Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Chatwin, (Charles) Bruce - Malcolm Deas

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MALCOLM DEAS

Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia is … concerned with the human agents who have failed to transform the ambiente there in the past hundred years or so. It is a work of travel, of observation and accident, but also of learning, reflection and art, and can stand in the curiously distinguished literary company that Patagonia has touched….

Frequently on the journey south from Buenos Aires the author walked. In ninety-seven passages of from a few lines to a few pages he covers the distance, and much else besides…. Bruce Chatwin's success in this short book is the more interesting because it is so exceptional.

It is a book about isolated people, but of very diverse origins; the reader must reflect that any man might be a Patagon-ian…. As [William Henry] Hudson hinted, human weakness and oddity will show up more sharply against this background than against any other. In Patagonia resists the temptation of exploiting this...

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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