A Card from Angela Carter
28/02/12 03:20
Great interview with Susannah Clapp, Chatwin's friend, editor and memoirist at the Telegraph; talking of her new book 'A Card from Angela Carter', she references Bruce and a postcard joke at his expense:
'A very unlikely card, in a way, for Angela to send, is the Maori creation myth card. It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect her to be interested in. Her interest in mythology and fairy tale and the landscape of the unconscious was very different to that sort of overarching myth. She was much more drawn to individual mythologies, to Kleinian and Freudian explanations, and to fairy tales, which have a more precise and personal narrative.
I have a feeling that there’s a sort of half-joke at Bruce Chatwin’s expense in that choice of card. Angela would have known that some of the more extravagant claims that Bruce was making in The Songlines, about the origins of the unconscious, were not, perhaps, absolutely anthropologically accurate.'
The book is also well worth a read.
'A very unlikely card, in a way, for Angela to send, is the Maori creation myth card. It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect her to be interested in. Her interest in mythology and fairy tale and the landscape of the unconscious was very different to that sort of overarching myth. She was much more drawn to individual mythologies, to Kleinian and Freudian explanations, and to fairy tales, which have a more precise and personal narrative.
I have a feeling that there’s a sort of half-joke at Bruce Chatwin’s expense in that choice of card. Angela would have known that some of the more extravagant claims that Bruce was making in The Songlines, about the origins of the unconscious, were not, perhaps, absolutely anthropologically accurate.'
The book is also well worth a read.