Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia is … concerned with the human agents who have failed to transform the ambiente there in the past hundred years or so. It is a work of travel, of observation and accident, but also of learning, reflection and art, and can stand in the curiously distinguished literary company that Patagonia has touched….

Frequently on the journey south from Buenos Aires the author walked. In ninety-seven passages of from a few lines to a few pages he covers the distance, and much else besides…. Bruce Chatwin's success in this short book is the more interesting because it is so exceptional.

It is a book about isolated people, but of very diverse origins; the reader must reflect that any man might be a Patagon-(Charles) Bruce Chatwin 1940– Photograph by Paul Kasminian…. As [William Henry] Hudson hinted, human weakness and oddity will show up more sharply against...