Fascinating travelogue.
I first heard of this book while reading Susan Hill's memoir Howards End Is on the Landing. Hill's book discussed books she has read and books she wants to read during a single year. IN PATAGONIA is one of her favorite travel books and based on this, I put this on my wishlist. I later found a copy at Goodwill and snatched it up. Patagonia has always sort of fascinated me. I remember the Disney movie based on Jules Verne's In Search of the Castaways where some parts of it took place in Patagonia. Patagonia is the southern part of South America and is comprised of sections of both Argentina and Chile.
The book starts out with Chatwin at his grandmother's house that contained a cabinet. This cabinet held a piece of skin that the grandmother purported to be a piece of brontosaurus. Turns out it was actually skin from an extinct giant sloth that had been sent to Chatwin's grandmother by her cousin Charles Amherst Milward who had discovered it in a cave in Chilean Patagonia. This piece of skin inspired Chatwin to visit Patagonia. IN PATAGONIA tells of Chatwin's journey but it is mostly filled with anecdotal stories of the people there as well as historical personages that were once in the area. The people he meets with are mostly Welsh, German, Italian, and Boers. The book tells of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's exploits there after fleeing from the Western US. He makes the case that Cassidy was not killed there but returned to the US and met up with his sister. He also discusses Charles Darwin and Edgar Allan Poe. Both seemed to have been influenced by a book by Captain Jame Weddell: Voyage towards the South Pole. Poe based his novel Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym on this. The book also describes some rather bizarre things including the sect of male witches known as the Brujeria that supposedly existed solely to hurt people.
Chatwin's route took him from Buenos Aires south through Argentina as far as Ushuaia (the most Southern city in the world), and thence to Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales and the Cueva del Milodon in Chile. Other topics he discusses in the book include the landscape and wildlife of Patagonia, the history of European exploration and settlement, anarchists and strikers, and the fate of the native inhabitants.
I was very mixed on this one. While some of the subject matter was quite interesting, I found that overall the narrative was very disjointed. The book is comprised of 97 short chapters. Some of these sort of pop up with no prelude and do not seem to fit the flow of the overall book. I would only mildly recommend this one.
The book starts out with Chatwin at his grandmother's house that contained a cabinet. This cabinet held a piece of skin that the grandmother purported to be a piece of brontosaurus. Turns out it was actually skin from an extinct giant sloth that had been sent to Chatwin's grandmother by her cousin Charles Amherst Milward who had discovered it in a cave in Chilean Patagonia. This piece of skin inspired Chatwin to visit Patagonia. IN PATAGONIA tells of Chatwin's journey but it is mostly filled with anecdotal stories of the people there as well as historical personages that were once in the area. The people he meets with are mostly Welsh, German, Italian, and Boers. The book tells of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's exploits there after fleeing from the Western US. He makes the case that Cassidy was not killed there but returned to the US and met up with his sister. He also discusses Charles Darwin and Edgar Allan Poe. Both seemed to have been influenced by a book by Captain Jame Weddell: Voyage towards the South Pole. Poe based his novel Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym on this. The book also describes some rather bizarre things including the sect of male witches known as the Brujeria that supposedly existed solely to hurt people.
Chatwin's route took him from Buenos Aires south through Argentina as far as Ushuaia (the most Southern city in the world), and thence to Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales and the Cueva del Milodon in Chile. Other topics he discusses in the book include the landscape and wildlife of Patagonia, the history of European exploration and settlement, anarchists and strikers, and the fate of the native inhabitants.
I was very mixed on this one. While some of the subject matter was quite interesting, I found that overall the narrative was very disjointed. The book is comprised of 97 short chapters. Some of these sort of pop up with no prelude and do not seem to fit the flow of the overall book. I would only mildly recommend this one.
From what I read about it, it was considered a groundbreaking travel book when it was written (1977), I read about 80 pages and found it rather blazee. He seems to find a lot of misanthropic ex-pats to write about, which aren't always the most fascinating people. Maybe it got better as he moved further south...
