|
|
Adult Books - Nonfiction - Literature
|  |   | 
Bruce Chatwin.
Shakespeare, Nicholas (author).
Feb. 2000. 704p. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, hardcover, $35 (0-385-49829-2). 823.
REVIEW.
First published February 15, 2000 (Booklist).
Shakespeare spent eight years tracking Bruce Chatwin and, initially at least, seems bent on showing us his work. The acknowledgments, in the front matter, run for almost three full pages. As the narrative begins, one feels put off by the many quotes of and references to these sources. But then the masterful writer of The Dancer Upstairs (1997) settles in, and the work becomes absorbing, the sources a chorus of witnesses to the life of an extraordinary individual. Chatwin was a charming, enigmatic writer-adventurer--an intrepid T. E. Lawrence type who sought out remote and dangerous places, at times trekking across countries on foot and alone for great distances, and like a Hemingway he thrust himself into his imaginings and wrote books that were incredible mixtures of fact and fiction. Yet, too, he was very English, very private and died of AIDS in the ‘80s still refusing to confess publicly his homosexual leanings. One of Shakespeare’s sources claimed that Chatwin was “a polymorphous pervert. . . . out to seduce everybody, it doesn’t matter if you are male, female, an ocelot or a tea cosy.” Interesting. The portion on Chatwin’s evolution as a writer is simply a brilliant portrait of the artist as a young man. With the unhurried storyteller’s pace, Shakespeare re-creates Chatwin’s peripatetic childhood, his intrigues at Sotheby’s and Christie’s before the stint at Edinburgh where he began a formal study of archaeology, his marriage to the American Elizabeth Chanler, which would last 23 years, and the twists and turns that took him to Patagonia and the classic travel book that launched his writing career and his celebrity. From that point, Shakespeare charts the descent into the heart of darkness that adventurers always seem compelled to travel before the mad scramble back to safety and sanity, though Chatwin didn’t quite make it back. (Reviewed February 15, 2000)— Bonnie Smothers
| |
|
| Click here to find more books by this author |
| |
|
|
Features That Discuss This Work:
1. Notable Books : 2001
2. Booklist Editors' Choice : 2000
3. Booklist Editors' Choice : Adult Books, 2000
|
|
|
 |
|