Take a photo of a barcode or cover
firstwords 's review for:
In Patagonia
by Bruce Chatwin
Forced myself to finish this book. The book starts out with a rambling, skipping history of Argentina, dipping into popular lore to talk about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. From there, it dips into short anecdote after anecdote, divided up roughly by chapters, chronicling the narrator's trip through Argentina to find remains of a great giant sloth that made the papers around the turn of the 20th century.
You've got 3 interesting possible subjects:
1. The history of outlaws fleeing to Argentina, from bank robbers to Nazis fleeing at the end of WWII.
2. The story of the giant creatures that roamed South America before the last ice age, and the hunt for their remains.
3. The story of the indigenous people there, and their relation to the European settlers who came later.
While all 3 of these are mentioned in the book, none is told with any flair, none keep your interest. About a third of the way into the book, I pictured an elderly British gentleman in a dark-paneled shooting club somewhere in his home country, reading out to a crowd of Scotch-swilling cronies from his diary, paradoxically in the 1900s, which is the colonial voice this is written in. The book made a lot more sense then. The author brings up just about every stereotype a colonialist has ever come up with, and peppers his book with wonderful words like "peon" to refer to any native worker - which is actually the word they used for indentured, usually indigenous, laborers they used in South America. By the time this book was written, Britain and most western nations had given up their colonies, however the author doesn't seem to know it.
Even if one takes no exception with the author's politics, the writing itself is dry, formless, and - there's no other word for it - boring. I am frankly surprised it has gotten a positive review from anyone. At no point did the author's description bring images flashing to mind. It's Argentina, man! It's not hard!
You've got 3 interesting possible subjects:
1. The history of outlaws fleeing to Argentina, from bank robbers to Nazis fleeing at the end of WWII.
2. The story of the giant creatures that roamed South America before the last ice age, and the hunt for their remains.
3. The story of the indigenous people there, and their relation to the European settlers who came later.
While all 3 of these are mentioned in the book, none is told with any flair, none keep your interest. About a third of the way into the book, I pictured an elderly British gentleman in a dark-paneled shooting club somewhere in his home country, reading out to a crowd of Scotch-swilling cronies from his diary, paradoxically in the 1900s, which is the colonial voice this is written in. The book made a lot more sense then. The author brings up just about every stereotype a colonialist has ever come up with, and peppers his book with wonderful words like "peon" to refer to any native worker - which is actually the word they used for indentured, usually indigenous, laborers they used in South America. By the time this book was written, Britain and most western nations had given up their colonies, however the author doesn't seem to know it.
Even if one takes no exception with the author's politics, the writing itself is dry, formless, and - there's no other word for it - boring. I am frankly surprised it has gotten a positive review from anyone. At no point did the author's description bring images flashing to mind. It's Argentina, man! It's not hard!