Bruce Chatwin (57 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
Bruce liked to adopt an insouciant attitude to reviews. “Don’t flap too much about the critics,” he wrote to the artist Keith Milow, “and never try to please them and don’t ever complain about them. It isn’t worth it. The function of the artist is to work for (a) himself (b) to leave something memorable for the future, to shore up the ruins. Fuck the rest of them!” Yet in the very next sentence he confessed “to a sneaking pleasure at a card I got yesterday from Jan Morris saying that my description of the Welsh in Patagonia actually moved him/her to tears.”
One aspect of
In Patagonia’s
reception did vex the author. Most critics united in calling his “peculiarly dotty book” a travel book. He wrote to Welch that while the critics had been very complimentary, “the FORM of the book seems to have puzzled them (as I suspect it did the publisher). There’s a lot of talk of ‘unclassifiable prose’, ‘a mosaic’, ‘a tapestry’, a ‘jigsaw’, a ‘collage’ etc. but no one has seen that it is a modern WONDER VOYAGE: the Piece of Brontosaurus is the essential ingredient of the quest.”
In Patagonia’s
reception did vex the author. Most critics united in calling his “peculiarly dotty book” a travel book. He wrote to Welch that while the critics had been very complimentary, “the FORM of the book seems to have puzzled them (as I suspect it did the publisher). There’s a lot of talk of ‘unclassifiable prose’, ‘a mosaic’, ‘a tapestry’, a ‘jigsaw’, a ‘collage’ etc. but no one has seen that it is a modern WONDER VOYAGE: the Piece of Brontosaurus is the essential ingredient of the quest.”
The sale of his American rights for $5,000 provided an excuse “to do a bit of explaining”. On 1 December 1977, he drafted a letter to Rogers, requesting that the book be taken out of the travel category. He wanted the blurb on the American edition to convey four points, in his opinion the key to understanding the book:
I. Patagonia was the farthest place to which man walked from his place of origins. “It is therefore a symbol of his restlessness. From its discovery it had the effect on the imagination something like the Moon, but in my opinion more powerful.”
2. The form described in the
Daily Telegraph
as “wildly unorthodox” was in fact as old as literature itself: “the hunt for a strange animal in a remote land”.
Daily Telegraph
as “wildly unorthodox” was in fact as old as literature itself: “the hunt for a strange animal in a remote land”.
3. He preferred to leave the reader with the choice of two journeys: one to Patagonia in 1975, the other “a symbolic voyage which is a meditation on restlessness and exile”.
4. “All the stories were chosen with the purpose of illustrating some particular aspect of wandering and/or of exile: i.e. what happens when you get stuck. The whole should be an illustration of the myth of Cain and Abel.”
But the question of categorisation continued to trouble him.
Bruce’s first book is the literary equivalent of his grandmother’s cabinet, a collection of stories gathered with a singular eye. For all his insistence that he followed a traditional form, most readers disagreed. Among booksellers it inaugurated a category: “the new non-fiction”.
Its literary influences are nevertheless easy to discern. An earlier choice of title, “Journey to Patagonia”, acknowledges the debt to Osip Mandelstam, whose
Journey to Armenia
he had read aloud to the
Sunday Times
art department. Mandelstam, he wrote to Sethi, “in poetry, but more so in prose, is one of my gods”. In his introduction to it, he called Mandelstam’s laconic, elliptical travel book “among the outstanding masterpieces of the twentieth century” and its author “the shaman and seer of his time”.
Journey to Armenia
he had read aloud to the
Sunday Times
art department. Mandelstam, he wrote to Sethi, “in poetry, but more so in prose, is one of my gods”. In his introduction to it, he called Mandelstam’s laconic, elliptical travel book “among the outstanding masterpieces of the twentieth century” and its author “the shaman and seer of his time”.
On 14 April 1979, Mandelstam’s translator, Clarence Brown, wrote to ask “with a certain trepidation” whether Bruce was aware “that the spirit of OM seems to peep out from behind this or that phrase or stroke of portraiture or landscape”. Bruce replied by return. “For what it’s worth – and at the risk of being a bore – I’d like to put it on record that you are surely the finest translator out of Russian alive; that you have a most finely-tuned ear for the cadence of a sentence; that your literal translations of M’s poems are far better than the work of the versifiers, and, lastly, that you are TOO MODEST. In an ideal world you would be appointed
generalissimo
in charge of vetting all translations from the Russian; one only has to think of the horrors of the so-called Oxford Chekhov . . .
generalissimo
in charge of vetting all translations from the Russian; one only has to think of the horrors of the so-called Oxford Chekhov . . .
“Of course
Journey to Armenia
was the biggest single ingredient – more so even than met the eye. Perhaps too much so – ‘skull-white cabbages etc.’ . . . But one bit of plagiarism was quite unintentional (though indicative of the degree to which I had steeped myself in the
Journey
). Not until after I had passed the final proofs did I realise I had lifted ‘the accordion of his forehead’ straight. I rang up the copy-editor in a panic. She said it was too late and, besides, all writers were cribbers.”
Journey to Armenia
was the biggest single ingredient – more so even than met the eye. Perhaps too much so – ‘skull-white cabbages etc.’ . . . But one bit of plagiarism was quite unintentional (though indicative of the degree to which I had steeped myself in the
Journey
). Not until after I had passed the final proofs did I realise I had lifted ‘the accordion of his forehead’ straight. I rang up the copy-editor in a panic. She said it was too late and, besides, all writers were cribbers.”
Bruce admitted to cribbing from other Russians. Brown’s translation of Mandelstam’s
The Noise of Time
had led him to “discover” writers like Isaac Babel (“Soon afterwards I started to write”). He had “immersed” himself at the time of writing in the literature of Turgenev and Chekhov: the way Anglo-Argentinians clung to their estates in order to enjoy a life in town was exactly the story of
The Cherry Orchard
.
The Noise of Time
had led him to “discover” writers like Isaac Babel (“Soon afterwards I started to write”). He had “immersed” himself at the time of writing in the literature of Turgenev and Chekhov: the way Anglo-Argentinians clung to their estates in order to enjoy a life in town was exactly the story of
The Cherry Orchard
.
It appeared to Welch, who read the book “VERY VERY slowly because each phrase is so provocative and enjoyable”, that Bruce’s style in its combination of flamboyance and austerity owed something to Eastern influences. “Particularly I like it because it has the qualities I find in Mughal pictures: extraordinary portraiture, very deep and psychological, superb technically, with all sorts of enrichments.” Bruce was delighted at the connection: “The Babur-Nama has influenced me greatly in what I write. With the possible exception of Isaac Babel, I know of no writer capable of such economic portraits of people. What I love is the clear, staccato line with a fantastical flourish at the end . . . Such directness in Babur. Such awesome GAPS.”
Then there were the Americans: Edmund Wilson’s travel journals,
Black Brown Red and Olive
, Gaylord Simpson’s
Attending Marvels
, and, of course, Hemingway’s short stories. Along with
Journey to Armenia
, Bruce had carried
In Our Time
in his rucksack.
Black Brown Red and Olive
, Gaylord Simpson’s
Attending Marvels
, and, of course, Hemingway’s short stories. Along with
Journey to Armenia
, Bruce had carried
In Our Time
in his rucksack.
Martha Gellhorn, to her infinite regret, was once married to Ernest Hemingway. Possibly because of this connection, Bruce sought her out on the pretext of gathering information about Mandelstam’s widow Nadezhda, whom he wanted to meet in Moscow. (Gellhorn recommended Bruce take her marmalade, cheap pens, writing paper, scent, American thrillers and pills for an ulcer that she only suffered each spring.) “I think he wanted to survey the landscape,” she said. “I was very surprised by this fey creature bouncing in and chatting. He promised to take me to a rugby game and never did.”
Apart from the structure of their sentences, their careful repetitions, Bruce shared with Hemingway the same “wonderful memory”. Also, said Gellhorn, a vision of themselves as adventurers. “When you’re daydreaming as a child you’re always Joan of Arc or Richard Coeur de Lion: that’s one of the pleasures of childhood. But it’s supposed to change.” She felt that Bruce had not grown up. “If you and I go on a journey it’s hell and we get dysentery and it’s misery. If he goes, because he’s an adventurer to himself first, these amazing things happen.” She contrasted him with Paul Theroux. “Anything Theroux wrote about, he did. He doesn’t make it heroic. He made it the way it was – which you’d pay money
not
to do.”
not
to do.”
Both Bruce and Hemingway were “
mythomanes
”, said Gellhorn. “They are not conscious liars. They invent to increase everything about themselves and their lives and
believe
it. They believe everything they say.”
mythomanes
”, said Gellhorn. “They are not conscious liars. They invent to increase everything about themselves and their lives and
believe
it. They believe everything they say.”
Bruce in an early draft had opened
In Patagonia
with the description of the “
mythomane
” Louis de Rougemont, a visionary charlatan who first met Captain Milward at a banquet in New Zealand, successfully predicted Milward’s shipwreck, and ended his days on stage leading a show called
The Greatest Liar on Earth
.
In Patagonia
with the description of the “
mythomane
” Louis de Rougemont, a visionary charlatan who first met Captain Milward at a banquet in New Zealand, successfully predicted Milward’s shipwreck, and ended his days on stage leading a show called
The Greatest Liar on Earth
.
In his journal Milward describes his surprise at meeting de Rougemont again in London: “He spent many hours a day, for a long time, studying in the British Museum and reading all manner of interesting adventures there. I once asked him how he dared to annex an albatross story and make it into a pelican story, to which he replied: ‘Well, you see, zer vas no albatross zer and zer vas pelican.’ ‘But it’s not true,’ I said. ‘No,’ was his only excuse, ‘but it does come in so very well just zer’.”
The temptation to seek comparisons between Bruce and de Rougement, a star who was “booed off the stage in Brisbane”, is not frustrated by the author. “I once made the experiment of counting up the lies in the book I wrote about Patagonia,” he told Michael Ignatieff. “It wasn’t, in fact, too bad: there weren’t too many.” The book did, however, ruffle feathers in Patagonia.
First there was a confusion over the mix of genres. Just as Patagonia is not a place with an exact border so Bruce’s book did not fall into an easy category. Was it travel writing? Was it historical fiction? Was it reportage? And was it true?
Though he changed most names, Bruce left a trail of offended people in the Welsh community. Unused to scrutiny, they judged what he wrote with a nineteenth-century Methodist eye. They found it hard to conceive that their characters were so transparent that they could be reduced to a few vivid details by a stranger they had met for an hour. He had pinned them down as specimens, like Ernst Jünger skewering his beetles. In Gaiman, Geralt Williams compares the shock of reading about himself to the first time he heard his voice: “When someone tape-records your voice, you don’t recognise it as yours.”
Unlike the subjects of Cartier-Bresson’s
Tete-à-Tete
portraits, Bruce had not sought Geralt’s permission. As a result Geralt felt diminished. He had not had an easy life in the desert. Bruce had described his difficulties with a twentieth-century eye, passing swiftly through his life and refusing to dwell on it. He had snatched the intimacy Borges writes of: “that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow”.
Tete-à-Tete
portraits, Bruce had not sought Geralt’s permission. As a result Geralt felt diminished. He had not had an easy life in the desert. Bruce had described his difficulties with a twentieth-century eye, passing swiftly through his life and refusing to dwell on it. He had snatched the intimacy Borges writes of: “that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow”.
“He wrote in a
manera sobradera
, an English way of looking at things when they were the Empire,” says Luned Roberts de Gonzalez. “
Condescending
would be the word.” He was too slick, too sharp, made people more interesting than they were, did not catch the spirit, says Albina Zampini. She prefers a book like Wilfrid Blunt’s
Of Flowers and a Village
. “Now
that
I enjoyed immensely.”
manera sobradera
, an English way of looking at things when they were the Empire,” says Luned Roberts de Gonzalez. “
Condescending
would be the word.” He was too slick, too sharp, made people more interesting than they were, did not catch the spirit, says Albina Zampini. She prefers a book like Wilfrid Blunt’s
Of Flowers and a Village
. “Now
that
I enjoyed immensely.”
The problem is exacerbated by the world-wide success of
In Patagonia
. Few complete histories exist of the region. Most books concentrate on one aspect: the Welsh, the Anarchists, the early travellers. Bruce cherry-picked the lot and with his connecting gaze integrated them into a single narrative that has become, for foreign visitors, their favourite guide-book. “We should write something on the English who come here with
In Patagonia
,” says Luned’s son, Fabio. “It’s their bible.”
In Patagonia
. Few complete histories exist of the region. Most books concentrate on one aspect: the Welsh, the Anarchists, the early travellers. Bruce cherry-picked the lot and with his connecting gaze integrated them into a single narrative that has become, for foreign visitors, their favourite guide-book. “We should write something on the English who come here with
In Patagonia
,” says Luned’s son, Fabio. “It’s their bible.”
This popularity fuels the resentment of local historians. Best-known is the Argentine Oswaldo Beyer. In Buenos Aires, Bruce consulted the left-wing Beyer about the Anarchist uprising in the 1920s. He had read Beyer’s
La Patagonia Tragica
which, “on a cursory glance” he wrote in his diary, “seemed to me to be the hysterical, doubtless justified, ravings of a poor lawyer, driven to dementia by the greed and drunkenness that surrounded him – the work of a man with a persecution mania”.
La Patagonia Tragica
which, “on a cursory glance” he wrote in his diary, “seemed to me to be the hysterical, doubtless justified, ravings of a poor lawyer, driven to dementia by the greed and drunkenness that surrounded him – the work of a man with a persecution mania”.
In February 1994, Beyer published a ringing attack on Bruce.
In Patagonia
, he wrote, was the key to understanding Europe’s arrogance, always treating Beyer’s part of the world with a colonial attitude. He felt guilty whenever he saw a copy in a window. He had furnished Bruce with a bibliography and photocopies of various articles, while at the same time wondering “how he was going to read these because it seemed to me his knowledge of Spanish was very deficient”. This explained to Beyer various, unspecified “errors of interpretation”. And he accused Bruce, who had only spent “three weeks in Santa Cruz and Chubut”, of passing off other people’s material on the anarchist Antonio Soto “as if it was the product of his own investigation”.
In Patagonia
, he wrote, was the key to understanding Europe’s arrogance, always treating Beyer’s part of the world with a colonial attitude. He felt guilty whenever he saw a copy in a window. He had furnished Bruce with a bibliography and photocopies of various articles, while at the same time wondering “how he was going to read these because it seemed to me his knowledge of Spanish was very deficient”. This explained to Beyer various, unspecified “errors of interpretation”. And he accused Bruce, who had only spent “three weeks in Santa Cruz and Chubut”, of passing off other people’s material on the anarchist Antonio Soto “as if it was the product of his own investigation”.
Most deeply upsetting to Beyer was the wealth he imagined Bruce had accrued. “He made a fortune from this book,” he declared. “He sold the rights in Germany for $300,000 dollars, in America for double that, the same as in England, without counting the rest of the world.”
Beyer’s reaction explains why it was impossible for many years to find
In Patagonia
in Buenos Aires. As Bruce wrote to Jorge Torre Zavaleta, who reviewed it in
La Nacion
: “I have always been a bit mystified about the book’s reception in the Argentine, particularly since the Spanish translation seems to have sunk without trace.”
In Patagonia
in Buenos Aires. As Bruce wrote to Jorge Torre Zavaleta, who reviewed it in
La Nacion
: “I have always been a bit mystified about the book’s reception in the Argentine, particularly since the Spanish translation seems to have sunk without trace.”
In Punta Arenas, Bruce had also consulted the Chilean historian Mateo Martinic, author of 23 books on Patagonia, “for the moment”. Bruce found Martinic to be a chauvinistic patriot with a mechanical intellect, “a politician tooth and nail, but one whose attitudes do not lead him to the extremes of either party”. Martinic, who admits to a “strict” historical vision, dislikes
In Patagonia
for its sensationalism. He takes Bruce to task for exaggerating the killing of Indians and for reducing Patagonia to five or six precious stories without reflecting “in the best way” the contribution made by the British. But the author was not, he concedes, writing a history. “The problem is not Chatwin,” he says, “but those who read Chatwin and think it
is
the bible.”
In Patagonia
for its sensationalism. He takes Bruce to task for exaggerating the killing of Indians and for reducing Patagonia to five or six precious stories without reflecting “in the best way” the contribution made by the British. But the author was not, he concedes, writing a history. “The problem is not Chatwin,” he says, “but those who read Chatwin and think it
is
the bible.”
The book Martinic most recommends is
A Patagonian Panorama
by Tom Jones, the one-time British Consul in Punta Arenas. Jones’s daughter, Daphne Hobbs, is Bruce’s most vociferous critic.
A Patagonian Panorama
by Tom Jones, the one-time British Consul in Punta Arenas. Jones’s daughter, Daphne Hobbs, is Bruce’s most vociferous critic.
She does not possess a copy of
In Patagonia.
“I would not sully my shelves,” she says. But she still, 20 years later, writes regular letters to the
Buenos Aires Herald
against a book which “whilst containing some elements of truth was much exaggerated and in some instances pure lies”. One section angered her sister so much that she consulted a lawyer, only to be advised that you cannot libel the dead.
In Patagonia.
“I would not sully my shelves,” she says. But she still, 20 years later, writes regular letters to the
Buenos Aires Herald
against a book which “whilst containing some elements of truth was much exaggerated and in some instances pure lies”. One section angered her sister so much that she consulted a lawyer, only to be advised that you cannot libel the dead.
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