Bruce Chatwin’s “The Songlines”
I have lately spent much time thinking about travel writing as a genre, and was therefore pleased to discover the New York Review of Books has published a portion of Rory Stewart’s introduction to a new edition Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines. I’ll allow him to explain the significance of Chatwin’s book:
The publication of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines in 1987 transformed English travel writing; it made it cool. For the previous half century, travel writing seemed to consist either of grim, extended journeys through desolate landscapes or jokes about foreigners. And the leading figures—such as Wilfred Thesiger or Robert Byron—in their tweed suits were celebrated for neither their prose nor their charm. But Chatwin was as attractive as a person as he was as a writer. The New York Timesreview of The Songlines ran: “Nearly every writer of my generation in England has wanted, at some point, to be Bruce Chatwin, wanted to be talked about, as he is, with raucous envy; wanted, above all, to have written his books.”
I was no exception.
To read more, click here. The new Penguin edition of The Songlines is out now; buy it directly from the publisher by clicking here.
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