Utz - Bruce Chatwin

 UTZ - BRUCE CHATWIN

Another book that I went into blind, not having a clue what it was about before starting it. Sometimes, of course, that's the best way. Bought on a whim for something to read when my train was cancelled and I had to catch a bus which means Great Western Railway are to thank/blame for this. Utz, by Bruce Chatwin. Consisting of 154 pages, so a relatively short read. Short enough to be read on a bus journey, at least.

It turns out that Utz is actually the name of a person - Kaspar Utz, to give him his full name - who is a collector of porcelain figurines. His hobby has amassed him a spectacular collection that he has managed to keep safe from the ravages of the Second World War and the subsequent imposition of Stalinism upon former Czechoslovakia where he lives. It has, however, become the focal point of his life to the extent that it has come to define his life, or so it would seem. Utz is the proverbial hunter captured by the game.

Utz keeps his collection of over a thousand figurines crammed in a tiny two-room flat where he resides, a reflection and result of his antipathy towards such beautiful objects being housed in museums.

'An object in a museum case' according to Utz 'must suffer the de-natured existence of an animal in the zoo. In any museum the object dies of suffocation and the public gaze. The collector's enemy is the museum curator. Ideally, museums should be looted every fifty years, and their collections returned to circulation.' In addition, he surmises that 'wars, pogroms, and revolutions offer excellent opportunities for the collector.'

The book starts with Utz's funeral attended by the author who by this process plants himself at the centre of the story. The author has only met Utz on just one occasion in the past but such a fascinating character was Utz that he is the perfect subject for a book. He is also the perfect pivot on which to spin ideas and points of interest which is what Bruce Chatwin as the author does, and it is here that the book excels. 

Alchemy, identity, entomology, idolatry, iconoclasm, the legend of the golem and obscure figures from history; all these things are woven around the story of a man in Czechoslovakia who collects something so apparently innocuous as porcelain figurines. All told and channeled through a sense of humour not too dissimilar from the wit and comedic eloquence of Vivian Stanshall when reciting the story of Sir Henry At Rawlinson End.

Utz, as in the book, is brilliant and clever, and little wonder it was shortlisted for the 1988 Booker Prize. It didn't win - the prize that year being taken by Peter Carey for his book Oscar And Lucinda - but it probably should have done.

John Serpico