Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia (1977) is one of my favourite books. Yesterday, while waiting for my prescription to be re-filled, I visited the bookstore down the street where I found Nicholaus Shakespeare's Bruce Chatwin: a Biography (2001). After much deliberation, I added it to a pile that included Dirk Bogarde's A Postillion Struck by Lightning (1977) and a beautifully bootlegged VHS copy of Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1974)
The chapter that deals with Chatwin's travels in Patagonia ("Gone to Patagonia") is at dead centre and, against my better judgement, I read it first. Would anything I read before that have prepared me for a man as entitled as this one?
Here is Shakespeare on the Chatwin who dropped in:
"Usually, he arrived unannounced. 'He felt he was welcome anywhere,' says [his wife] Elizabeth. 'He couldn't imagine not being welcome.' This attitude caused friction further south. At Despedida, he appeared without warning while Jacqueline de las Carreras's husband was shearing. 'He was very arrogant, very sure of himself, very narcissistic,' she says. 'He didn't speak any Spanish and he didn't make any effort to be understood. He was very Me, myself and I'm the Queen of England.' He appalled Nita Starling, a 60-ish spinster who looked after the garden, by asking if she would wash his clothes. She refused."
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