In Patagonia - Chatwin

I look forward to sharing some of my favorite books. My thoughts originate from my experiences and preferences as a lifelong reader. These reflections are about what each book leaves with me.

For this book, a short digression is merited to consider what a travel book is or isn’t. The one constant about travel books is that they are non-fiction. Some are characterized as literary or creative nonfiction if they have been composed to read more like a novel. “In Patagonia” is often placed in the literary nonfiction category. Technically, Fodor’s

and similar guides are travel books, but I don’t read them. They are references. With that exception, I define travel books broadly. My definition includes traditional travel books by authors such as Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson. With those, I add books on great explorers, such as “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen E. Ambrose about Lewis and Clark. Ambrose’s book crosses genres of biography and history, and I would argue it is foremost a book about an epic journey. Hemingway’s “Green Hills of Africa” is considered by many a travel book. Anthony Bourdain combined his travel and cooking in “A Cook’s Tour.” All of them take me to places that I haven’t seen.

I became aware of the book “In Patagonia” through recommendations in other travel material I was reading. It wasn’t your ordinary travel book. It details Chatwin’s 1974 travels in Patagonia, where he pursues an unrelated set of myths and legends before accomplishing his original traveling purpose.

Ultimately the reason for his travel was to resolve a childhood obsession with a small piece of “brontosaurus skin” covered in thin red hair. A relative from Patagonia provided the relic to his family. The skin was thrown away before Chatwin could claim it for himself. As he embarked on his journey, he learned that his childhood treasure was a remnant from a mylodon or Giant Sloth, not a brontosaurus. Chatwin also learned it was found in a cave on Lost Hope Sound in Chilean Patagonia.

Chatwin shared an intermittent narrative about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the book. After outlining their North American background, Chatwin traveled from person to person in Patagonia as each told him more of the story and referred him to another. There is a cross in one isolated area where Cassidy was shot in a battle with local authorities. There is also speculation that the grave is not Cassidy’s.

The second narrative is the Jemmy Button story. Jemmy (his English assigned name) was a Yaghan tribe member from islands around Tierra del Fuego. Chatwin relates the story of his kidnapping along with three others by Captain Fitzroy of the HMS Beagle in 1830 on the Beagle’s first trip to Tierra del Fuego. The kidnapping was said to be retribution when the tribe burned an English ship. Chatwin argues that Darwin’s experience with Jemmy and the Tierra del Fuego Indians impacted Darwin’s views contributing to the theory of evolution.

Jemmy’s experience in England was short but eventful. He learned English and became “civilized.” Jemmy returned to his homeland on the HMS Beagle’s second journey, Charles Darwin’s famous journey of discovery. Chatwin goes on to tell of Jemmy’s life following his return home. Chatwin shares a related narrative about the Yaghan language and the development of a dictionary. The description of the dictionary was Chatwin’s nod to the errors of the English view that indigenous peoples were not as intelligent as Europeans. Not as human. He doesn’t delve into the wrongs of the human exhibition in England. Instead, he chronicles the complexity of their language through the report on the dictionary.

These two stories are lengthy sidebars to the stated purpose of the journey. The unacknowledged purpose of Chatwin’s travel in Patagonia appears to be exploring this unfamiliar land. The larger picture to be drawn from Chatwin’s story is of the people he meets and the land itself. He paints a vivid word portrait of the isolation preferred by those who live inland in Argentina and Chile. At the time, the region was far less connected to supplies and services. The Welsh, German, indigenous people, and other residents were self-sufficient by necessity. Chatwin muses that they mostly don’t fit in well with society. He gave me a feeling for the land and the oddness of the people co-habiting it.

Chatwin spent six months in Patagonia. Many used his book to guide their travels in the years that followed. The introduction to the book is a beautiful writing by Nicholas Shakespeare, who wrote a biography of Chatwin. Shakespeare also read Chatwin while traveling in Patagonia. In 2013 Sandra Allen traveled to Patagonia with the book and subsequently wrote a review of it. She described Chatwin’s writing in this way. “He’s making you feel the contradictions, the exhausting contradictions, that make a place.”[1]

I won’t reveal what happens when he finds the cave that is the impetus for this trip to this place. But I will say it’s a side note to the rest of the journey. I take that as what I leave with. Sometimes you get where you’re going, what you wanted, or not, but the outcome isn’t the big thing. It’s the journey.

[1] Allen, Sandra. “In Patagonia in Patagonia.” The Paris Review. May 14, 2013. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/05/14/in-patagonia-in-patagonia/