Queer stylistics, unqueer politics: revisiting Bruce Chatwin

ABSTRACT

This essay considers Bruce Chatwin from a fresh perspective of queer stylistics. Special emphasis is laid on his cruising between fact and fiction in travel writing and his own life, as well as on his constant queering of generic and representational norms. The Chatwinesque style is defined here through its textual and generic transgressions, as part of which the Foucauldian-Barthesian and French feminist tactics of jouissance are reframed as a queer bodily practice. However, when read through queer theory, Chatwin’s output comes across as ridden with internal contradictions. While resembling queer practices of failing, cruising, or generally subversion, Chatwin’s works fail to align with queer ethics. It is so because his queer style is not so much used to critique the socio-cultural conventions of his times as for symbolic and economic success, marketed in the mainstream, heteronormative economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Bruce Chatwin
• The Songlines
• On the Black Hill
• queer stylistics
• the Chatwinesque style

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In his political loyalties, he often seemed elusive, wandering off in directions unbeknownst to anyone but himself, which made it impossible to specify what his views actually were.

2 In the case of The Songlines, that desire is primarily set on the dreaming tracks.

3 The practice is more evident in Chatwin’s other travel narrative, In Patagonia.

4 For a more detailed discussion, see Kłaniecki (2020, 43–51).

5 The English translation comes from (Schehr 1995, 105).

6 Even though Chatwin intended the book as a novel, its reception has been that of a travel narrative. I choose to read it as a failed travelogue for two reasons. Firstly, The Songlines largely resembles a travel narrative in that it is based on Chatwin’s travels and exploration of the dreaming tracks and that it has all the hallmarks of a travelogue, until it begins to disintegrate. This makes it seem an intentionally failed, that is deconstructed, travelogue rather than simply a novel. Secondly, its contribution to the widespread (mis-)understanding of what dreaming tracks actually are among Chatwin’s readers is a vulnerability that typically befalls non-fiction, rather than fiction.

7 The final version, according to Nicholas Shakespeare (1999, 383), was toned down in comparison to the first drafts of the novel, which had reportedly been much more explicit. Edmund White claimed that the “pretty gay” character of the novel had been eventually weakened, and the final, published version was “dully normal” (Shakespeare 1999, 124).

8 Referred to as “the decade of the gay novel”, the 1980s saw a rapid growth of the queer novel with such names paving the way as Edmund White, David Leavitt, Janette Winterson and Alan Hollinghurst, to name a few, which makes Chatwin’s reticence all the more noticeable.

9 This is not intended as criticism of Chatwin’s decision not to come out. Even though homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales when Chatwin was 27 years old, the stigma that was attached to homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s must have effectively discouraged Chatwin from considering a coming-out, regardless of his other personal motives.

10 Shakespeare reports that Chatwin had a number of male lovers, for example, an affair with Enrique in Argentina (1999, 293), other affairs in Brazil (1999, 335), and a relationship with Donald Richards (1999, 342–52).

11 Though a (un)coincidental part of his rise to fame, his queerness remained unacknowledged until his death in 1989.

12 In a note about its brand heritage, Moleskine confirms that its success is attributable to Bruce Chatwin. (‘Our Heritage’ 2023)

13 Traces of Chatwin’s socio-political engagement, if any, can be found in his letters. For example, in a 1988 letter to the London Review of Books, he complained of the bleak language used in a review of three books on AIDS that had been published by the London Review of Books (Chatwin 2011, 514–5). In a letter to his friend Cary Welch, he advocated against the use of the acronym AIDS (Chatwin 2011, 516–8).