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Summary: English guy checks out native Australians
Review: Bruce, an English guy, heads into the Australian outback to check out aborigines, as part of his life-long interest in nomadic cultures. Part of the book is travel writing - the wacko Australian situations and characters he meets are fully described - part the history/psychology/philosophy of nomadic living and human aggression, and part a poetic description of Aboriginal culture.The link between a human sedentary existance and human aggression has long been described; Bruce presents sedentary living as an unnatural state, and the nomadic lifestyle as cleaner, more beautiful and better. It's very convincing while you're reading it, and certainly deeply interesting. It's certainly a refreshing counterpoint to thinking about all those land-related wars and situations (Israel, for example), to all the nastiness of European colonization in America, Africa, and Australia, and it has a certain intuitive appeal - land belongs to everyone! I'm not certain how accurate Bruce's description of Aboriginal culture is, but I don't think it really matters. This is not a carefully constructed sociological or anthropological analysis, but rather a lyrical, and fairly romantic, description of nomadic life and a way of thinking. Most importantly, I think, the message is: the ways the Aboriginies think and relate to the land are powerful and beautiful and so different to what we're used to that it's very difficult for Westerners to appreciate them immediately. I strongly recommend this book, because it outlines a way of thinking about the human condition that is nice, and that lingers in your mind for a long time.
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Summary: an innovative thinker takes on the human spirit
Review: Chatwin brings an original and innovative way of thinking to issues concerning the human spirit and man's fundamental nature. His basic thought is that we were meant to be wanderers and only when settling began did the darker side of humans emerge. His views on human nature and our spirit are profound and original. His was a life and mind curtailed too soon. I resonated with this book as one of the hardest things I've done is to simply stay in one place.
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Summary: In search of origins Songlines creates anew
Review: Chatwin's Songlines nods not only to the origins of humans but also to the contemporary manifestations of those origins and our corresponding innate instincts: the need to wander, communicate, understand where one has come from, the contemplation of where one may be going. Chatwin's ability to explore such profound topics within the confines of a travel narrative (albeit not a traditional one) is perhaps the book's greatest feat. In a style that reflects the very way that such revelations, discoveries, demystifications, and bewilderments occur during a long journey, Songlines has become a model for the new travel narrative, much to my delight.
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Summary: do it
Review: Dying of AIDS and with Salman Rushdie, Bruce Chatwin made a lightning visit to Australia. The Songlines is the fascinating result of this terminal search for meaning. The good points are that Chatwin's considerable intellect and narrative capacities weave a story based on year's travel experience. The bad point is that he knew almost nothing about his subject and as such has written an Englishman's compassionate contemporary account of the colonies. I live and work on a remote aboriginal community near the areas Chatwin visited. Traditional Aborignal law is an amazingly complex oral culture so rich in history and symbolism that I have profound doubts about any whitefella ever properly understanding it, let alone a visiting foreigner desperately looking for something. This is a great book, but don't think by reading it you will get a terrifically accurate profile of what being an aborigine is, whatever that means. They are not, as Chatwin seems to deduce, another group of nomadic noble savages more fulfilled than the more sedentary post-agriculture communitites.
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Summary: A great read particularly if you have been there.
Review: Going to Alice Springs and surrounding areas was one of the great experiences of my life. This book brought the whole experience back to life for me. I thoroughly recommend it.
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Summary: If you don't get the space, you don't get the book...
Review: He had this uncanny, indescribable ability to write in such a way that his words and starnge landscapes instantly embed themselves in your consciousness. The experience of reading him becomes, then, a sort of self-fulfilling deja vu... This is by far his best book. I guess Chatwin is an acquired taste, if only for the breadth of his thought, and I can imagine the less imaginative reader having a hard time of it. But I personally love the open space in his writing, the room he gives ideas to breathe, the notion or sentence or hypothesis like a solitary tree standing at the far end of an uninhabited plain... The investigation (from the last "From the Notebooks" section) into what might have been the primal trauma visited upon the prehistoric horde, with its unusual mixture of Freud, paleontology and climactic theory, was especially thought-provoking. His voice is missed...
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Summary: Slow start, but it grows on you
Review: I bought this book because I had heard that Chatwin's writing was lyrical. The first part of the book left me cold; oddly passionless, it was a fairly dull description of traveling under somewhat unpleasant conditions. The excerpts from his notebooks, however, were engaging and thought-provoking. I found myself much more involved in the latter portion of the book. It occurs to me that Chatwin had written his notebook entries long before his trip to Australia. Possibly the lackluster quality of the first half was due to his illness; the "flashback" portion of the book was much more dynamic and showed great vitality. Because of the notes, I'll work backward and try some of Chatwin's earlier works. I doubt, however, that I'll re-read the Australian portion of Songlines.
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Summary: Mind Blowing Insights
Review: I first read this book when it came out in 1987. It completely rearranged my views of humanity as a species & the role of aggression in our lives. Now it's 13 years later, Bruce Chatwin is dead, & yet I still gain new insights into "the Origins of Man" every time I re-read this book. Altho ostensibly about the Aboriginal culture & mythos, Bruce Chatwin simply uses that as a starting point for meditations upon what forces of pre-history created the creature that became us & how those forces still impact our day to day lives. This may sound dry & dull, but it's not! You will find yourself reading with a Hiliter in hand, the better to mark your favorite passages. If there is anyone else in the room, you will find yourself reading sections out loud, then having intense discussions. You will definitely want to read this book more than once! If you have any interest at all in what makes us "human", then please, buy "The Songlines"; you'll probably see the world around you with new eyes once you've read it!
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Summary: I forgot to say. . .
Review: I heard about a fellow in San Francisco who read this book. He immediately quit his job and moved to Australia.
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Summary: A Must Read
Review: I read this book along with several other "travel books" this summer and was startled by its genius.chatwin is a very captivating figure , a remarkable amateur traipsing through any number of disciplines en route, he hoped, to mankind's nomadic quintessence. Unlike other aspirant travel writers his books are clorful and detailed. He may have been wrong but he was brilliantly wrong.
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