Dave,
Your article, and Chatwin, and The Songlines, raise so many issues, strum so many chords, touch so many nerves - all of which are so central to my personal life and projects at this time - that the fact you created this thread now seems wholly serendipitous to me.
The reason I can't react is because I am travelling right now - I am stopped on a dusty hot roadside - through the country that Chatwin wrote about. I have been doing this for over a year now ... oh, if I started to tell, it would not end, and the heat here is ferocious, so I must get back on the road.
I am intrigued to know what you make of Chatwin, your impressions when you met him. When Chatwin and/or The Songlines are mentioned, the two words that come instantly to my mind are specious and meretricious.
Alas, I really have no time now. Australia is hot and hard and vast. And I wouldn't look to The Songlines (there! I just corrected a typo where I had written The Songlies!!) to understand this land or the culture that grew out of it.
Chatwin himself is another story. As you say - he is a complex character, and I much prefer to think of his theories on nomad and settled societies out of the Australian context. These questions go to the heart of my life's preoccupations, only I take a more psychological view of it, rather than anthropological or philosophical.
Of course, a writer can be both meretricious and great. There was certainly some kind of powerful daimon alive in Bruce Chatwin.
This is a vast topic - and all the threads it throws out would take time to follow. In a way, it's my life's work - the nature of Australia and travel writing - so do forgive this brief and inadequate reply to a deeply challenging, often disturbing, topic. I did not want you to believe your article had gone unnoticed. It deserves to spawn a huge discussion.
When my present journey is done - this leg of it, at least - I hope to articulate some of my thoughts on things you've raised. But it's hot as hell here right now, Dave, and I need to get to the coast, to my island, and sink into the Coral Sea for a while.
Cally
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