Roberto Bolano

(Not to dismiss early DeLillo--I was thinking of Americana and Great Jones Street, with many appealing set pieces, but they pile up)Tonight I'm thinking of the old witch lady on a Mexican talk show, who wants to drive the murdering bastards out; and the old African-American man, telling his story and how to eat right and live right--that's what I meant, at the moment I wrote it, by testifying, and it seemed like Bolano was gentle with those characters, and holding them up to say, "Hell yeah---see?" Raging in his cage, as much as an authorial god can allow himself to do (even if I didn't know he was dying, I think I would still think this) But yeah, by-his-bootstraps ex-Marxist exile still droppin' science etc, that too.

(dropping the other hobnail boot too; def relentless)

Like James Agee circa Let Us Now etc.: evan more than (or at least, in the midst of)art-in-your-face/King James Bible shitstorms/smell of brimstone looming, a gut reaction to the state of things is palpable.

maybe it's most similar to das kapital, especially the parts where marx leads you through the awful conditions of the factories and forces you, at the same time, to consider the relationships among people in a much bleaker way than you are accustomed to doing. so like, what you are seeing is in a sense familiar -- urban squalor in the case of marx, terrible violence in impoverished areas of latin america in bolano -- but due to the way it is presented, it is like you are seeing it all for the first time, and recognizing that you live in hell in a way that you haven't before. the main difference, i think, is that revolution/redemption seems out of reach in bolano's universe.

Yes, maybe especially like when Marx is writing with Engels. Also, it's like B.'s gotta be Walker Evans, seemingly austere, *and* Agee: deadpan and audacious. Dante and Virgil too (who are both Dante).

(but it can be pretty entertaining too, in different ways: the first section can seem like a Woody Allen movie at times, until...and no wonder that science fiction writer finally fell out of favor with Stalin!)

really concerned about the idea of bolano being 'humourless'

I think his is a kind of humorlessness that knows what humor is, and can mimic it, but ultimately the absurd elements if 2666 dont add up to levity, in my view.

Springtime 2010, and fancies lightly turn to what are you reading?

Interesting. I find lots of things, like Poe for instance, hilarious when other ppl dont comment as much on it. This wasnt my experience of 2666 though, clearly

'that's when the battle began. the visceral realists questioned álamo's critical system and he responded by calling them cut-rate surrealists and fake marxists. five members of the workshop backed him up; in other words, everyone but me and a skinny kid who always carried around a book by lewis carroll and never spoke.'

The Third Reich -- yea or nay?

Qualified yea - it's pretty obviously an earlier work while he was still finding his feet but the conceit is good and the central character is very funny. It's enjoyable enough if you don't expect anything near the level of The Savage Detectives or 2666.

Agreed, I enjoyed it. Sort of a mood piece, where the characters don't really act like humans but it's all internally consistent, reminded me of Lynch that way.

It also has the unexpected pleasure of Bolano talking about the Judge Dredd role-playing game

https://twitter.com/mookse/status/475153356780888064/photo/1

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpgVddACIAAtp1h.jpg

epigraph for bolaño’s a little lumpen novelita

Artaud otm

Hey! Some of my best friends are pigs.

I had a strange Bolaño-moment this week. In Bolaño's ´Between Parentheses´ he writes about the movie and book ´84 Charing Cross Road'. Watching that movie this week, I noticed that someone in the moview asks about a book on Archimboldi in a book shop. In the movie, Archimboldi's a graphic artist but I guess that's where Bolaño took his name from for ´2666´ (I havent´t read the book ´84 Charing Cross Road´ so I have no idea if his name is mentioned there).

I just finished Between Parenthesis. I'll need to find that film.

As a result of finishing the book I was doing some Bolano research tonight (or googling). Many (if not all the pieces) were written while he was feverishly writing 2666, so actually this turns into a keeper, something to read in parallel.

I made a little list of stuff to get (or keeping until it is translated):

Rodrigo Fresan - Mantra (not translated, although Kensington Gardens has been translated)
Juan Rodolfo Wilcock - The Temple of Iconoclasts
Jaime Bayly - I Love My Mommy (not trans.?)
Roberto Arlt - short stories (not sure, but there is a bk)
Rodrigo Rey Rosa - (couple of things knocking about)
Carmen Boullosa - (as above)

Bolano is clearly made by Argentinian writing from the 30s and 40s (the group around Borges although he talks about Macedonio Fernandez (whose Museum of Eterna's Novel has been translated), then Sabato (keep meaning to read The Tunnel), Arlt, Borges of course (he loves his poetry which isn't as well regarded in English at least) (he is the absolute central figure and why not..), Bioy, Ocampo (NYRB really helping here, the latter just issued).

Bolano does have this love/hate r/ship w/the Latin American boom, seems to love as originally conceived but then hate with an equal zeal because of what it became in the hands of Isabel Allende and the like. Then again he seemed to have made a ton of friends through writing - so combative but v sociable too. Really good newspaper reviewer.

On the poetry front he idolizes Parra (whom I've read now), likes Lihn (not a hope in finding) and then Catalan and Spanish poets I'm not going to find.

Sorry Macedonio Hernandez is the person who invented Borges

that movie is available in the itunes store. i need to reread ´Between Parentheses'.

apparently he was friends with javier cercas, who casts him in his novel ´soldiers of salamis´. i think the swordfighting-on-the-beach scene in ´the savage detectives´ is about him and enrique vila-matas.

there´s a spanish book called ´bolaño por si mismo´ which is quite good if you want to know more about his influences.

apparently he was friends with javier cercas, who casts him in his novel ´soldiers of salamis

Yeah Bolano reviews the book in Between Parentheses - such a strange reading experience..

like the poem from romantic dogs you posted several thousand years ago upthread, xyzzzz. waiting to pick it up from the library, read some in a bookstore & felt prepped to really like it.

Cool, I actually have only read a couple of poems from that myself.

I do not own any Bolano, its all read from libraries. The copy I see of 2666 is so horrible looking though.

The Rebeca Nodier bookstore is tended by Rebeca Nodier herself, an old woman in her eighties who is completely blind and wears unruly white dresses that match her dentures; armed with a cane and alerted by the creaky wooden floor, she hops up and introduces herself to everyone who walks into her store, I'm Rebeca Nodier, etc., finally asking in turn the name of the "lover of literature" she has the "pleasure of meeting" and inquires what kind of literature he or she is looking for. I told her that I was interested in my poetry, and to my surprise, Mrs. Nodier said all poets were bums but they weren't bad in bed. Especially if they don't have any money, she went on. Then she asked me how old I was. Seventeen, I said. Oh, you're still a pipsqueak, she exclaimed. And then: you're not planning to steal any of my books, are you? I promised her that I would rather die. We chatted for a while, and then I left.

thank you for that. Ms. Nodier deserves our boundless admiration.

There's now another theatrical adaptation of 2666 in Chicago, though this interview with its directors strangely never mentions the earlier attempt by Pablo Ley Fancelli and Alex Rigola in Barcelona, 2007: http://lithub.com/adapting-bolanos-unadaptable-masterpiece-for-the-stage/

i read Amulet last week and couldn't put it down. the reclusive painter honing in on Erigone and Orestes, Arturo Belano negotiating like he's in the mafia, the singing ghosts in the valley, Auxilio covering her missing teeth when she speaks. i enjoyed it despite not knowing anything about the Tlatelolco massacre, the topic the whole fucking book is dancing around. someday after i've learned one or two more things about the world i look forward to circling back to Amulet and reading it again.

the character of Auxilio was based off of the story of Alcira Soust Scaffo, who really did remain hidden in a bathroom for 15 days during the military's occupation of the university.

https://i.imgur.com/Rhl2fl6.jpg

https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Alcira-la-poeta-del-68-mexicano-entre-Roberto-Bolano-y-Jose-Revueltas

Distant Star is fuckin' great.

My favorite of his, so haunting and sad.

Been rereading Savage Detectives as well, now that I actually live in Mexico City it's so much fun recognizing all the places! Even the beginning has held up better than I thought, and how the second part gets more and more melancholy and mysterious as time moves on never fails to amaze me.

Had no idea I needed a novel about Roberto Bolaño, but holy shit, LAST WORDS ON EARTH by Javier Serena, translated by Katie Whittemore, coming from @open_letter this year is 🔥🔥🔥. Anyone who loves Bolaño or understands the uncompromising pursuit of literature will love this.

— Mark Haber (@markhaber713) April 28, 2021

After obsessing over this guy in my 30s, I honestly haven't thought much about him in a while. Mostly due to starting a family, but I also just burned out on him a bit. I should revisit one of his novellas. My favorite Bolano character type is the old friend/acquaintance who reappears in your life in an almost menacing way, now adrift and depressed, mumbling dark things to himself.

has much in common with Sebald in that respect

found out that a friend of mines parents are depicted in the savage detectives, in the first part of the book theyre part of the artistic milieu like a sculptor and... something, been a while since i read the book, and since he told me lol, not a close friend

Influencers!

lmao

Is that the foul-mouthed American woman?

yeah must be i know one of his parents is american

finishing up Distant Star rn, pretty good! I do like the concept of "how do you process it when someone in your little arts circle becomes a politically aligned psychotic murderer," because I am thinking of similar things now that I recently found out that someone I grew up with created a giant company that does new slavery or whatever.

for some reason this book is kinda reading like a musical to me, where things are happening in a semi-realistic way or whatever and then suddenly the plot takes off on these (kinda corny) flights of fancies and then comes down (like the skywriting poetry, or the the torture photography exhibit or w/e). Anyway, I tried to read him like 10-15 years ago and thought he was pretty overrated, couldn't get through anything, now I'm having a good time reading this book, not sure why. 10-15 years ago I was able to dive into Marias and Sebald and other more "it helps to be divorced to get it" authors, but whatever it's nice to have something to be into now.

"Aged 19, he ghosted the autobiography of Cliff Bastin, the former Arsenal and England player, and three years later wrote his first novel, The Reluctant Dictator (1952), about a footballer who becomes a leader of a south American republic."

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/may/18/brian-glanville-obituary

some thoughts on By Night in Chile

Two central images from the text are stuck in my mind. The first is the falcons used by various European parish priests as a means of controlling the pigeon population and therefore of preserving the structural integrity of their historic churches (by means of preventing a whole lot of pigeon shit from gumming up the roofs). It seems to me that this is both a commentary on the Catholic Church’s complicity in fascist movements worldwide, but also on the horrors that so many people are willing to tolerate if they feel at least that the old ways, always under threat from the forces of modernization and the incursion of the other, are being preserved. This is a violence that hovers above and swoops down suddenly and torrentially, and in this way the falcons recall the sky-writing that forms such a memorable part of Distant Star.

The second image is the naked body found hand-cuffed to a bed by a drunken theatre critic who finds himself wandering down the wrong hallway in the basement of the house where María Canales throws her parties. This is not a violence in the sky, but rather a subterranean violence, one that lurks beneath the surface of the uneasy artist soirées that were conducted in spite of the curfews during the Pinochet regime. There seems to be some kind of commentary here too about complicity, about the willful ignorance of intellectuals and artists who allowed their connections to fascism to sustain them, or who otherwise looked away, only to later hypocritically deny any kind of proximity to the horrors of disappearance and torture.

It’s hard to express in a write-up like this how terrifying both of these images are in the context of the book. Even writing them out like this, I don’t think I’ve really done justice to how these images truly come across in the course of the narrative. I’m thinking too that perhaps my analysis is too simplistic, or perhaps suffers from a poor understanding of Chilean history. In any case, I’m open to what others might have to say about this or any other parts of the book.

I read this maybe 15 years ago but your impressions match mine, which have been bubbling around in my head ever since. Especially living in a neighborhood filled with Catholics getting paid off the MAGA regime, seeing their houses get nice expensive renovations.

Bolano in general makes more sense as I get older and learn about the evil of institutions and violence against women. I should reread BNiC soon

Very nice post Cattedrale. I also read this book once about 15 years ago too and might be good to pick it up again.