On this day in 1940 Bruce Chatwin was born. Even leaving out the literary controversy and the personality cult, Chatwin's life has dramatic scope -- middle-class Birmingham teenager to Sotheby's clerk, to art-world star, to ultima thule by backpack, to a handful of best-sellers, a burst of fame, and death at forty-eight. Adding the debate over the books and the author back in might shift the drama closer to opera, but few since Hemingway have attracted such attention, or been credited with establishing "a new definition of the Writer as Hero ... FULL STORY »
