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In Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin

When Mr. Chatwin was a small boy, his grandmother had a small piece of “brontosaurus” skin—a small piece of thick, leathery skin with strands of coarse, reddish hair that had come from his Uncle Charley who had found it when he lived in the Patagonia. He begged his grandmother to give it to him, but she would not part with it. When the grandmother died he felt sure it would be his, but before he could claim it his mother threw it away. The rest of the book tells of his travels in Patagonia to places Uncle Charley traveled to, lived, and worked, and his talks with people who had known Uncle Charley. And along with this, he tells a good deal of the history of the Patagonia. And when he returned home to Scotland he brought with him a piece of “brontosaurus,” only what he brought home and what his grandmother had were both pieces of a mylodon, or Giant Sloth. The mistake came about because Chatwin’s grandmother knew only two kinds of prehistoric animals—brontosaurus and mammoth—and she knew it wasn’t a mammoth because mammoths lived in Siberia and not the Patagonia.

Chatwin’s style of writing is rather like that of Paul Theroux, which isn’t necessarily a compliment, but the book is worth reading.

— Warren Langdon

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