0 mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
Ian Buruma
WITH CHATWIN: PORTRAIT OF A WRITER by Susannah Clapp Cape, £15.99, pp. 246 BRUCE CHATWIN: PHOTOGRAPHS AND NOTEBOOKS edited by David King and Francis Wyndham Picador, £15, pp. 160 One of the many good things about Susannah Clapp's memoir of Bruce Chatwin is her deft use of the telling anec- dote. As he lay dying, Chatwin liked to give parting gifts to his friends. One old friend received a small object with sharpened edges. It was, Chatwin explained, an Aboriginal instrument to cut the urethra in initiation rites. He held it up to the light. It had to be made of some desert opal, he said, and pointed out the remarkable chartreuse colour. A few weeks later, the director of the Australian National Gallery saw this macabre gem at the friend's house, held it up to the light in his turn, and said: Thrunm. Amazing what the Abos can do with a bit of an old beer bottle.'
The story lias a double edge. It can be read as praise of Chatwin's extraordinary gift for making. the mundane seem glam- orous, or as a criticism of his mythomania, which could resemble the patter of a very clever, but rather mendacious antiques dealer. It depends on how captivated you are by his voice. I must admit I was hooked, both by his presence and his books. And so, clearly, was Clapp, other- wise she wouldn't have written this beauti- ful memoir. And since she shared so much of his story, as his friend and editor, it is a memoir more than a biography.
It is a sharp-edged memoir, however. Since she was in the kitchen, so to speak, while Chatwin's confections were cooked up, she saw too much to be taken in by any- thing. It is fascinating to read how she helped to pare down what I still think is his best, and perhaps most problematic book, In Patagonia, from a bulky, beautifully written, but rather incoherent mess into a slender masterpiece. But she is equally revealing about the non-literary side of the Chatwin myth. She deScribes how, con- sciously or not, an exotic persona emerged, like a brilliant butterfly, from the cocoon of Marlborough College, Sotheby's and The Sunday Times Magazine.
His blonde, captain-of-the-11 beauty, his dress sense (pale blue button-down shirts, khaki shorts, hand-made boots, etc) his bijou flats at grand addresses, his dazzling social connections, both haut and bas, his `eye' as a fine arts expert, his esoteric erudition, his moleskin notebooks from Paris, his calf-skin haversack, hand-made by a saddler in Cirencester, even the name of his last house in the country (`Homer End'), all these went into his legend, into what has become known as Chatwinesque, as in Kafkaesque, or perhaps more appro- priately, Firhankian.
Clapp is very perceptive about the Chatwinesque autobiographical style: Chatwin never confessed anything, but spun endless personal tales. She also points out how his talent at Sotheby's for hooking rich buyers spilled over into his literary work. Selling works of art is a matter of story-telling too, of infusing an object with the mystique of history, preferably esoteric, bizarre, magical. And she shows how this dangerous talent to amuse was a literary and social asset, which filled the author himself with feelings of great ambivalence. He glittered at Sotheby's and gave up his job. He shone in the best company in Lon- don and New York, and headed for the desert with his custom-made haversack. He told splendid stories, but wanted to make a big statement about nomadism.
It is hard even for a Chatwin admirer not to feel ambivalent about him. In a lovely review of Chatwin's own literary criticism, Clapp analyses a piece Chatwin wrote about Robert Louis Stevenson. Chatwin is unusually exercised by, and harsh on, Stevenson, yet everything he says reads like a portrait of himself: the restlessness, the sexual ambiguity, the charm, the endless myth-making. Chatwin writes:
Whether his acts were genuine or faked is beside the point. The events of his life and the circumstance of his death have a mythic wholeness.
If this was true of Stevenson, it was cer- tainly true of Chatwin. But there is a differ- ence: Stevenson didn't fudge the edges between fact and fiction in quite the same way that Chatwin sometimes did; his fictions were clearly made up. With Chatwin — and this adds a frisson to much of his prose — you never quite know. You are not supposed to know. It is not sup- posed to matter. Chatwin, brilliantly, ever so seductively, turned the modern travel book into a form of mythology. I was as easily seduced as the next man. But it sure- ly does matter. Fictional truth is not the same as non-fictional truth. Different crite- ria apply. To blur them is to lie, no matter how artfully it is done.
It is perhaps partly because of Chatwin's gifts as a myth-maker that we should be so fascinated by his notebooks. After all, the notes were written to himself. There was no need to impress or dazzle in this raw material. Yet the notes — and the accom- panying photographs — are absolutely Chatwinesque. Take this fine miniature novella, written in Mauritania: The Governor. Small moustache. Sad deca- dent eyes. Reclines instead of sits. White robes. Masseur. Pills. Decongestants. Chinese pills. French pills. His assistant round-headed with cauliflower ears. The ex- Ambassador of Mali to Jidah, elegant, deca- dent. Hand movements. With him an immensely tall bearded Negro in green satin and his permanent musician in cool pink, long fingers plucking at a guitar. Chauffeurs are invited to lunch comme nous sommes mainlenant democratiques but are made to feel so uncomfortable that they leave.
The most tragic part of the Chatwin myth is of course his early death. As with Rimbaud, Mishima and James Dean, there is no doubt that this added a romantic dash to the already existing mystique. In the case of Mishima or Rimbaud — and possibly Dean too — their best work was already done. Not, in my view, in the case of Chatwin. He wrote his last novel, Utz, when he was very ill. Yet it shines like a small gem, and shows, I think, that Chatwin's best was yet to come.
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