Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
The Songlines captured my interest far more than [b:In Patagonia|79909|In Patagonia|Bruce Chatwin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924798l/79909._SY75_.jpg|1193490], if only because Chatwin gives a sustained survey of a cultural history with which I was largely unfamiliar, while profiling the land and people he encountered along the way...at least for the first half of the book. He soon begins slipping into the same practice of giving brief character sketches/profiles, and then switches entirely to scraps of diary entries and quotes. While this is at times an intriguing look into his thoughts, it ultimately distracted me from the question of nomadic wandering rather than giving me greater insight or different perspectives, which I think was the intention.
I believe Chatwin when he admits that he wasn’t quite sure how to write about nomads, and so the diary entries rescue him in that sense. But I couldn’t help but wish he had distilled this information into cohesive prose and integrated it into his narrative...or perhaps just published the diary separately. As with [b:In Patagonia|79909|In Patagonia|Bruce Chatwin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924798l/79909._SY75_.jpg|1193490], I found myself fascinated by Chatwin and his subject (the mimetic faculty as it pertains to pre-industrial human life was one of my interests in grad school, due in part to reading the works of Walter Benjamin, who also wrote about urban wandering of the flâneur), but I just did not connect at all with Chatwin’s writing style.
Still, there are moments of beauty here, and quite a few points to ponder, even if it left me wanting more -- either a detailed sociological study of the Aboriginals and their songlines, or a more poetic/mystic encounter. Chatwin tries to walk the line of both in the guise of travel writing, but it just doesn’t quite work for me, even though there is some worthy material here.
I believe Chatwin when he admits that he wasn’t quite sure how to write about nomads, and so the diary entries rescue him in that sense. But I couldn’t help but wish he had distilled this information into cohesive prose and integrated it into his narrative...or perhaps just published the diary separately. As with [b:In Patagonia|79909|In Patagonia|Bruce Chatwin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924798l/79909._SY75_.jpg|1193490], I found myself fascinated by Chatwin and his subject (the mimetic faculty as it pertains to pre-industrial human life was one of my interests in grad school, due in part to reading the works of Walter Benjamin, who also wrote about urban wandering of the flâneur), but I just did not connect at all with Chatwin’s writing style.
Still, there are moments of beauty here, and quite a few points to ponder, even if it left me wanting more -- either a detailed sociological study of the Aboriginals and their songlines, or a more poetic/mystic encounter. Chatwin tries to walk the line of both in the guise of travel writing, but it just doesn’t quite work for me, even though there is some worthy material here.
The subject matter is fascinating. The writing, less so. Always more personal memoir than in-depth study, Songlines loses all momentum at the point at which Chatwin starts regurgitating long entries from his notebooks, only regaining it a couple of frustratingly short chapters from the end.
My Australian friend Grant gave me this book when he visited from Sydney - we'd talked a bit about the Aborigines in Australia compared to the Native Americans in the US. I'm not quite sure what to make of The Songlines: it's well written, an interesting portrayal of an outsider slowly coming to understand some aspects of Aborigine thinking. And there are plenty of amusing Australia anecdotes. But then the book also reminds me heavily of The Teachings of Don Juan - I sure hope Chatwin is more honest than Castenada.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Excellent, dreamlike account of Chatwin's quest to understand both the origins and spiritual meaning of Songlines of the Australian Aborigines.
The wandering words of a wandering writer.
The "songlines" were a sort of Aboriginal GPS. The people could find their way unerringly across vast territories simply by "singing" the ancient stories of the Dreamtime creatures. The stories contained landmarks, and were meant to be sung at a walking pace of about 4 mph. Thus, as he walked and sang, the singer encountered the sacred sites and knew he was following the correct "line" to his destination. As I came to understand the concept, I was moved by the perfect combination of reverence for the land, remembering the ancestors, and avoiding getting lost in a harsh and unhospitable landscape.
The timeline of Chatwin's experiences was scattered, so it was sometimes hard to keep track of all the people and their stories. Also, I was puzzled by the inclusion of all the fragmentary pieces from the author's old notebooks. Most of the notes had nothing to do with Australia, and a clear connection never formed between the notebooks and the book's topic. Still, The Songlines is an excellent contribution to the ethnographic record of Australia's native people.
The "songlines" were a sort of Aboriginal GPS. The people could find their way unerringly across vast territories simply by "singing" the ancient stories of the Dreamtime creatures. The stories contained landmarks, and were meant to be sung at a walking pace of about 4 mph. Thus, as he walked and sang, the singer encountered the sacred sites and knew he was following the correct "line" to his destination. As I came to understand the concept, I was moved by the perfect combination of reverence for the land, remembering the ancestors, and avoiding getting lost in a harsh and unhospitable landscape.
The timeline of Chatwin's experiences was scattered, so it was sometimes hard to keep track of all the people and their stories. Also, I was puzzled by the inclusion of all the fragmentary pieces from the author's old notebooks. Most of the notes had nothing to do with Australia, and a clear connection never formed between the notebooks and the book's topic. Still, The Songlines is an excellent contribution to the ethnographic record of Australia's native people.
This is certainly a great book. And Chatwin is an interesting figure and brilliant writer. And the ideas are all really interesting, too. But I think Chatwin kind of bends what he finds into his own vision of nomadism and human history. He uses a lot of creative license. And also does very little talking to Aboriginal Australians. More often than not others are speaking on behalf of them. He and they are well-meaning, but it makes me suspicious of his conclusions. It's all too easy and seductive to believe that human language and history are forms of one long song or poem, especially for Chatwin - being a writer. Because it makes a good story - so I guess that's why this is a novel rather than non-fiction?
I did like the fragmentary / collage aspect of the latter half, although because I listened to it as an audiobook it made it harder to focus on the read.
But also this has encouraged me to read more books about Aboriginal Australia by Aboriginal Australians - so I've had some recommendations from Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh.
I did like the fragmentary / collage aspect of the latter half, although because I listened to it as an audiobook it made it harder to focus on the read.
But also this has encouraged me to read more books about Aboriginal Australia by Aboriginal Australians - so I've had some recommendations from Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh.
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
A strange book.
I expected a travel account, part essay, quite personal, probably novelistic... And that's what it is. But it's so weird, in its form!
This might have to do with expectations. I thought it would skip around Australia, with the usual ellipsis between scenes, and that's precisely what the first couple of chapters suggest. But then it turns out this is sequential and continuous, almost like a diary. Suddenly and unexpectedly, it's whimsical like a diary, too. It will go back in time to other trips or interviews or simply experiences Chatwin recalls, usually to make a diverted, long point, and then it will come back to the same unremarkable moment where we were before. Including, for instance, getting sort of stranded in an outback town and rummaging for days through his old notebooks, sampling half-random quotes and long paragraphs, and then dropping them in the middle of the narrative. The author sounds humble enough most of the time, but then these and some other details come through as remarkably self-important.
In short: he wanted to write down all of this and bind it together in a book because that's what he wanted to read. He wrote it for himself, just like his notebooks. He wrote his own long diary of his trip and he sent it to the printer, quite like the guy that pastes all the pictures he made during his last holiday into four or five albums and then goes through each one of them with you when you drop by for a beer.
And I'm being mean now, because Chatwin's not boring at all, he's very gracefully fluid. But that's a bit what he does, anyway.
Ups: the descriptions of Australian folk and landscape – so vivid, so accurate; the whole explanation and considerations about the songlines' concept, and their ramifications; the very elevated and scientifically enlightened way in which he always considers humans as animals – exceptional as we may be, but still, as the homo sapiens we are, fundamentally and entirely animals; the writing, overall – it's elegant and precise, just graceful.
Downs: the structure; the fact that he could have told everything he recounts about the songlines in a fraction (1/25 easily) of the pages; the fact that the title shoud have been "my trip to Oz and other trips I took while researching the nomadic instincts and behaviours of people, with some considerations about the Australian songlines"; the long allegedly verbatim dialogues (which make you wonder, did he carry a tape recorder in his pocket the whole time?) – they're obviously for ease of pace and reading, but they strike as too much like a novel and make you take with a spoonful of salt the veracity of all events; the awful final part, with all the excerpts from his notebooks that should have been edited down to much more pertinence and punch, and with the terrible lack of narrative in the interim, and with the unfinished feel of the ending – which would have been great in a long article but comes out as hasty in this... novel is it? Who can say?
I expected a travel account, part essay, quite personal, probably novelistic... And that's what it is. But it's so weird, in its form!
This might have to do with expectations. I thought it would skip around Australia, with the usual ellipsis between scenes, and that's precisely what the first couple of chapters suggest. But then it turns out this is sequential and continuous, almost like a diary. Suddenly and unexpectedly, it's whimsical like a diary, too. It will go back in time to other trips or interviews or simply experiences Chatwin recalls, usually to make a diverted, long point, and then it will come back to the same unremarkable moment where we were before. Including, for instance, getting sort of stranded in an outback town and rummaging for days through his old notebooks, sampling half-random quotes and long paragraphs, and then dropping them in the middle of the narrative. The author sounds humble enough most of the time, but then these and some other details come through as remarkably self-important.
In short: he wanted to write down all of this and bind it together in a book because that's what he wanted to read. He wrote it for himself, just like his notebooks. He wrote his own long diary of his trip and he sent it to the printer, quite like the guy that pastes all the pictures he made during his last holiday into four or five albums and then goes through each one of them with you when you drop by for a beer.
And I'm being mean now, because Chatwin's not boring at all, he's very gracefully fluid. But that's a bit what he does, anyway.
Ups: the descriptions of Australian folk and landscape – so vivid, so accurate; the whole explanation and considerations about the songlines' concept, and their ramifications; the very elevated and scientifically enlightened way in which he always considers humans as animals – exceptional as we may be, but still, as the homo sapiens we are, fundamentally and entirely animals; the writing, overall – it's elegant and precise, just graceful.
Downs: the structure; the fact that he could have told everything he recounts about the songlines in a fraction (1/25 easily) of the pages; the fact that the title shoud have been "my trip to Oz and other trips I took while researching the nomadic instincts and behaviours of people, with some considerations about the Australian songlines"; the long allegedly verbatim dialogues (which make you wonder, did he carry a tape recorder in his pocket the whole time?) – they're obviously for ease of pace and reading, but they strike as too much like a novel and make you take with a spoonful of salt the veracity of all events; the awful final part, with all the excerpts from his notebooks that should have been edited down to much more pertinence and punch, and with the terrible lack of narrative in the interim, and with the unfinished feel of the ending – which would have been great in a long article but comes out as hasty in this... novel is it? Who can say?
Not the greatest. I wanted to read this in hopes of gleaning some more information about Aboriginal Dreamtime and the songlines themselves, and while those things are present, the book itself is more of a murky slog through whatever the f@#k Chatwin is writing about. Seriously, I needed the Wikipedia article to tell me what this book was actually meant to be about! There were no doubt some fun anecdotes, and no shortage of colorful characters, but as a whole I was just terrifically unimpressed.