What Am I Doing Here?
By jazz
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What Am I Doing Here?
By Bruce Chatwin
I have always found Bruce Chatwin a fascinating character. To me, as a
Celt, he seems typical of the alien resident type of Englishman , the
type who is most English when he is not there.
I have tried to read one of the novels; The Viceroy of Oudiah, but
somehow I could not get on with it...the writing seemed elliptical at
times and rather too brief. Searching for something different the other
day I came across What Am I Doing Here? , a collection of stories,
interviews and travel pieces put together by Chatwin just before his
death in 1989.
There are interviews here with such as Andre Malraux, one of the last
great adventurers,also a novelist archaeologist and politician. There
are also reviews, tales of trips along the Volga and to Afghanistan as
well as tales from the art world, experiences gained during his time at
Sotheby's.
Is there a best piece? They are all of a very high quality. Even when
reviewing the diaries of Ernst Junger, a German soldier and writer whom
I have always found a very disagreeable character, Chatwin is at his
persuasive best and I cannot think of another writer who would entice
me to read a review of Junger's work.
His trip down the Volga is splendid reading. Here he encounters the
village where Lenin's family lived and the school where the
revolutionary attended classes ( his desk is still there, with crimson
castors). Then he attends a memorial service to those who died at
Stralingrad, with its enormous statue modelled on Delacroix's painting
of liberty. Huge crowds push forward, a tiny old lady is helped up the
steps in floods of tears, her shoes cut open due to bunions. He takes
pity on her and then sees as her overcoat opens that she wears a
soldiers tunic covered in medals.
There are pen portraits and sketches of people Chatwin has met, like
the painter Donald Evans, who also died young, who created a body of
work based on postage stamps. Here we also meet the archaeologist
Martha Reichs, who has spent alifetime studying the Nazca lines in Peru
and who still sleeps in the plains in the open.
Like Alec Guinness' wonderful diary My Name Escapes Me, this is a
marvellous book to dip in to. The best description I can give is that
each time you open it you discover some gem of interest, every entry
worth reading and re-reading.
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