Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10818 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-28
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

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.

Synopsis
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account, Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories.

About the Author
Bruce Chatwin reinvented British travel writing with his first book, In Patagonia, and followed it with four other books, each unique and extraordinary. He died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

The human tide
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.

Aboriginals in Australia
In Alice Springs the narrator called Bruce meets Arkady Volchok, an Australian citizen who is mapping the sacred sites of the Aboriginals. Arkady is fascinated by them, by their grit and tenacity and their ways of dealing with white people. Arkady speaks a couple of their languages and he is often astounded by their intellectual vigour, their memory and their capacity to survive.
It was during his time as a schoolteacher in Walbiri that Arkadi learned of the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as Songlines - a way for Aboriginals to sing out the name of everything that crosses their path during their wanderings: birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes and so sing the world in existence.
When a route is suggested for a new Alice to Darwin railway line, Arkady's job is to identify the traditional landowners, to drive them over their old hunting grounds and to get them to reveal which rock or soak or ghost-gum is the work of a Dreamtime hero. Bruce is happy to join Arkady and to spend some time "out bush".
The reader of this novel learns a lot about Australia and the Aboriginals. The plot and the characters however are a bit thin. One finds it hard to sympathise with the Aboriginal figures appearing in the story. What they have to say and the way they express themselves amounts to practically nothing. It seems as though they need the white people to tell their stories and traditions.

Interesting
All in all the book was alright, not superb but alright. I found the notes a bit tedious but quite interesting but what intrigued me the most was Bruce Chatwin's view of women throughout the book. While I was reading certain descriptions of women surprised me, if not shocked me. They didn't seem to fit with the 'beauty' in the writing of the rest of the novel. They seemed rather harsh, unnecessary and even a bit vulgar. It wasn't until someone pointed out to me that the author was infact homosexual that the reason became clear, however, I think it sad that the author felt he had to cover this part of him up even to the extent where he overcompensated for a male's view of women through his writing. Well, in my eyes alone anyway.