Just popping it to say thanks, and it seems wonderful to me that such rich rivers of conversation have sprung up from the publication of his letters. They can't be mined for perfect gems the way Keats's letters can, but there are some marvelous statements that didn't get into the reviews.
Quotations from Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin:
“This is my ambition—BOTANIST written on my passport. The sale of works of art is the most unlovable profession in the world.”
-To Cary Welch, 27 July 1964
“I am going to be a serious, and systematic writer.”
-To Elizabeth Chatwin, 21 July 1969
“Why are all one’s friends lunatics?”
-To Elizabeth Chatwin, 15 November 1970
“England is now little England with a vengeance, the world of boutiques and bitchery and little else.”
-To James Ivory, 8 April 1972
“I have dined with a man who knew Butch Cassidy and other members of the Black Jack Gang, I have drunk to the memory of Ludwig of Bavaria with a German whose house and style of life belongs rather to the world of the Brothers Grimm. I have discussed the poetics of Mandelstam with a Ukrainian doctor missing both legs….”
-To Elizabeth Chatwin, 21 January 1975
“Aren’t Victoria Falls a surprise? Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, can we look down on the sublime.”
-To Murray Bail, December 1984
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