 Several nineteenth and twentieth century writers influenced Chatwin 's work . The work of Robert Byron had an impact on Chatwin , who admitted to imitating his style when he first began making notes of his own travels . While in Patagonia he read In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway . Chatwin admired Hemingway for his spare prose . While writing In Patagonia , Chatwin strove to approach his writing as a " literary Cartier @-@ Bresson . " Chatwin 's biographer described the resulting prose as " quick snapshots of ordinary people . " Along with Hemingway and Cartier @-@ Bresson , Osip Mandelstam 's work strongly influenced Chatwin during the writing of In Patagonia . An admirer of Noël Coward , Chatwin found the breakfast scene in Private Lives helpful in learning to write dialogue . Once Chatwin began work on The Viceroy of Ouidah , he began studying the work of nineteenth @-@ century French authors , such as Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert . These writers would continue to influence Chatwin for the remainder of his life . 
