About this title: Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) was, for much of his short life, obsessed with the idea of nomadism, feeling that restlessness is encoded into human DNA. His first book, IN PATAGONIA, is a most unorthodox travel book (a designation Chatwin disliked), a picaresque chronicle of his own wanderings through the wildest parts of South America. Chatwin writes lyrically about the landscapes, the history, and most of all the vast variety of people he meets, whom he describes in evocative, impressionistic vignettes that are not unlike short stories. Chatwin's odd, fanciful, perhaps not always literally true, ...
read more
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: Later Printing
Binding: S Paperback
Publisher: Summit Books, New York
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780671448578ISBN:0671448579
Description: Very Good- 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall Edgewear, foxing to edges, browning to wraps. From the library of noted Los Angeles poet John Thomas, with his fine calligraphic signature and date on endpaper. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780671448578ISBN:0671448579
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. Trade paper in good used condition. read more
Edition: Third Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: A Summit Book By Simon & Schuster, New York NY
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780671448578ISBN:0671448579
Description: Very Good. Not Issued With Dustjacket. 205 Numbered Pages. The textblock of this quite exceptionally nice-looking trade paperback is splendidly clean, tight, square, carries absolutely no underlining, highlighting or marginalia and shows faint but pervasive age-toning and significant foxing to the pagehead and fore-edge. The covers are very clean, bright and show only minor finish rubbing, gentle edge and corner blunting, the most inconspicuous rub-through to the spine extremities and short ... read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Summit Books
Date Published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780671448578ISBN:0671448579
Description: Very Good. Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall; IN PATAGONIA by Chatwin, Bruce. Summit Books, 1977. Binding: Soft CoverDust Jacket: . NOTES: 3rd Printing. Showing very light exterior wear/creasing, previous owner signature on endpaper, otherwise contents are clean and tight with no other owner markings. Images available upon request. Please email us with any questions. read more
Description: Very Good. Truly very good 1977 softcover, text clean, covers glossy, bright, clean, binding square and tight, only minor wear, very reliable shipper(shelf#14) read more
"The truly fine-grained books are always impossible to review or describe. Even dragged-out praise leaves most of the best things unnoted. Certainly this is true in the case of In Patagonia, one of those unclassifiable mandarin anatomies whose summarized "action" but barely suggests the innumerable felicities of perception that make the book. A copy of In Our Time packed in his rucksack, Chatwin busses from Buenos Aires into Patagonia, tramps around, meets people and collects their stories--much as Ishmael "goes whaling" or Bloom "runs some errands and thinks about stuff." Updike, in his reviewer-guise of the Common Reader, on the occasion of Brodsky's Venetian capriccio Watermark marvels at those writers "beyond academic conventions, beyond commercial hopes" who depart from, dispense with or otherwise transcend plot (or the story hooks of "travel writing") to regale us with their "rare sensibility and curious fund of information; we are flattered to be in his or her company" (readers who complain that cetological lore trammels their breeze through Moby Dick miss the point: the prose of that long chapter is splendid). A truly picaresque narrative sensibility (rare enough) and a curio-cabinet of odd learning Chatwin indeed has, plus an enriching assimilation of those masters of unsettling concision, Mandelstam and Borges. Who knew a desert at land's end would offer such a mad dream of the world? Chatwin has the magic eye."
"Enjoyable, but not as enjoyable as The Songlines and a good bit more dated. As opposed to say, Paul Theroux's books and The Songlines I felt the book told me little about the places Chatwin visited and not even that much about Chatwin himself. Perhaps my disappointment reflects inflated expectations but I don't really see why this book is still regarded as a classic."
"An unorthodox work of travel writing, Chatwin voyages to one of the southernmost points on the globe to explore Los Gauchos, abandoned civilizations, and penguin colonies on the tip of Argentina.
The book intrigues from the beginning with talk of old maps that used to show Patagonia overrun by dinosaurs and sea creatures, but gradually becomes less and less interesting, and Chatwin's perspective seems to become more bizarre. A good book to check out if you're in to experimental travel writing, but definitly not a whispy summer read."
"This is one of those books I've tried to read many times, and perhaps the moment wasn't right. It's funny. I find that I can see ways I've changed by how receptive I am to a particular book at a particular moment...In any case I went back to it this time after my son spent some time in Argentina, and then I visited him there. He wanted to make it to Patagonia, but didn't have the time, nor did I, but being that much closer reminded me of the existence of that book, which I recently picked up again. This time, I was riveted. The Butch Cassidy/Sundance Kid stuff is just enthralling, and it is simultaneously romantic and depressing to think about all of the people who have migrated to Patagonia because it is the end of the earth. Chatwin is an old-fashioned storyteller with a gift for detail--really marvelous language. I recommend this book to anyone with a love of history, travel, or language, or who has ever fantasized about escaping the familiar via an adventure."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
