The Songlines
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. This is an account which recalls the authors' travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs ... read full description below.
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Full details for this title
| ISBN-13 |
9780099769910 |
| ISBN-10 |
0099769913 |
|
| Stock |
Available |
| Status |
Available at publisher; usually ships 5-14 working days |
|
| Publisher |
Vintage |
| Imprint |
Vintage |
| Publication Date |
1 January 1999
|
| International Publication Date |
28 November 1998 |
| Publication Country |
 United Kingdom |
|
| Format |
Paperback |
| Edition |
New edition |
|
| Author(s) |
By Chatwin, Bruce |
| Series |
Vintage Classics |
| Category |
Modern Fiction
Cultural Studies
Travel Writing
|
|
| Interest Age |
All ages |
| Reading Age |
All ages |
| Library of Congress |
Australian aborigines, Social conditions, Fiction |
| NBS Text |
Travel Writing |
| ONIX Text |
College/higher education;Professional and scholarly |
|
| Number of Pages |
304 |
| Dimensions |
Width: 132mm
Height: 200mm
Spine: 18mm |
| Weight |
224g |
|
| Dewey Code |
823.914 |
| Catalogue Code |
Not specified |
Description of this Book
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories.
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Awards & Reviews
| NZ Review |
'Extraordinary...a remarkable and satisfying book' Observer |
| UK Review |
The author couldn't give an account of a trip to the shops without some fantastic embroidering of mundane reality. This blend of myth, observation and outright invention is less an account of Aboriginal mythology than an excuse for the author to let rip. Travel writing has never been the same. (Kirkus UK) |
| US Review |
Chatwin, British author of books that blend travel, memoir, history, and philosophy (In Patagonia, The Viceroy of Ouidah), now goes to Alice Springs, Australia - for an investigation into Aboriginal culture, run-ins with assorted Aussies, and a fragmented meditation on larger anthropological issues. Chatwin's inquiry focuses on the Aboriginal songlines : a labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia, the routes taken (according to Creation myths) by legendary totemic beings as they sang the world into existence. Each clan has its own elaborate, largely secret story-song, linked to a particular animal-totem; and the songlines, which include numerous sacred sites, give rise to complex taboos and rituals (e.g., the walkabout ). So Chatwin mostly tags along with Arkady, son of Russian immigrants - a local Do-Gooder among the Aboriginals who's been hired by railway officialdom to help prevent the desecration of sacred sites (invisible to white eyes) during railway construction. And, in and around the Outback via Land Rover, there are encounters with a wide range of quirky sorts: unpleasant redneck racists (the ugly flip-side of Crocodile Dundee); Aboriginal artists in the totem genre, with their white agents (one zesty, one greedy); sophisticated Aboriginal activists, arguing land-claims against the Church and mine-owners; even a teen-age rock-group - part-Aboriginal - whose first big concert has to be scheduled around circumcision/initiation rites. Though individually fascinating, however, these vignettes never accumulate shape, drama, or even much weight. In the book's second half, in fact, the pokey narrative more or less fades away - as Chatwin offers almost 100-pp. worth of disjointed notes taken for a book on mankind's essential nomadic quality. There are quotations from Pascal, Buber, the Bible, Darwin, etc. There are anecdotes from Chatwin's travels in India, South Africa, Mauritania, Niger, Afghanistan, China, and London (lunch with a worldly panhandler). Chatwin muses on evolution and war, arguing - not very persuasively - that man's basic nature is migratory, defensive, not aggressive (contra K. Lorenz and others). And though this idealized view of nomadic life is also seen in the Aboriginals (who are sometimes romanticized), the interplay of theme and specific subject-matter is awkward, blurry, repetitious. The least satisfying of Chatwin's explorations, then, but occasionally provocative in its ambitious reach - and crisply, vividly engaging as long as it sticks to first-hand Australia reportage. (Kirkus Reviews) |
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Author's Bio
Bruce Chatwin reinvented British travel writing with his first book, In Patagonia, and followed it with four other books, each unique and extraordinary. He died in 1989.
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