In Patagonia / The Songlines

The recurring complaint across both books is the same one: people Chatwin interviewed in Patagonia said afterward he misrepresented what they told him, and he himself later admitted The Songlines couldn't honestly be filed as fiction or non-fiction. A critic goes further, calling the book “a pretentious pile of racist drivel.” Style complaints run alongside the factual ones: readers describe the parade of new characters, saying the “narrative lurches about like a penguin on acid,” and flatly add “Chatwin can't write a travelogue for nuts.” In Patagonia centers European settlers almost to the exclusion of Argentine and Chilean voices, and the harshest Songlines readers call the use of material sacred within Aboriginal law “tainted by the egotism and essential dishonesty” at the project's core.