UTZ - BRUCE CHATWIN

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When I lived in LA a few years ago, I lucked out and got to live in the same building as one of my best friends in the whole wide world, the big homie Nick. It was a fun year, I worked and explored LA and all that. Nick and I hung out a lot but during this time he was getting a master’s degree in english. My friends have always been more industrious than I. Anyway, the author that Nick specialized in, ie wrote his thesis on, was Bruce Chatwin. I didn’t know anything about Chatwin, nor did I read anything of his that year. I’m a bad friend. I recently saw this book at a local bookstore I have a lot of credit at and copped it. And I have to say, looks like I’ll have to read more Chatwin. This book was so wonderful and short and rich. The premise is really simple, it’s about a man named Utz who only cares about his collection of rare, beautiful porcelains and how he navigates life in communist Prague. The narrator only briefly meets Utz himself, we hear mostly from others and the story drips out slowly, so little “happens” that a lesser writer would have made it a short story. But you can tell Chatwin is at the height of his powers and confidence as an author (I believe this is the last thing he wrote) because the sentences are perfect and understated and the whole effect is light. He doesn’t beat you on the head with the themes or what collecting or porcelain or communist life is “about”. He trusts the reader to get all that, the characters mostly discuss 18th century giants and golems and spas. It’s nice to read something that trusts you as a reader. I’ll have to look into his non-fiction now. 68 immaculate porcelain figurines.