EPISODE · Jun 18, 2020 · 46 MIN
Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines
from Writers Off the Page: From the TIFA Archives · host Toronto Public Library
Note: given the current temporary closure of TPL due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made our best efforts to offer suggestions below for materials which are part our online collections (indicated) and available at home to anyone with a current Toronto Library card. Read: Why are wait times on ebooks or audiobooks sometimes so long? Works by Bruce ChatwinThe SonglinesIn PatagoniaAnatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings, 1969-1989 (ebook)On the Black Hill (ebook)Utz (ebook)Books About Bruce ChatwinBruce Chatwin by Nicholas ShakespeareAnywhere Out of the World: the Work of Bruce Chatwin by Jonathan ChatwinUnder the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin, Edited by Elizabeth Chatwin and Nicholas ShakespeareOther Related Books or MaterialsBowie’s Bookshelf: the Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life (ebook)Walking With Bruce Chatwin by Rory Stewart (about the importance and influence of The Songlines] (link opens a New York Review of Books article from June 2012)Travel and Endless Talk Connected me to Details of Chatwin’s Songlines Missed (link opens an article from The Guardian from Oct 2017)Bruce Chatwin, the Forgotten Travel-Writer is At-Last Being Remembered by Nicholas Shakespeare (link opens an article from The Oldie)About the HostNovelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.Music is by Yuka From the ArchivesWriters Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
What this episode covers
Recorded in Toronto in 1986, this reading from Bruce Chatwin’s bestselling book, The Songlines, shows us the mastery that Chatwin developed as he both remains in the background of his scenes but also takes charge of the narrative via a colourful, all-knowing character, Arkady the Russian, and his travels into the Australian bush and the territories of Aboriginals. This ability for Chatwin to be a silent observer by allowing characters who were experts to take the lead (purportedly based on real people Chatwin met in his travels) was what made Chatwin such a unique writer and his style (and this rhetorical construction) has been so widely influential and used by so many writers hence that it may not always be apparent how incredibly talented he was as a storyteller. What is apparent, though, is what a great reader he is of his own work and how he takes us on this journey where, by the end, real life kicking in again seems stark and far less comical than the world we inhabited alongside him, the characters in our own lives far less colourful than the author’s. This audio is used with the permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the Estate of Bruce Chatwin; the recording is also used with the permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors.
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Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines
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