Volume 35, Number 21 & 22 · January 19, 1989
The Songlines Quartet
By Bruce Chatwin
In the summer of 1986 I completed my book The Songlines under difficult conditions. I had in fact picked up a very rare fungus of the bone marrow in China. Certain I was going to die, I decided to finish the text and put myself into the hands of doctors. My work would then be done. The last third of the manuscript was a commonplace book of quotations and vignettes intended to back up the main line of argument. I put this into shape on sweltering summer days, wrapped in shawls, shivering with cold in front of the kitchen stove. It was a race for time.
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