Although there is nothing new under the sun, some things endure more than most. Like a healthy lapel-width, martinis, and minimalism, Bruce Chatwin seems to go in-and-out of popular fashion every few years — raved about and then forgotten again until his fresh rediscovery.
Boundless in his life and writing, Chatwin was seemingly unconstrained by limitations — under his command even hard facts frequently gave way to his talent. Whilst regarded as one of the greatest travel writers to have put pen to Moleskine (the very notebooks that Chatwin himself popularised) he was more a storyteller than documentary journalist. Never afraid to change, or even invent details altogether, in order to better communicate some point of knowledge that was truer than that which he had uncovered on his nomadic travels. Werner Herzog, speaking in defence of this side of Chatwin after his death, said that “Facts cannot be underestimated as they have normative power. But they do not give us insight into the truth, or the illumination of poetry. Yes, accepted, the phone directory of Manhattan contains four million entries, all of them factually verifiable. But do we know why Jonathan Smith, correctly listed, cries into his pillow every night?” Biographer, Nicholas Shakespeare perhaps summed up this idea best, when he said that Chatwin “didn’t tell a half-truth but a truth-and-a-half.”
The route of discovery is often a strange one. I came across Chatwin because he was one of the first private clients of minimalist architect @johnpawson Pawson having designed Chatwin’s small apartment at 77 Eaton Place, an experience that is summarised in the piece “A Place to Hang Your Hat” and Chatwin’s letters. It’s easy to see what Chatwin appreciated in Pawson. Chatwin’s home (typical of Pawson’s work) was like his writing — consisting of, spartan, clean, clear lines that draw your eye towards a distant horizon. The few pieces of furniture and decoration (whilst evocative of Chatwin’s time at Sotheby’s, where he was a junior director) offering the occasional embellished decorative detail, imbued with deep artistic considerations and, most of all, a good story to tell.