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Amazon.co.uk Review
The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included In Patagonia, a fabulist travel narrative, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and The Songlines, his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made The Songlines one of his last books.
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"'Extraordinary...a remarkable and satisfying book' Observer"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wandering star,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Songlines (Vintage classics) (Paperback)
The songlines criss cross Australia; the paths taken by the first men as they sang creation into being. Each Aborigine tends his section of the line, and must regularly sing the songs that keep creation new.Chatwin's wanderings took him to Australia's red centre to explore the origins of these lines, as part of a project he was toying with (but never completed, so far as I'm aware) exploring the roots of man's incessant need to travel. His prose is as sparse and dusty as the landscape itself as he meets the native and European Australians who inhabit the vast emptiness of the outback. The result is as beautiful and strange as the outback itself. The book uncovers a little about the Aborigines, a group who have not been often explored in mainstream wirting before, as well as the racism felt by many Australians towards them. But its main success is opening up the dusty interior itself - a place on a scale that is unimaginable to Europeans. Chatwin's triumph is to reveal the magic that pervades Australia - that a stagnant pond can be as important a spiritual site as Ayers Rock. For anyone with an interest in Australia, Aboriginal culture or the nature of man's wanderlust, this is an essential read. Highly recommended.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The human tide,
By
This review is from: The Songlines (Vintage classics) (Paperback)
This is a unique and unclassifiable book, part novel, part travel book, part notebook full of quotations and speculations. Chatwin focuses on the notion that language and human thought began in songs that sang the landscape and living things into existence. Aboriginal culture continues this tradition in songlines which are explored as living entities, maps, boundaries, calendars, catalogues, survival systems, myths. Chatwin says the ultimate question he is asking is, why are humans so restless? He argues that this is the ultimate human quality. We are nomadic in our core. He quotes a European tramp: "It's like the tides were pulling you along the highway. I'm like the Arctic tern, guv'nor...what flies from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again." This book doesn't provide answers. Indeed it plunges into even wider speculations about war, prehistory, mythology and culture. But it goes far beyond the predictable "Aboriginal wisdom for the westerner" that I expected. A fascinating, difficult, but intriguing book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Communicating through song,
This review is from: The Songlines (Vintage Crucial Classics) (Paperback)
I was recommended this book by several different people, if you are interested in the 'aboriginal' culture/travelling or you think you might be then this book is for you. Although it is classically written & occasionally quite heavy I found it very interesting. Bruce Chatwin goes on a journey to study the songlines and on the way he ponders the origin of man, presenting evidence that man was originally Nomadic & also writes 3/4 chapters worth of short passages taken from all over the globe to give atmosphere to this claim, one of the most amazing facts was that an aboriginal in the far north can understand an aboriginal from the far south without understanding his language, he translates the melodies of his songs & therefore knows which path he is walking & therefore where he is from, this book has been a great help in understanding more about the ancients in OZ for me, personal accounts of cultures are always more informative than text books I find & this book is no exception :-)
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