Anatomy of Restlessness (23 page)

The tide ‘Gone to Timbuctoo' echoes the famous telegram of resignation that Chatwin is said to have sent to the
Sunday Times
in 1975 on leaving for Patagonia: ‘Gone to Patagonia for Six Months'. The article was originally published in
Vogue,
in 1970. (See also N. Murray
Bruce Chatwins
, Seren Books, Bridgend, 1993, pp. 38—9, for an account of this episode.)

 

 

II STORIES

In his introduction to
What Am I Doing Here
, Chatwin wrote: ‘The word “story” is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.' The following selection of ‘stories' reveals how fact and fiction fuse under Chatwin's pen to emerge as a single seamless narrative.

 

‘Milk', a tale of initiation clearly drawn from Chatwin's African notebooks, was published in the
London Magazine,
August-September 1977 (and was later reprinted in
London Magazine Stories,
in 1979).

 

‘The Attractions of France' was published posthumously by the Colophon Press in 1993. The original typescript is undated and was only discovered after the author's death. It is the fictionalised account of a true-life episode taken from the notebooks. Chatwin was an avowed francophile; the title reflects his admiration for French literature and culture.

 

In ‘The Estate of Maximilian Tod', Chatwin explores the psychology of the obsessive collector: an autobiographical theme he was to return to in ‘The Morality of Things', before making it the central concern of his last novel,
Utz,
some ten years later.

 

Significantly,
Tod
is the German word for ‘death'. The story appeared in the
Saturday Night Reader,
W. H. Allen, in 1979.

 

‘Bedouins' is possibly the shortest and most succinct of the author's anecdotal tales, or ‘miniatures'. Chatwin relates a different version of the same story in the ‘Notebooks' section of
The Songlines,
pp. 211—12.

 

 

III ‘THE NOMADIC ALTERNATIVE'

This section brings together three separate texts which explore the nature of nomadism. Taken together, they are perhaps the closest one can come to an idea of what the author's ‘unpublishable' book on nomads may have looked like, had it seen the light of day. According to a footnote attached to the third text, ‘It's a nomad
nomad
World', the book was due to be published by Jonathan Cape in 1971. Chatwin makes repeated allusions to the manuscript throughout his work, although he seems subsequently to have destroyed it.

 

‘Letter to Tom Maschler'. This previously unpublished letter, dating from 1968, was written in response to the editor's request for a synopsis of Chatwin's planned book on nomads. It resulted in a book contract with Jonathan Cape which was later transferred to the manuscript of
In Patagonia,
once the original project had been abandoned. Chatwin's ‘nomad letter' prefigures a series of texts on the same theme that appeared in various periodicals in the early 1970s.

Untypically for the author, the letter is typewritten and bears a handwritten postscript: ‘
Sorry, I have a fiendish typewriter.'

 

‘The Nomadic Alternative' is Chatwin's principal contribution to
Animal Style
(
Art from East to West
), the catalogue of an archaeological exhibition of nomad art-work which he helped organise in New York in 1970. Controversial in nature, the essay appears to have been deliberately relegated to the end of the catalogue. The ‘Letter to Tom Maschler' suggests that it was to have been one of the main chapters of Chatwin's nomad book.

 

The final article in this section, a summary of Chatwin's key ideas on the subject of nomadism, was originally published under the title: ‘It's a nomad nomad nomad NOMAD world' in the December 1970 issue of
Vogue.
A footnote links the article to the author's ambitious book project: ‘Bruce Chatwin, an insatiable wanderer himself, is now compiling a book on nomadism to be published by Jonathan Cape in 1971.'

 

 

IV REVIEWS

Bruce Chatwin's reviews figure among the least known of his writings. The texts gathered together here reveal a critic possessed of strongly held views at times bordering on the polemical. While the author displays a marked penchant for the play of ‘grand ideas' in his reviews, his narrative technique is also well to the fore in texts like ‘The Anarchists of Patagonia', which reads like a blueprint for the ‘Revolution' chapter in
In Patagonia.

 

‘Abel the Nomad', a critical review of Wilfred Thesiger's
Desert, Marsh and Mountain
(Collins, London), was published in
The London Review of Books,
22 November 1979, p. 9. In eulogistic terms, Chatwin reveals his natural affinity with the compulsive wanderer in Thesiger. The myth of Abel and Cain is a recurrent ‘motif' in Chatwin's œuvre, notably in
The Viceroy of
Ouidah
and
The Songlines.

 

‘The Anarchists of Patagonia' is a review of Osvaldo Bayer's three-volume
Los Vengadores de la Patagonia Tragica
(Editorial Galerna, Buenos Aires). It was published in
The Times Literary Supplement,
31 December 1976, pp. 1635—6. In keeping with his belief in the indivisibility of fact and fiction, Chatwin resorts to the techniques of fictional narrative to relate an extravagant episode in Patagonian history.

 

‘The Road to the Isles' is a critical review of James Pope-Hennessy's biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, published in
The Times Literary Supplement,
25 October 1974, pp. 1195—6.

 

‘Variations on an Idée Fixe' is a review of Konrad Lorenz's
The Year of the Greylag Goose
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/a Helen and Kurt Wolff book), published in the
New York Review of Books,
6 December 1979, pp. 8—9. Later, Chatwin was to discuss Lorenz's behaviourist ideas at length in the ‘Notebooks' section of
The Songlines,
presenting them as an antithesis to his own theory of nomadism.

 

 

V ART AND THE IMAGE-BREAKER

Chatwin came closest to formulating a comprehensive statement of his aesthetics when writing about the fine arts. The following texts discuss the decadence of Western art, and in doing so mark a vigorous counterpoint to the author's previous career as art expert and collector.

 

With its pantheon of extravagant characters, finely wrought descriptive passages and irreverent humour, ‘Among the Ruins' is a characteristically ‘Chatwinian' tale of modem decadence, originally published in
Vanity Fair,
April 1984, pp. 46—60, under the fuller – and more explicit – title: ‘Self-Love Among the Ruins'.

‘The Morality of Things', originally sub-titled ‘A Talk by Bruce Chatwin', is the typescript of a speech that Chatwin gave at a Red Cross charitable art auction in 1973. It was published posthumously, in a limited private press edition, by Robert Risk (Typographeum, New Hampshire) in 1993. The text explores the philosophical and psychological implications of possession, a subject Chatwin was to return to in narrative form in his last novel,
Utz
.

PRINCIPAL WORKS

In Patagonia,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1977, 204 pp. (Paperback edition—London: Picador, 1979, 189 pp.)

 

The Viceroy of Ouidah,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1980, 155 pp. (Paperback edition – London: Picador, 1982, 126 pp.)

 

On the Black Hill,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1982, 284 pp. (Paperback edition—London: Picador, 1983, 249 pp.)

 

Patagonia Revisited
(text by Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux; illustrations by Kyffin Williams), Salisbury: Michael Russel, 1985, 62 pp. (Reprinted by Jonathan Cape, London, 1992, 62 pp.) (U.S. edition:
Nowhere is a place: travels in Patagonia
[text by Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux; photographs by Jeff Gnass; introduction by Paul Theroux], San Francisco: Yolla Bolly Press book, published by Sierra Club Books, 1992, 109 pp.)

 

The Songlines,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1987, 293 pp. (Paperback edition—London: Picador, 1988, 327 pp.)

 

Utz,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1988, 154 PP. (Paperback edition—London: Picador, 1988, 154 pp.)

What Am I Doing Here,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1989, 367 pp. (Paperback edition – London: Pan Books, 1990, 367 pp.)

 

Photographs and Notebooks,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1993, 160 pp.

 

 

LIMITED EDITIONS, CATALOGUES AND ANTHOLOGIES

Animal Style (Art from East to West)
(Bruce Chatwin with Emma Bunker & Ann Farkas), New York: The Asia Society Inc., 1970, 185 pp.
⁵¹

 

Great American Families
(Bruce Chatwin & various authors), New York, Times Books, 1978, 192 pep.
⁵²

 

Cobra Verde: Filmbuch
(Wemer Herzog). Fotografien von Beat Presser, Tagebuch von Bruce Chatwin, Gespräche mit Werner Herzog von Steff Gruber, Geschichte des Films und Dialoge von Werner Herzog. Schaffhausen: Edition Stemmle, 1987, 152 pp.

 

John Pawson
(Bruce Chatwin & various authors; tr. fr. Spanish by E. Bonet), Spain: Gustavo Gili, 1992, 94 pp.
⁵³

 

The Morality of Things—A Talk by Bruce Chatwin,
Francestown, New Hampshire: Typographeum, 1993, 26 pp.
⁵⁴

The Attractions of France,
London: Colophon Press, 1993, 17PP.

 

Prague,
edited by John and Kirsten Miller, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994.
⁵⁵

 

 

PREFACES, POSTSCRIPTS, ARTICLES AND STORIES

‘The Bust of Sekhmet'. In
Ivory Hammer 4: The Year at Sotheby's & Parke-Bernet 1965
—
66,
London: Longman, 1966, pp. 302—3.
⁵⁶

 

‘The Nomadic Alternative'. In Emma Bunker, Bruce Chatwin & Ann Farkas,
Animal Style (Art from East to West),
New York: The Asia Society Inc., 1970, pp. 173—183.

 

‘Museums'. In Robert Allen & Quentin Guirdham (eds),
The London Spy—a discreet guide to the city's pleasures
, London: Blond, 1971, pp. 95—109.
⁵⁷

 

‘The Estate of Maximilian Tod'. In Emma Tennant (ed.),
Saturday Night Reader,
London: W. H. Allen, 1979, pp. 25—37.
⁵⁸

 

‘Foreword'. In Lorenzo Ricciardi,
The Voyage of the Mir-el-lah,
London: Collins, 1980, p. 6.

 

‘Introduction'. In Robert Byron,
The Road to Oxiana, London:
Pan Books, 1981. pp. 9—15.
⁵⁹

‘Howard Hodgkin'. In Michael Compton,
Howard Hodgkin's Indian Leaves,
London: Tate Gallery catalogue, 1982.
⁶⁰

 

‘Body and Eyes'. In Robert Mapplethorpe,
Lady: Lisa Lyon,
New York: Viking Press, 1983, pp. 11—15.
⁶¹

 

‘Introduction'. In Osip Mandelstam,
Journey to Armenia,
London: Redstone Press, 1989, pp.4—7.

 

‘Introduction'. In Sybil Bedford,
A Visit to Don Otavio,
London: Folio Society, 1990, pp. 11—12.

 

 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS

‘Gone to Timbuctoo'. In
Vogue,
July 1970, pp. 20, 22, 25.
⁶²

 

‘It's a Nomad Nomad Nomad NOMAD world'. In
Vogue,
December 1970, pp. 124—5.

 

‘The Mechanics of Nomad Invasions'. In
History Today,
22 May 1972, pp. 329-37 + bibliography, p. 382.
⁶³

 

‘Surviving in Style'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, 4 March 1973, pp. 42—54.
⁶⁴

‘Moscow's Unofficial Art'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, May 6 1973, pp. 36—54.
⁶⁵

 

‘Postscript to a Thousand Pictures', the
Sunday Times
magazine, 26 August 1973, pp. 48—51.
⁶⁶

 

‘Heavenly Horses'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, 9 September 1973, pp. 56—61.
⁶⁷

 

‘Fatal Journey to Marseilles – North Africans in France'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, 6 January 1974, pp. 22—45.
⁶⁸

 

‘The Oracle'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, 17 March 1974, pp. 20—34.
⁶⁹

 

‘The Witness'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, 9 June 1974, pp. 52—9.
⁷⁰

 

‘The Road to the Isles'. In
The Times Literary Supplement,
no. 3790, 25 October 1974, pp. 1195—6.

 

‘Man the Aggressor'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, I December 1974, pp. 28—41, 85—7.
⁷¹

‘The Riddle of the Pampa'. In the
Sunday Times
magazine, 26 October 1975, pp. 52—67.
⁷²