Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wandering star, 19 Jul 1999
By A Customer
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.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Outback adventure, 29 Sep 2003
In the late 1980s, travel writer Bruce Chatwin visited the Australian outback to find out more about the songlines, the invisible pathways across the continent which connect communities and follow ancient boundaries. During his journey, he is accompanied by a Russian-born Australian, Arkady Volchok, who is mapping the sacred sites of the aborigines. Volchok proves to be a wonderful and knowledgeable host, showing Chatwin the rugged beauty of the landscape and introducing him to its many native human inhabitants.Chatwin's writing is deceptively simple but very engaging; he captures feelings and characters so aptly that it's almost like you're on the journey with him. I thoroughly enjoyed his adventure to Alice Springs and the far north, especially his encounters with Jim Hanlon, a 73-year-old loner who wanted Chatwin to stay in a caravan "smelling of something dead" to finish his book, and Donkey Donk, an aboriginal who takes him hunting in a Ford Sedan which degenerates into a bit of a sad, hit-and-miss affair. My only quibble is that the book begins to wane about two-thirds of the way in and never quite picks up the pace again. Chatwin fills much of the last few chapters with jottings from old notebooks in an attempt to explore his idea that travelling is a natural instinct in humankind that has been tamed by the trappings of materialistic life. I appreciated the point, but felt it had been laboured much too strongly. Despite this, The Songlines is a highly readable and interesting travel tale, well worth reading, especially if you are interested in nomadic lifestyles, aboriginal culture and the Australian outback.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A story of a segment of humanity who have a commitment, 9 Oct 2000
By A Customer
This story is not really an edited book, rather a conversation with a dusty traveller whom you have met on an isolated rural railway station, somewhere far away, with two days until the next train. It starts as something to pass the time, but becomes a tale of the global history of Man, revealing many reasons for doing what we do - or having done what we have done. It makes us question the values that our civilisation has socialised us into believing in, not because we envy the squalid freedom of the aborigines, but because we must envy that they still understand the nature of Nature, and the nature of Man, and also of Man in Nature.. Sometimes it asks questions and answers them, and sometimes it gives an answer and you are left searching for the question. A book to be read alone, without distraction, when you have time to read it without laying it down. An memorable book which can be used to find some answers to many problems in the world today, whether they be related to religious divergence, racism, ethnic conflict, suppression of minorities, environmental conflicts, etc., etc., etc..
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