Bookraft

On Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin - $13.50US, Penguin Paperback
On Patagonia is a travelogue, no a people-log, written in the spare piercing style of Ernest Hemingway about the wide, wild and barely settled out back against the Andes that is Southwestern Argentina. As Chatwin implies from his opening stories of how a dinosaur hide and fear of the Cobalt bomb originally lured his attention to Patagonia - so too is there a constantly renewed crop of extra-territorial settlers from Wales, Persia, the American West, Italy .... each seeking their Klondike or Euboria of dreams. We along with Chatwin stop by and visit these wandering souls.

So history and people of the pampas are part and parcel of this Patagonia. In fact, the story line is like a movie with many fade-outs - only to open up on another haunting Patagonian scene. The allure of the countryside is the take your breath away vastness plus the robustness and character it demands of its denizens. No urban Goths need apply.

And Chatwin has a piercing eye and strong will in traversing Patagonia's bio-diversity. He goes where few would go:
"The negro was delighted to hear this. He wanted to walk to the lake and go fishing.
'How you like my friend? asked Ali.
'I like him. He's a nice friend.'
'He is my friend.'
'I am sure.'
'He is my very good friend.'
He pushed his face up to mine. 'And this is our room.'
He opened a door. There was a double-bed with a stuffed doll perched on the pillow. On the wall, strung up on a leather thong was a big steel machete, which Ali waved in my face.
'Ha! I kill the ungodly.'
'Put that thing down.'
'English is infidel.'
'I said put that thing down.'
'I only joke,' he said and strung the machete back on its hook. 'Is very dangerous here. Argentine is very dangerous people. I have revolver also.'
'I dont want to see it.'
Ali then showed me the Garden and admired it. The Bahais set their hand to sculpture and garden furniture, and the Bolivian had made a crazy-paving path.
'And now you must go,' Ali said. 'I am tired yet and we must sleep.'
The Bolivian did not want me to go. It was a lovely day. He did want to go fishing. Going to bed that morning was the last thing he wanted to do."
The rough and tumble but also the tumbled out of luck all appear in these pages - like newspaper stories before the obituary.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid appear (and a quick Google check sees that Chatwin has the names and dates right on). The book teems with historical trivia stretching may be one hundred years back. I think Chatwin prefers the here and now; but Darwin and Aracunia are all here.

The constant winds and vast vistas permeate this book broken by stories and places brought alive by souls and spirits pursuing more than an estancia. The line between human fiction and non-fiction is ever so thin in every player mind ... and its all wavering in this Patagonian wind.

Whats even more fascinating this second reading, 10 years later, is even more fascinating and terrifying than the first.