrying’: My Memories of Bruce Chatwin and In Patagonia.” The Guardian, September 24, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/24/bruce-chatwin-in-patagonia-fortieth-anniversary.
Moss, Chris. “Patagonia: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin.” The Telegraph, December 1, 2014. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/south-america/articles/Patagonia-In-the-footsteps-of-Bruce-Chatwin/
Moss, Chris. “Patagonia.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
