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Nowhere Is a Place: Travels in Patagonia
This thoughtful, captivating book presents two of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time recounting their impressions of one of the most remote and haunting places on Earth--Patagonia, the desolate southern region of South America. Includes 100 color photos. Theroux's introduction, "Chatwin Revisited," conveys his late friend's coy but adventurous spirit.
109 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 1986
232 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Chatwin
66 books674 followersCharles Bruce Chatwin was an English novelist and travel writer. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill (1982).
In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted. "I've always wanted to go there," Bruce told her. "So have I," she replied, "go there for me." Two years later in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later. When he arrived, he left the newspaper with a telegram: "Have gone to Patagonia." He spent six months in the area, a trip which resulted in the book In Patagonia (1977). This work established his reputation as a travel writer. Later, however, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were alleged to have been fictionalised.
Later works included a novel based on the slave trade, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which he researched with extended stays in Benin, West Africa. For The Songlines (1987), a work combining fiction and non-fiction, Chatwin went to Australia. He studied the culture to express how the songs of the Aborigines are a cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man's personal story. He also related the travelling expressed in The Songlines to his own travels and the long nomadic past of humans. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, his novel On the Black Hill (1982) was set closer to home, in the hill farms of the Welsh Borders. It focuses on the relationship between twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin, who grow up isolated from the course of twentieth century history. Utz (1988), was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain.
Chatwin was working on a number of new ideas for future novels at the time of his death from AIDS in 1989, including a transcontinental epic, provisionally titled Lydia Livingstone.
In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted. "I've always wanted to go there," Bruce told her. "So have I," she replied, "go there for me." Two years later in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later. When he arrived, he left the newspaper with a telegram: "Have gone to Patagonia." He spent six months in the area, a trip which resulted in the book In Patagonia (1977). This work established his reputation as a travel writer. Later, however, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were alleged to have been fictionalised.
Later works included a novel based on the slave trade, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which he researched with extended stays in Benin, West Africa. For The Songlines (1987), a work combining fiction and non-fiction, Chatwin went to Australia. He studied the culture to express how the songs of the Aborigines are a cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man's personal story. He also related the travelling expressed in The Songlines to his own travels and the long nomadic past of humans. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, his novel On the Black Hill (1982) was set closer to home, in the hill farms of the Welsh Borders. It focuses on the relationship between twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin, who grow up isolated from the course of twentieth century history. Utz (1988), was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain.
Chatwin was working on a number of new ideas for future novels at the time of his death from AIDS in 1989, including a transcontinental epic, provisionally titled Lydia Livingstone.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 29, 2011
I had actually read this book before, but under a different title, namely: Patagonia Revisited. The only difference is that Nowhere Is a Place: Travels in Patagonia is accompanied by scores of photographs which, however beautiful, have nothing to do with the parts of Patagonia that Bruce Chatwin wrote about in In Patagonia or Paul Theroux wrote about in The Old Patagonian Express.
Fortunately, the book was worth re-reading, especially as Chatwin and Theroux dug deep in their original research to discuss how the whole idea of Patagonia has influenced Western literature, beginning with Antonio Pigafetta's journal of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe and going all the way to Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. By no means, however, is it useful as an initial approach to researching a Patagonian trip: It is interesting as a survey of the literature relating to how the image of patagonia affected artists such as Melville, Poe, and Shakespeare (The Tempest).
I have been to Patagonia and intend to return soon. I keep thinking of the words Darwin wrote in the final chapter of The Voyage of the Beagle:
Fortunately, the book was worth re-reading, especially as Chatwin and Theroux dug deep in their original research to discuss how the whole idea of Patagonia has influenced Western literature, beginning with Antonio Pigafetta's journal of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe and going all the way to Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. By no means, however, is it useful as an initial approach to researching a Patagonian trip: It is interesting as a survey of the literature relating to how the image of patagonia affected artists such as Melville, Poe, and Shakespeare (The Tempest).
I have been to Patagonia and intend to return soon. I keep thinking of the words Darwin wrote in the final chapter of The Voyage of the Beagle:
... In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support only a few dwarf plants. Why, then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold of my memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can scarcely analyze these feelings; but it must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having thus lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last boundaries to man's knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations?
August 14, 2024
I read both Chatwin's and Theroux's Patagonian books many years ago, but it was nice to read their lecture notes in this book. Fantastic photography
December 8, 2019
Hypnotic and mesmerizing
May 12, 2022
This is a beautiful book of photos by Jeff Gnass, not quite a “coffee table book,” that uses a joint presentation by Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux made about their individual experiences and thoughts about Patagonia at the Royal Geographical Society. The photos are just completely outstanding and the two writers’ thoughts and remembrances perfect.
A bonus is the introduction by Theroux who writes hilariously and movingly about his friend Chatwin, who had died by the time this book emerged.
A bonus is the introduction by Theroux who writes hilariously and movingly about his friend Chatwin, who had died by the time this book emerged.
August 18, 2018
At times whimsical, thoughtful, historical- best IMO when the latter. Beautiful pictures. It’s not a history or analysis of Patagonia, but a fair introduction to how Patagonia has featured in the Anglo imagination.
January 27, 2021
Great photos and historical commentary about the ends of the earth. Giants and hell and desert, but so much more. Theroux's words grounds this book.
August 22, 2015
The book, published by the Sierra Club, documents a presentation made by the authors to the Royal Geographic Society. Each of the two authors had previously published their own widely acclaimed books detailing their travels in Patagonia. One of the most interesting parts of the book is the introduction written by Theroux talking about his friend and recently deceased colleague, Chatwin. It is one of the quirkier eulogies you will ever read. The book features a beautiful series of photographs by Jeff Gnass.
February 28, 2010
Beautiful book and beautiful prose. I've enjoyed both authors and it is interesting to see them juxtaposed in a photo book. Too bad Goodreads doesn't have the cover. Incredible place that I must visit.
December 17, 2016
The big name duo of authors has given this vague, rambling publication an undeserved readership. Reads like a collection of off-cuts.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews