Talk:Bruce Chatwin/Archive 1

Place of Birth
Does anyone have a definitive source for Chatwin's place of birth? Also how long did he live in Birmingham? Info on the web is mixed. Reviews of Nicholas Shakespeare's biography here and here state Chatwin was born in Birmingham, here it states Sheffield. All agree he was from a middle-class Birmingham family and that he spent some of his childhood here. The Salon.com review quotes Nicholas Shakespeare: - For Bruce, Birmingham was always a place to leave. See also Talk:List of famous residents of Birmingham, England. Valiantis 13:50, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Have you read Nick Sh.'s biography, as distinct from reviews on the web? It says Chatwin was born on 13 May 1940 at 8.30pm "in the Shearwood Road nursong home," Sheffield (page 22 of the Viking paperback edition). For the next 5 years he was "passed around like a tea-urn" from one relation to another, while his father served in the Royal Navy. On his father's return from the war the family finally settled in a sort of farm near Birmingham, where he spent his childhood. Shakespeare spent 7 years doing his research, so I guess this about as definitive as it gets.


 * Thanks for clarifying. I haven't read the biography - my interest in Chatwin was primarily linked to whether he belonged in the Birmingham famous residents list. I was hoping however that someone here had read the biography and could save us all from the laziness of web reviewers and second-hand net info :) Valiantis 18:35, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Visual Acuity
The article states that Chatwin became an expert on Impressionist art at Sotheby's "thanks to his sharp visual acuity". Does anybody know of a source for this strange claim? I don't understand why anyone would need anything better than normal eyesight in order to become an expert on Impressionist art -- I would have thought that a deep understanding of the history and culture around the Impressionist painters and perhaps some expertise regarding the specific techniques of the Impressionist school would be more important. I decided not to change the text because, perhaps there is some specific reason for the inclusion of this statement. Any ideas? 123.243.81.120 (talk) 12:51, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Moleskine
Is Bruce Chatwin notable for his use of Moleskine notebooks? My first impression from the article is that the reference is advertising. RobC (talk) 13:08, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, his piece about them in What Am I Doing Here certainly contributed strongly to the cult thing around the brand and its association with the idea of "hip budding writers" (published or not yet published). And he wasn't paid for writing that one. It's fairly sure I think that he did actually have a "Moleskine habit" and he is strongly associated with those notebooks. The accuracy of his statement that the "real" Moleskine notebooks were about to completely disappear off the market is questionable though. Strausszek (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Literary influence
The article needs more on Chatwin's work, as he was considered an important and influential writer. It seems more concerned with personal details.--Parkwells (talk) 15:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree, I think outside of the UK he's not seen as primarily a gifted travel writer or an exoticizing anecdote master (though he did have a really good eye for the weird anecdote). His powerful skills as a prose writer and his interest in the relationship between man, the local place and being on the move (especially in The Songlines) have been more appreciated. There's also a fairly obvious link to magical realism in his work, even though he rarely brings the absolutely impossible or supernatural into his stories. Strausszek (talk) 02:42, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Change to the lead; proper citations needed in Illness & Death section
In the section on illness and death, it's reported that members of the gay community criticized Chatwin for not telling the truth about his illness. In the lead, however, it's the "gay community" as a whole that criticize. Since it seems unlikely that any community would reach unanimity on such a subject, I would propose to change the lead to reflect more closely the I&D section. Unfortunately, I'm not skilled in Wikipedia-ness, and cannot find a way to edit the lead, so I'm hoping somebody else will take this up. I might add too, that the referencing in the I&D section is ambiguous. Two facts are mentioned, first, the reports of a fungal infection in many obituaries, and second, criticism from some in the gay community. It's not clear which of these two facts are the subject of the Murray and Shakespeare citations, so this too needs to be cleaned up. Theonemacduff (talk) 21:07, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've added "some members of" to the lead. Reffing by paragraph is normal practice. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

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External links modified
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