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Dec 20, 2007

Trevor rated it:

This is a book that is a personal response to whatever it is for white people to think about nomadic peoples with layers of meanings. It seemed to me to be a very honest book - the person telling the story does not try to make himself seem better than he is.

I had never heard of songlines before reading this book - the fact that I've lived in Australia for most of my life and did not know this perhaps says as much about me and as much about the life of a white person in Australia as i More...

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Jul 29, 2007

Robyn rated it:

The Songlines is, on the surface, an auto-biographical travel narrative. Under the surface, it's none of these things and so much more. The door in is that the "Bruce" of the book may or may not be the Bruce who is writing. The narrative Bruce's clumsy attempts to interrogate the Australian aboringine's sacred knowledge smacks of neo-colonialistic cultural tourism. Is the real Bruce Chatwin really this gormless or is he positioning his narrative Bruce to point out the problems of s More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 27, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

The wandering words of a wandering writer.

The "songlines" were a sort of Aboriginal GPS. The people could find their way unerringly across vast territories simply by "singing" the ancient stories of the Dreamtime creatures. The stories contained landmarks, and were meant to be sung at a walking pace of about 4 mph. Thus, as he walked and sang, the singer encountered the sacred sites and knew he was following the correct "line" to his destination. As More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 14, 2008

Beth rated it:

As I wandered through some special place no one else ever gets to see, I passed a beautiful woman wearing a sheer top that revealed her round breasts and small, pert nipples. She looked seductively at me and licked her lips. I nodded politely, making my way toward a tall man standing by himself.

"Wait!" My super-elite companion stopped me. "That man is the KING OF THE UNIVERSE. He hates everyone! Nothing impresses him. The last white man who attempted to talk to him -- More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2011

Zeruhur rated it:

Chatwin alla ricerca della natura umana. Così sintetizzerei Le vie dei canti. Una natura che secondo l’autore è nomade: la sedentarietà moderna è solo una prigione cui l’uomo cerca di sottrarsi. All’inizio lo scopo del libro non risulta evidente. Salta all’occhio certamente la sua natura di diario, di resoconto di viaggio. In questo senso ritroviamo il solito Chatwin: una narrazione legata a persone e fatti e non a luoghi e paesaggi. Alla ricerca delle Vie dei Canti, mitici racconti della creazi More...

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Nov 21, 2010

Echo rated it:

Quando guardo una Moleskine mi chiedo come un libricino, apparentemente insignificante, possa esercitare una tale malìa. Come possa riuscire a tirare fuori una vena artistica anche dai pezzi di legno. A indurre la gente a disegnare, scrivere, osservare ed elaborare. Come possa, per incanto, rendere brillanti gli ottusi.
“Le vie dei canti” sta alle Moleskine come l'uovo sta alla gallina.
Non si capisce se le Moleskine devono parte del loro fascino al libro di Chatwin o se il libro di Chatwin non s More...

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Feb 14, 2009

James rated it:

Bruce Chatwin's book is ostensibly an examination of the Australian Aboriginal notion of the Songline: a song that relates a series of geographical locations ranging from one coast to another, tied to the (mythical) creation of an animal, that in a variety of languages unified by tune sings out the geography of the route. He explores this abstract concept through the agency of Arkady and a cast of other Whites who live and work amongst the Aborigines in the harsh heart of Australia, defending th More...

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Dec 28, 2011

Roberta rated it:

“Gli Antenati, che avevano creato il mondo cantandolo, disse, erano stati poeti nel significato originale di poiesis, e cioè «creazione». Nessun aborigeno poteva concepire che il mondo creato fosse in qualche modo imperfetto. La vita religiosa di ognuno di essi aveva un unico scopo: conservare la terra com’era e come doveva essere. L’uomo che andava in walkabout compiva un viaggio rituale: calcava le orme del suo Antenato. Cantava le strofe dell’Antenato senza cambiare una parola né una nota – e More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Christoph rated it:

Author: Bruce Chatwin
Title: The Songlines
Time: 1986
Destination:
Australia
Length: probably a couple of months
Type: some walking, but mostly by car
Rating: 6/10
A bit on the whacky side

This is a rather interesting one: British writer BC roams through the Australian outbacks in order to find out about Aboriginal songs and their use as cultural “maps” for the nomadic people. He drifts all over the place, befriends the locals and conducts More...

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Jun 03, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

I am a horrible reader sometimes. I read to just read, not because I like what I am reading, which at this point in my life defeats the purpose of it all. I am getting better at putting down boring books, mainly cause I use the library and I don't have to feel guilty about not finishing them because I didn't invest any money in the first place. But school kind of killed that for me and I hate not reading something that I started, no matter how boring it is. Two books I picked up from the library More...

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Apr 03, 2010

Kerfe rated it:

Chatwin journeys to Australia to study aboriginal songlines, the ancestor trails that criss-cross the continent. This is a continuation of his fascination with the nomad, and he brings his notes for an unwritten book on human migrations. These notes, and ruminations that spiral out from them, are interspersed with the Australian story.

Chatwin feels that man's original and most comfortable state was migratory, and his original language, song, the poetry of sound to accompany the jou More...

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Feb 09, 2009

Martin rated it:

The book claims to be an account of incidents in the author's life as he travels about Australia and spends time with the aboriginal population. Whether exactly true or not it is a fascinating account, both of the author's experiences with interesting characters and the interesting technique used by the native population to find their way about the country using a kind of song. The "song" represents what is really a technology developed by the native peoples. One suspects (this type of More...

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Dec 30, 2008

Rukmini rated it:

'Put it this way,' he said. 'Anywhere in the bush you can point to some feature of the landscape and ask the Aboriginal with you, "What's the story there?" or "Who's that?" The chances are he'll answer "Kangaroo" or "Budgerigar" or "Jew Lizard", depending on which Ancestor walked that way.'
'And the distance between two such sites can be measured as a stretch of song?'

'Songlines' is about Aboriginal culture and Chatwin's experien More...

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Jul 08, 2011

Jan-Maat added it

I read this and was utterly impressed by it when I was a teenager. I went on to read a pile of other books written by Chatwin. At some stage, probably after Chatwin's death, I heard that parts of "In Patagonia" had been either invented or substantially misrepresented. Naturally this puts a seed in your thinking and I doubt that "Songlines" should be thought of as a travel book, or as being autobiographical or factual in any conventional or normal sense.

"So More...

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Feb 28, 2011

Russell rated it:

I absolutely loved this for the first 200 pages. Chatwin, a sort of literary ethnologist, aims to understand Aboriginal song lines. In Aboriginal mythology, song lines mark the journeys taken by the first animals – the first kangaroo, the first hyena, the first cat etc. – upon their creation. The song lines essentially map the whole continent. When aboriginal people go ‘walkabout’, they are retracing these journeys, essentially a pilgrimage to the land that sustains them.
Chatwin is e More...

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Jun 27, 2010

Lydia rated it:

This book was really interesting and I learned a lot I had never heard of before. The information is fascinating, and the writing style is relatively accessible. I had never heard of flip-flops called thongs before and he never bothers to translate any Australian slang even though he is British! The bit of the book where he is in town and sees a sign on a pub that says "No Thongs" really threw me! I also had to look up willywilly, a type of cyclone, apparently the term is used by Austr More...

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Apr 24, 2010

Mark rated it:

I searched high and low for this book and finally found it in a bookstore in Melbourne last month. You'd think it would be easier to find in Australia. Chatwin is right up there with Theroux and Thubron in my book as far as travel writers go, and there are so few books to remember him by.

The Songlines is Chatwin's search for the ancestral mythology of Aboriginal Australia. Songlines are maplines across Australia that carry the story of the original animal in tribal song across the More...

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Nov 20, 2011

Lemar rated it:

Chatwin invests everything in this moving account of his research into the Songlines of Australia. Any relevant experience or research that might add to his examination of man's inclination towards a life of migration versus the sedentary life if carefully included. Going back to Cain and Abel, myths and archeology point out that ever since man first pursued a sedentary life and created the villages and monuments we prize in museums, there has continued to exist the nomadic people who just may More...

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Mar 13, 2009

Lazarus rated it:

“I had the presentiment that the ‘travelling’ phase of my life might be passing. I felt, before the malaise of settlement crept over me, that I should reopen the notebooks. I should set down on paper a resume of the ideas, quotations and encounters which had amused and obsessed me; and which I hoped would shed light on what is, for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness.”

Chatwin pursues his quest for an understanding of the nomadic instinct to the Australian More...

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Mar 16, 2009

Annette rated it:

If I was given a choice of 3 people to invite for dinner from any age, Bruce Chatwin would be one. I only wish I could sit down (probably in a pub) and watch him drink a pint and tell stories of his travels. He writes in such a compassionate way about the people he comes across in his travels, he has a way of explaining and understanding histories and events that is so intriging to me. This book is so loved and well worn...I underlined almost the entire copy. It is not only about the aborigi More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 12, 2009

Corrie rated it:

This was a great book, but it took me forever to read. The first half is basically a travelogue of Bruce's experience following around Arcady, a Russian-Australian whose job is to help design a railroad route through the bush that won't destroy any Australian Aboriginal sacred dreaming sites. This is a huge job, because it includes tracking down the Aboriginal "owners" of each of the tracks of land that the railroad will invade, and convincing them to discuss dreaming sites, a secretiv More...

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Mar 20, 2009

Oceana2602 rated it:

the book that made me love Chatwin, who shares the place with Paul Theroux and Douglas Adams as my favourite author of all times. It was also the first book of Chatwin that I ever read, so you can see that loving Chatwin wasn't a hard sell.

What can I say about Chatwin that hasn't already been said? Not much, I guess. I'll say that this book is outstanding in the way it combines travel-writing, philosophy, history and fiction, but I doubt I'm the first one to say this.

So l More...

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Jan 10, 2009

Matthew rated it:

I'm curious that Chatwin considered this book fiction; perhaps by today's standards we'd brand it "creative nonfiction" the "creative" part being perhaps invented or doctored dialogue, some bending of facts to get at a more truthful narrative, etc. As a travel document, though, it maintains Chatwin's compressed ability to sketch a character or paint a landscape in a few deft strokes. And the book continues what appears to be his life-long thesis: that humans are meant to be More...

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Aug 11, 2011

Neil added it

I couldn't make my mind up with this book, until i'd got at least 200 pages in. Although full of wonderful and useful bits of information about aboriginal and other nomadic cultures as well as examining the roots of nomadism and humanity, the narrative is dumbed down to make this more pallatable. This creates the situation where profound anthropological points are being pitched in what seems to be a soap story like an episode of "flying doctors".

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Sep 07, 2009

Tripmastermonkey rated it:

Set in Australia, the book looks at the history of the native people there, to explore the greater story of humanity's origins and our drives. The narrator is an English fellow who has been traveling all over the world talking to nomads and how they relate to the lands they travel. Mix in some complicated stories of human evolution, linguistics, the migrations of birds, and veiled references to homosexuality, and you have a very lively and philosophical read!

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Sep 22, 2011

Megan rated it:

Fascinating read, really enjoyed it. The story of Bruce's search and his experiences in Australia and around the world was engaging and felt like he was sitting beside me espousing his theories of migratory society and the human as hunted to me personally. Like many of those experiences though, I sometimes wished he would shut up and stop reading out the many pages of his fieldwork notebooks that excited him so much and me a little less so. That being said, I don't think the story would have wor More...

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Dec 07, 2009

Tiffany rated it:

What a smart book! I was a bit bummed by the deromanticizing of the Australian Outback, but I suppose it's good to take a hard look at the conditions of indigenous people around the world. I've done it here in the US, why should it be any different somewhere else? I got a little bogged down in the philosophizing-sound bites section of the book, but overall, I think this was an excellent read. If nothing else, it's taught me that I really don't understand the idea of Dreaming.

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Nov 03, 2011

Joseph rated it:

Seldom is there a book that strikes at the core of your being. Chatwin uses the "Songlines" of Australian aboriginal culture to explore an intellectual, philosophical and metaphysical world of the human condition. The book is wildly original; simultaneously a thoroughly entertaining travelogue and also an almost stream of consciousness exploration of history, psychology, natural history, and more. Truly an instant favorite...

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May 10, 2009

Helen rated it:

That travel writing doesn't have to be step by step, journal/diary entries...travelling through the mind is to travel over land and vice versa, depending on the strength of the narrative; and it certainly is that. Strong language and fixed images;snap shots of a moment, place or a conversation between two persons...or a vast canvas of images, sights, smells and sounds. If you've ever travelled through Australia, then I suggest you read this book.

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Jan 23, 2012

Kevin rated it:

Chatwin in Oz doing what the anthropologists do. 2/3rds interesting 1/3rd tedious I have to say though the references lead you into other areas that are just as interesting.. After reading successive books by Chatwin you begin to feel that he was somewhat the travel dilettante and I wonder how much of the alleged Chatwin fabrication went into this one. And then you get a third of a book of his notes from previous notebooks from previous joourenys! Whaaaaaaaaaaa. Would have rather have read him p More...

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