A review by caterinaanna
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

3.0

I'm not sure what I make of this. The travelogue is is interesting, and his short pen-portraits of some of the characters he meets are remarkably concise and revealing at the same time - like a good cartoon - but I got annoyed by the reams of material from the notebooks. They were like all the ideas and evidence for a thesis which he'd begun to put into order but never quite got round to articulating clearly - almost as if he wasn't quite prepared to stand up for it, wouldn't be willing to undergo a viva to defend it and risk being proved wrong or derivative. Even though this isn't academia and the random quotations and fragmented thoughts are collated into some sort of order, and that order is dictated by an intriguing train of thought, I wonder how many people would be able to get such work past a commissioning editor. Especially when, as he points out when reporting discussions he has had with those famous-in-their-field, not all of the ideas are original. I suppose, what I'm saying is that, much though I enjoyed large parts of the book, I felt cheated.

I had to smile when I reached the now famous lament for the notebook in which version one of this review was written. If, as the current manufacturers claim, his rushing round Paris only to be told 'le vrai moleskine n'est plus' inspired them to resurrect this particular variety of little black book, then I am forever in his debt and probably ought to show my thanks with a more generous review. If it's any consolation Bruce, it's a 7/10 sort of 3/5.