Bruce Chatwin [Hardcover]

An obsessive art collector, Chatwin also acquired people as he did fabulous objects. He took both male and female lovers while continuing to remain married to his wife Elizabeth, seemingly the most enduring relationship of his life. It is her cooperation and tenacity which enabled this biography to come about, as well as Nicholas Shakespeare's exhaustive research (the book was eight years in the making), and his countless interviews with friends and acquaintances from all corners of the globe. It is the international span of Chatwin's experiences that make the reader appreciate his desire to know all cultures and disciplines.

There is some excellent, evocative writing here, particularly in Shakespeare's account of Chatwin's last weeks, his disappointment at not winning the Booker Prize for Utz lifting when a friend told him of acclaimed Italian novelist Alberto Moravia's glowing review of the book in a newspaper. In particular, the detailed passage describing Chatwin's awful, miserable death surrounded by friends and family is harrowing yet moving to read. There are a plethora of adjectives used to describe Chatwin; the list generally includes words such as "elusive", "mercurial", and "charismatic". Yet what Nicholas Shakespeare brings across in this immense, excellent life of Chatwin is the complete aloneness of the man, an at times almost impenetrable solitude. He was a flamboyant fabulist, an unparalleled conversationalist, yet, as the Australian poet Les Murray is quoted as saying: "He was lonely and he wanted to be. He had those blue, implacable eyes that said: "I will reject you, I will forget you, because neither you nor any other human being can give me what I want".--Catherine Taylor --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

"In Nicholas Shakespeare he has found, posthumously, the right biographer. This is a magnificent work of empathy and detection." Colin Thubron, Sunday Times

"Though it runs to 550 pages, Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography feels concise: comprehensively researched, elegantly written, perfectly balanced between the life, the books and the ideas. It's hard to imagine the Life being better done - or that, Chatwin’s books being few, and so much having been written since his death 10 years ago, there is anything now left to say." Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday

"I take my scalp off to Nicholas Shakespeare. Biographies don’t come any better than this. Eight years in the writing, Bruce Chatwin is a glorious quilt-work of texts, voices and places, joined together with consummate judgement . . . Wisely Nicholas Shakespeare eschews detailed literary analysis. Such is his skill as a biographer, there is no need." Justin Wintle, Financial Times

" . . .an epic piece of work of immense fascination. In awe-inspiring detail and with a rounding-out of all the other characters, Shakespeare takes us successively through the milieux of Chatwin’s life . . . Moreover he does what Chatwin never did and drenches all these worlds in their emotional, human implications." Duncan Fallowell, The Times

"This excellent . . . biography is very far removed from Chatwin’s own anecdotal concision. However, it is fantastically difficult to fashion a narrative out of the inchoate facts of someone’s life. Shakespeare has managed to pull it off." Ian Thomson, Guardian

"It is so difficult to have any sense of another person’s inner life, but in this vastly enjoyable book Shakespeare successfully shines the torch onto a psychic landscape peopled by the fearful monsters that Chatwin kept mostly at bay by continually moving and reinventing himself." Sara Wheeler, Independent

"Shakespeare must be praised for his energy, his always lucid presentation, and – above all – for his mostly poker-faced willingness to leave us as suspiciously intrigued by his strange subject as we were before." Ian Hamilton, Sunday Telegraph

"This is an authorised biography, but with none of the inhibition that an authorised biography usually entails. Nicholas Shakespeare has obviously done his research thoroughly – travelled in Chatwin’s footsteps, interviewed all his friends – and, although I am still not entirely convinced that Bruce Chatwin was the most fascinating man who ever lived, he proves quite fascinating enough to sustain these 550 pages." Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph

But perhaps as compelling are the testimonies of those who knew Chatwin, as the following descriptions of his most complex personality reveal. he was so many different things, the storyteller, the traveller, the innocent, the mythmaker, the art collector, the lover of many.

THE STORYTELLER "He was looking for stories the world could give him and that he could embellish. He didn’t give a damn whether they were true or not; only whether they were good." (Salman Rushdie on Bruce Chatwin)

THE TRAVELLER "He was lonely and he wanted to be. He had those blue implacable eyes that said ‘I will forget you, I will reject you because neither you nor any other human being can give me what I want’." (Les Murray on Bruce Chatwin)

THE INNOCENT "I saw this guy back in the woods. And this son-of-a-bitch was stark naked except for his hiking boots. And you won’t believe this but he’d tied some flowers round his pecker. I figured he was a hippie except most of them can’t talk, just grunt, but this one had a hoity-toity way of speaking. I told him if he didn’t put his pants on I’d have to take him in. Good looking fella but sort of crazy look in his eyes; he reminded me of a little kid." (Charlie Van, caretaker of Lake of the Woods)

THE MYTHMAKER "He finds difficulty in remembering facts and only the bizarre or trifling really appeals to him." (Bruce Chatwin - school report, Michaelmas 1956) "Every writer is a cut-purse. The art is to make one’s thefts as invisible as possible." (Bruce Chatwin to Colin Thubron)

THE COLLECTOR "If you put 10 things on a table, Bruce would pick out the best one. Basically, he had a strange thing, rather unfashionable now, which is called a good eye." (John Hewett) "He’d come into my room at Christie’s. ‘Gosh, isn’t that so, so beautiful,’ and it might be something I hadn’t noticed. He didn’t know what it was, when it was done, who did it; but he knew it had quality. He could suddenly bring it out of the mire." (Brian Sewell)

THE LOVER "He was amazing to look at. There are few people in this world who have the kind of looks which enchant and enthrall. Your stomach just drops to your knees, your heart skips a beat, you’re not prepared for it. It isn’t just beauty, it’s a glow, something in the eyes. And it works on both sexes." (Susan Sontag on Bruce Chatwin) "His ambivalence was his impetus. Sexually, Bruce was a polymorphous pervert. He’s out to seduce everybody, it doesn’t matter if you are male, female, an ocelot or a tea-cosy." (Miranda Rothschild on Bruce Chatwin) --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.