Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin by Shakespeare Nicholas & Chatwin Bruce

Author:Shakespeare, Nicholas & Chatwin, Bruce [Shakespeare, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: VIKING ADULT
Published: 2011-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

To Sunil Sethi

L.6 Albany | Piccadilly | London | 29 April 1980

Dearest S.,

I have always wanted to have a letter from Macao: so the crumbling green portals of the Hotel Belavista were, to some extent, worth the sixth month wait.

I wouldn’t go anywhere near New York at the minute: the whole of the US has gone collectively barking as the Ayatollah himself. I was there three weeks ago to do some pre-publicity on The Viceroy of Ouidah (as the new book is called), and even intelligent friends, who last year were cosmopolitan liberals were shouting ‘Bomb Qom’: it’s one of those slogans, like ‘I like Ike ’536 which conceal a complete vacuity of purpose, yet nevertheless have the power to sway the millions. The shops in 42nd street were all selling the rifleman’s targets, presumably put out by some Gun Owner’s Association, with the Ayatollah’s photo superimposed, his nostrils being the bull’s eye.

I have a sneaking regard for him, as did Wilfred Thesiger,537 who when interviewed recently said: ‘You can’t blame him for not wanting his country littered up with plastic.’ One simply does believe in God’s angels when the helicopters came out of the sky.

I long, like you, to go to China, but have never been able to cope with the idea of constant supervision and red tape. Eve Arnold538 went for four months last year, even to Sinkiang and Lhasa, but although her photos were conventionally beautiful, nothing about the trip actually inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

If you stay in Hong Kong for any length of time I may visit you. It seems possible that In Patagonia will be translated into Japanese, and I’ve said I’ll accept a trip instead of an advance. I have a passion to see the North of Hokkaido, the Inland Sea and the Seamier side of Downtown Tokyo. I know a very entertaining cuss called Donald Ritchie,539 who is the world’s expert on the Japanese film and he had always made it sound astonishing.

No. Paul Theroux’s540 The Old Patagonian Express (such a cheat the title!) although it’s a success commercially is not good. He happens to be a friend of mine, though, and if I can’t quite stomach what he does, he is one of the more lively spirits around London. In November we gave a combined talk to the Royal Geographical Society, which completely bewildered types like Lord Hunt,541 as we took the audience breathlessly through a literary excursion to the Antipodes.

I, I might say, have started a new book – on a pair of Welsh hill farmers, identical twins who have slept in their mother’s bed for the past forty-three years. Marvellous subject, but do I have the poetic talent for it?

To go back to the previous paragraph – Paul and I appeared on a TV programme542 together with Jan Morris, in her/his twinset and pearls. Going back to London in the taxi she/he said: ‘I was so interested by what you said about the dangers of travel. You

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