Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Chatwin, (Charles) Bruce - Eve Auchincloss

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EVE AUCHINCLOSS

[In Patagonia] is a travel book of sorts, containing a lot of well-digested history of that strange southerly part of Argentina where so many oddly assorted people have turned up: Magellan, Drake, Darwin, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Spanish revolutionaries, Scotch sheep farmers, Jewish merchants, a colony of dour Welshmen, and the author's grandmother's cousin, a shipwrecked sea captain. As he travels south from Buenos Aires, much of the way on foot, Chatwin gives us Patagonia in charged fragments: anecdotes, etymology, landscape, characters, poetry, towns, Patagonian literature, tragic sea stories. The style is the man: detached, humorous, succinct, wry, feeling, energetic, self-effacing: he catches the essence and gives just that, not a word more. In Patagonia may bring to mind The Great Railway Bazaar, but it is a less showoff book: absolutely original, perfectly poised, wise, an unclassifiable classic.

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1. Introduction
2. Maurice Richardson
3. Malcolm Deas
4. Hilton Kramer
5. Alastair Reid
6. Eve Auchincloss
7. Brian Martin
8. Mary Hope
9. Victoria Glendinning
10. John Hemming
11. John Thompson
12. Richard Hall
13. Anne DuchêNe
14. Francis King
15. Lorna Sage
16. V. S. Pritchett
17. John Updike
18. Copyright

1. John Updike