"This was my album of 1974, although it came out in 1973. I guess I was always catching up with Frank Zappa. The first album by him that I bought was Hot Rats, and I found that a rather irritating album of not very evolved guitar playing. Frank was a bit of a one-trick pony as a guitarist, but as a musician, arranger and bandleader of the traditional sort, he was at the top of the tree, although he wasn’t unique as a bandleader. There were by then other bandleaders in rock, blues and soul groups like BB King, James Brown and in England John Mayall. In America, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart were bandleaders of an apparently tough-cookie nature, although everyone who worked with Frank seems to have revered him as a musician and a person."

"This is travel writing at its best. As a boy, Chatwin was fascinated by a dried-up piece of skin and hair, said to be from a brontosaurus brought back from Patagonia by a distant cousin and and kept in a glass-fronted cabinet in his grandmother’s dining room. Chatwin’s musings about the brontosaurus eventually led to a trek through Patagonia described in ninety-seven brief chapters filled with sharp observations and crystal-clear prose, gem-like entries in a brilliant diary. The narrative meanders, just as Chatwin did on his journey. Passages describing the stark landscape are juxtaposed with profiles of people encountered, nuggets of historical lore, and the details of rugged overland travel. Readers who insist on a traditional narrative thread might be disappointed, even put off. But for me, Chatwin evokes a serene curiosity that I find ingratiating."