8 - A Man and His Things

Summary

A close reading of Bruce Chatwin's novel, Utz, illuminates the tangled relationships between man and his material things in his physical environment, thereby illustrating the rich reciprocity of psychoanalytic approaches to literature. The eponymous protagonist of Utz is obsessed with his valuable collection of Meissen figurines, shutting himself off from the external world and retreating to a world populated by material things – objects he can buy, sell, and manipulate. Utz is interpreted as a fictional proxy for its author, a former director at Sotheby’s, who had an intense relationship to the antiquities and artifacts that he collected, yet would periodically leave his home, loved ones, and collections to travel abroad. Chatwin’s Utz affords a model for the conflicts inherent in man’s relationships to things, which variously operate as symbols and trophies; as dehumanized substitutes for human relationships; as markers of domination and control; and as agents of self-creation. (148)