In Patagonia / The Songlines
Bruce Chatwin · 1977
Chatwin invented a form: travel writing as philosophical essay. *The Songlines* meditates on nomadism, evolution, and the human need to walk. *In Patagonia* is the most elegantly constructed travel essay in English.
The case against
Chatwin's facts are negotiable. People he met in Patagonia disputed whole conversations; The Songlines builds a grand theory of nomadism on Aboriginal material he barely understood, with informants serving as props, and when challenged he reclassified the book as fiction. The prose is gorgeous. Whether any of it happened is another question.
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