 Chatwin returned to the subject of art and objects during his career . In his early writing for the Sunday Times Magazine , he wrote about art and artists , and many of these articles Chatwin included in What Am I Doing Here . The main focus of Utz is on the impact the possession of art ( in this case porcelain figures ) has on a collector . Utz 's unwillingness to give up his porcelain collection kept him in Czechoslovakia even though he had the opportunity to live in the West . Chatwin constantly struggled with the conflicting desires to own beautiful items and to live in a space free of unnecessary objects . His distaste for the art world was the result of his days at Sotheby 's , and some of his final writing focused on this . The final section of What Am I Doing Here , " Tales from the Art World , " consists of four short stories on this topic . At the end of What Am I Doing Here , Chatwin shares an anecdote about advice he had received from Noël Coward , who told him " Never let anything artistic stand in your way . " Chatwin stated , " I 've always acted on that advice . " 
