In Patagonia
LC Class | F2936 .C47 |
In Patagonia is an English travel book by Bruce Chatwin, published in 1977, about Patagonia, the southern part of South America.
Preparations
During the
In a
In 1972, Chatwin was hired by the
In Patagonia
Two years later, in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to
Chatwin described In Patagonia as "the narrative of an actual journey and a symbolic one ... It is supposed to fall into the category or be a spoof of Wonder Voyage: the narrator goes to a far country in search of a strange animal: on his way he lands in strange situations, people or other books tell him strange stories which add up to form a message."[7]
Content
The book is experimental in the way that it is structured. It is divided into a total of 97 separate sections, some of which are as short as a lone paragraph. In a sense this construction with its frequent use of digression, rather than a linear structure, mirrors one of the underlying themes of the work as a whole: a meditation upon wandering and nomadism in human life. This is accentuated by the fact that many of the narratives of the people that Chatwin meets in the work involve discussions of the nomadic life.
Chatwin's route takes him from
Reception
This work established Chatwin's reputation as a travel writer. One of his biographers, Nicholas Murray, called In Patagonia "one of the most strikingly original postwar English travel books"[8] and said that it revitalised the genre of travel writing.[9]
However, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were later alleged to be fiction.[11] In the words of his biographer Nicholas Shakespeare, "Critics ... suspected that a number of Chatwin's brontosauri were mylodons."[12]
Some editions of In Patagonia contain 15 black and white photographs by Chatwin. According to Susannah Clapp, who edited the book, "Rebecca West amused Chatwin by telling him that these were so good they rendered superfluous the entire text of the book."[13]
Prizes
For In Patagonia Chatwin received the Hawthornden Prize and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[14]
References
General
- Chatwin, Bruce (1977). In Patagonia. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-22-401419-9.
- ISBN 978-0-09-976951-4
- ISBN 1-86046-544-7
- ISBN 1-85411-079-9[15]
- «El mito del escritor viajero - Diario La Nación - 13 de enero de 1999»
Citations
- ^ Chatwin 1977, pp. 1–3.
- ^ Utz, Richard. "In Patagonia". The Literary Encyclopedia. 09 March 2001
- ^ Shakespeare 1999, p. 267.
- ^ Shakespeare 1999, p. 286.
- ^ Shakespeare 1999, pp. 287–291.
- ^ Shakespeare 1999, p. 301.
- ^ Chatwin, Elizabeth (2010). Under the Sun. p. 271.
- ^ Murray (1999). Bruce Chatwin. p. 39.[full citation needed]
- ^ Murray (1993). Bruce Chatwin. p. 44.[full citation needed]
- ^ Review at Powell's Books
- ^ Murray (1999). Bruce Chatwin. p. 51.[full citation needed]
- ^ Shakespeare, Nicholas (2005). "Introduction". In Patagonia. Vintage. p. xxiv.
- ^ Clapp (1996). With Chatwin. p. 94.[full citation needed]
- ^ Shakespeare 1999, pp. 372–373.
- ^ "Bruce Chatwin – Nicholas Murray". 13 February 2016.