With Chatwin: Portrait of a Writer
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Product Description
Product Description
Few writers have had as many distinct lives as Bruce Chatwin and few have been as compelling in person as in print. Chatwin was a traveller, an aesthete and an anthropologist. In his twenties he was a star at Sotheby's; in his thirties he was a star at the SUNDAY TIMES. A solitary and a socialite; he was always and exotic. He became famous as the person who reinvented travel-writing and when he died in 1989, aged 48, he had published six strikingly varied books. Susannah Clapp's book is not a biography, but collects her own memories of Chatwin and those of his friends, acquaintances and colleagues, with the aim of producing a chronology of the author's life and, more important, of illuminating particular fields of interest. This is not merely a celebratory volume, but a investigatory one, illustrated with photographs of and by Bruce Chatwin.
About the Author
Susannah Clapp worked as an editor and reader at Jonathan Cape. She helped to found the London Review of Books, where she was assistant editor for several years. She is currently the theatre critic of the Observer and a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
First off, let me say that Nicholas Shakespeare's biography will ever be the standard work on Chatwin. Like many others I think his book is one of the great biographies.
This is not to dismiss Susannah Clapp's book at all, for this is a different kind of book. Its introduction, in which she tries to capture the allure of Chatwin, is excellent. Where this really book really scores, however, is in the unmatchable insight Clapp, as Chatwin's editor, can bring to bear on his methods of composition and revision. Again, this is something covered well by Shakespeare on a book-by-book basis in his biography. Clapp, however, is able to reveal exactly the nature of the collaboration between her and Chatwin. True to the title this is a portrait of a working writer, and, great and distinctive as his books are, it turns out none of them appeared fully formed, and took a lot of paring down and shaping.
I'm still somewhat in awe of him as a creative artist, but after reading her blow by blow accounts of how a book like "In Patagonia" was honed at the editing stage, it's good to know he was mortal after all. Chatwin was many things, but one thing that's overlooked is that he was willing to do a lot of hard graft. Something else is also for sure: If it wasn't for the people around him who believed in him and nurtured him, it's doubtful he would have had the impact he had and continues to have.
This is not to dismiss Susannah Clapp's book at all, for this is a different kind of book. Its introduction, in which she tries to capture the allure of Chatwin, is excellent. Where this really book really scores, however, is in the unmatchable insight Clapp, as Chatwin's editor, can bring to bear on his methods of composition and revision. Again, this is something covered well by Shakespeare on a book-by-book basis in his biography. Clapp, however, is able to reveal exactly the nature of the collaboration between her and Chatwin. True to the title this is a portrait of a working writer, and, great and distinctive as his books are, it turns out none of them appeared fully formed, and took a lot of paring down and shaping.
I'm still somewhat in awe of him as a creative artist, but after reading her blow by blow accounts of how a book like "In Patagonia" was honed at the editing stage, it's good to know he was mortal after all. Chatwin was many things, but one thing that's overlooked is that he was willing to do a lot of hard graft. Something else is also for sure: If it wasn't for the people around him who believed in him and nurtured him, it's doubtful he would have had the impact he had and continues to have.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Until I read this book I had assumed that Chatwin's travel writing was all true. Now I'm not so sure! Having said that, it doesn't make it any less enjoyable. This book really takes pains to show you the complex and deliberately mysterious life that Chatwin chose to live. I love the whole ambiguity of his existence. The book is written by one of Chatwin's close friends and it is amazing how few "facts" she knows about him too. It is a wonderful shadowy book of a shadowy charismatic man. Hard to pin down but irresistible.
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