Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989)

This really is a book to get lost in, and it has had an immense influence overseas in popularising Aboriginal Australian culture. (Rory Stewart, for instance, recalls this book as the one that made English travel writing "cool".) A rambling yarn, tangents upon tangents, unpleasant viewpoints and hopeful ideas mingling together like dyes being poured into a vat.

The situation is more complex now - some would say problematic but I'd argue that's going too far. Chatwin's time in Australia was fairly brief, his subjects sometimes ironic or perhaps even outright false (to be fair, he acknowledges this), and his attempt to understand an issue that Australians themselves were still grappling with in the 1980s was always going to be deeply flawed. Still, it has its place in the history, and its rather basic overview of one particular aspect of Aboriginal life - even if it is drawn without any shadow or nuance - is an intriguing viewpoint on Australia from an outsider.… (mere)

Very interesting read, fascinating, and quite wonderful. Chatwin interweaves his journey to observe a territorial issue between aboriginal tribes and a proposed train line, with thoughts, science, history, myth, lore, of all peoples origins in song. Life is a songline in which we doing ourselves, and all the things, into existence. Really interesting segue into the theories of human violence (innately offensive, defensive? A result of population and/or resources only—counter intuitively the less a people has the less violent they are, fascinating stuff). Personable and full of the quality I most love in humans and my limited ideas of "aboriginals": a sense of joy.… (mere)