Bruce the profuse

yarb

Sep 19, 2024

This posthumous assortment of literary disjecta confirms my impression that Chatwin isn't my kind of travel writer (he's the kind who travels with his eyes more than his ears), but since none of it is actual travel writing, I quite enjoyed it. There are five sections:

1. Pieces about places or traveling to/from them — I liked A Tower in Tuscany because said tower turns out to belong to one of my fave literary oddballs, Gregor von Rezzori, and his glam wife, and Chatwin chats winningly about hanging out with them. The short piece on Timbuctoo is good, too.

2. Stories. Nothing special here, and Chatwin's embarrassing Orientalism is on full view.

3. Pieces about "nomadism". These are mostly pretentious nonsense, unfocused notes for a book that unsurprisingly never materialised.

5. Writings on art. Only two of these, but they're the highlight of the book imo. I loved Among the Ruins, a leisurely look at the enchanted isle of Capri and three of the myriad eccentrics who've taken up residence there over the centuries — Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen (of whom I'd never heard), Axel Munthe, and Curzio Malaparte — with nods in the direction of the emperor Tiberius and Norman Douglas, whose novel of Capri South Wind has a special place in my heart. The other piece is all about objets d'art and our relationship to them, kinda abstract but interesting stuff.