Planet and Glow-worm

"This anthology, arranged as a common-place book, was recommended to Bruce at his public school by an old lady in Marlborough’s White Horse Bookshop. It excited in him the fragmentary approach of the scrap-merchant, and he would base The Songlines on its structure, reworking his fictionalised journey in Australia into a collage of quotation and diary. Another influence was Cyril Connolly’s anthology-cum-journal The Unquiet Grave , which Chatwin described as “a book I return to again, so brilliant yet so terribly indicative of the pitfalls of English literary life.” He was particularly taken by Connolly’s cautionary advice to aspiring writers, “that the true function of the writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence … All excursions into journalism, broadcasting, propaganda and writing of films, however grandiose, are doomed to disappointment.”"