 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Bruce Chatwin |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Travel |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
Publication date | 1977 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 0-224-01419-6 |
| OCLC | 3687188 |
| 918.27/04/6 | |
| 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.
During the Second World War, Chatwin and his mother stayed at the home of his paternal grandparents, who had a curiosity cabinet that fascinated him. Among the items it contained was a "piece of brontosaurus" (actually a mylodon, a giant sloth), which had been sent to Chatwin's grandmother by her cousin Charles Amherst Milward.
In a cave in Chilean Patagonia, Milward had discovered the remains of a giant sloth, which he later sold to the British Museum. He sent his cousin a piece of the animal's skin. The skin was later lost, but it inspired Chatwin decades later to visit Patagonia. [1] [2]
In 1972, Chatwin was hired by the Sunday Times Magazine as an adviser on art and architecture. [3] In 1972, he interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted. [4] "I've always wanted to go there," Bruce told her. "So have I," she replied. "Go there for me."
Two years later, in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima, Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later. [5] He would later claim that he sent a telegram to his editor, merely stating: "Have gone to Patagonia." Actually, he sent a letter: "I am doing a story there for myself, something I have always wanted to write up." [6] He spent six months in the area, traveling around, gathering stories of people who came from elsewhere and settled there. He used his quest for his own "piece of brontosaurus" (the one from his grandparents' cabinet had been thrown away years earlier) to frame the story of his trip.
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]
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 Buenos Aires south through Argentina as far as Ushuaia, and thence to Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales and the Cueva del Milodon in Chile. The many topics he discusses in the book include the landscape and wildlife of Patagonia, the history of European exploration and settlement, Butch Cassidy's time in Patagonia, anarchists and strikers, and the fate of the native inhabitants.
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]
The New York Times described it as a "little masterpiece of travel, history, and adventure." [10] Some reviewers[ who? ] compared it with classics of travel literature such as Travels by Sir John Mandeville, Eothen by Alexander Kinglake and The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron.
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]
For In Patagonia Chatwin received the Hawthornden Prize and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. [14]
Patagonia is a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers in the west and deserts, tablelands and steppes to the east. Patagonia is bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and many bodies of water that connect them, such as the Strait of Magellan, the Beagle Channel, and the Drake Passage to the south.
Mylodon is a genus of extinct ground sloth belonging to the family Mylodontidae, known from the Pampas and Patagonia in Chile and Argentina in southern South America. With a total length of 3 to 4 m, it is one of the best-known and largest representatives of the group. The oldest finds probably date to the Lower Pleistocene; however, most of the fossil remains date from the Upper Pleistocene period. One of the most important sites of this phase is the Cueva del Milodón in southern Chile. Shortly after, about 10,200 BP, Mylodon became extinct. At this point in time, it coexisted with the first human colonists in America.
Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the "Wild Bunch" in the Old West.
Robyn Davidson is an Australian writer best known for her 1980 book Tracks, about her 2,700 km trek across the deserts of Western Australia using camels. Her career of travelling and writing about her travels has spanned 40 years. Her memoir is to be published in late 2023.
Charles Bruce Chatwin was an English travel writer, novelist and journalist. His first book, In Patagonia (1977), established Chatwin as a travel writer, although he considered himself instead a storyteller, interested in bringing to light unusual tales. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill (1982), while his novel Utz (1988) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2008 The Times ranked Chatwin as number 46 on their list of "50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945."
The Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia was an unrecognized state declared by two ordinances on November 17, 1860 and November 20, 1860 from Antoine de Tounens, a French lawyer and adventurer, who claimed that the regions of Araucanía and eastern Patagonia did not depend of any other states and proclaimed himself king of Araucanía and Patagonia. He had the support of some Mapuche lonkos around a small area in Araucanía, who thought they could help maintain independence from the Chilean and Argentinian governments.
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William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, KG was an English nobleman and politician. Stanley inherited a prominent social position that was both dangerous and unstable, as his mother was heir to Queen Elizabeth I under the Third Succession Act, a position inherited in 1596 by his deceased brother's oldest daughter, Anne, two years after William had inherited the Earldom from his brother. After a period of European travel in his youth, a long legal battle eventually consolidated his social position. Nevertheless, he was careful to remain circumspect in national politics, devoting himself to administration and cultural projects, including playwriting.
Justin Chatwin is a Canadian actor. He began his career in 2001 with a brief appearance in the musical comedy Josie and the Pussycats. Following his breakthrough role as Robbie Ferrier in the blockbuster War of the Worlds (2005), Chatwin headlined studio films such as The Invisible (2007) and Dragonball Evolution (2009), an action-adventure feature based on the manga series Dragon Ball. In the 2010s, Chatwin acted in small independent films. He starred as rock star idol Bobby Shore in the sci-fi musical Bang Bang Baby (2014), which earned him a Canadian Screen Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and appeared in the romantic comedy Unleashed (2016), and drama Summer Night (2019).
Nicholas William Richmond Shakespeare FRSL is a British novelist and biographer, described by the Wall Street Journal as "one of the best English novelists of our time".
Puerto San Julián, also known historically as Port St. Julian, is a natural harbour in Patagonia in the Santa Cruz Province of Argentina located at 49°18′S67°43′W. In the days of sailing ships it formed a stopping point, 180 km (112 mi) south of Puerto Deseado. Nowadays Puerto San Julián is also the name of a small town located on the harbour.
"Crystal Japan" is an instrumental piece written by David Bowie and released as a single in Japan in spring 1980. It was recorded during the Scary Monsters sessions that year. The instrumental was used in a Japanese commercial for the shochu Crystal Jun Rock, which also featured an appearance by Bowie, although he said at the time that the track was not specifically written for this purpose. Originally titled "Fuji Moto San", it was apparently intended to close the Scary Monsters album until replaced by "It's No Game ".
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Paramylodon is an extinct genus of ground sloth of the family Mylodontidae endemic to North America during the Pliocene through Pleistocene epochs, living from around ~4.9 Mya–12,000 years ago.
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Simón Radowitzky was a militant Argentine worker and anarchist. He was one of the best-known prisoners of the penal colony in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, where he was held for the assassination of Ramón Lorenzo Falcón, a head of police responsible for the brutal repression of Red Week in 1909 in Buenos Aires.
Edgar Louis Mackay Vanderstegen Millington-Drake, usually known as Teddy Millington-Drake, was an English artist, known mainly for his watercolour paintings but also abstract work in oils. He was an aesthete in all spheres of his life, and a passionate traveller.
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