The Songlines (Paperback)

by Bruce Chatwin (Author) "IN ALICE SPRINGS - a grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers -..." (more)
Key Phrases: Land Cruiser, Middle Bore, Father Terence (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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.

From Publishers Weekly
PW praised Chatwin's "entertaining" and "resonant" reflections on the distinctions between settled people and wanderers, and between human aggression and pacifism, as he searches central Australia for the pathways along which aborigines travel to perform their cultural activities.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (June 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140094296
• ISBN-13: 978-0140094299
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,868 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars do it, February 11, 2000

By	Greg Flynn (Australia) - See all my reviews

Dying of AIDS and with Salman Rushdie, Bruce Chatwin made a lightning visit to Australia. The Songlines is the fascinating result of this terminal search for meaning.

The good points are that Chatwin's considerable intellect and narrative capacities weave a story based on year's travel experience. The bad point is that he knew almost nothing about his subject and as such has written an Englishman's compassionate contemporary account of the colonies.

I live and work on a remote aboriginal community near the areas Chatwin visited. Traditional Aborignal law is an amazingly complex oral culture so rich in history and symbolism that I have profound doubts about any whitefella ever properly understanding it, let alone a visiting foreigner desperately looking for something.

This is a great book, but don't think by reading it you will get a terrifically accurate profile of what being an aborigine is, whatever that means. They are not, as Chatwin seems to deduce, another group of nomadic noble savages more fulfilled than the more sedentary post-agriculture communitites.

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and important, January 7, 2003

By	Carper (Europe) - See all my reviews

This is a difficult book to describe: it masquerades as a Theroux style travelogue, but is anything but. I love Paul Theroux, but this totally transcends his travel writing. Chatwin starts out describing a trip to the Australian Outback. It starts out pretty conventional, in beautiful descriptive prose...but before too long you realize you are actually reading Chatwin's brilliant ruminations about the human race as a species, where we came from, and where we are going. The book is NOT really about the Aborigines, though they provide a number of terrific characters, and I suspect someone who really wanted to know more about the actual Songlines could be disappointed by this book. He very clearly sets up his own views against those of many important and popular thinkers. To sum it up, he makes a case that humans are not really an aggressive species at heart, and that evolution has not really programmed the human to fight for power but to defend the tribe. Not every will agree with this, but he makes a wonderful case and the book is beautiful and crystalline and should be read by everyone.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than a travel book, March 26, 2000

By	Boris Bangemann "boyse" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

William James said that to "learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils." It seems, Bruce Chatwin used the same method to shed light on what for him was the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness.

The Songlines consists of the stories of the eccentric experts in the science of restlessness Chatwin met in Western Australia, and notebook entries ranging from Blaise Pascal's philosophical reflections to a meeting with Konrad Lorenz in Austria. Chatwin had originally intended to use these notebook entries for a book on nomads. He gave up the project but the entries reveal the man and his quest.

In a way, The Songlines is Chatwin's own songline: a track which tells of what he found on his wanderings, and what he considered worth singing.