Roberto Bolano

I started enjoying it a lot more after I posted how much I wasn't enjoying it.

the point about a poem is an interesting one, Cherish, cos I was sitting there thinking hmm shd this probably be a short poem? What's the stuff here that cdnt be in a poem. the accumulated stylistic monotony (I mean that neutrally) is one thing + now I'm getting on with it a bit better it feels about the right length for its fragments. getting a feel for this non place. fragmentary articulated film images.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/23/roberto-bolano-the-return-review

^short story collection

See there is a bk by Clarice Lispector out so maybe I ought to switch my attention from one dead South American author to another.

There are $ books by Clarice Lispector out:

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http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I7jugr599uY/T7sUEhFMu2I/AAAAAAAAK_I/nuR2RBv5NTk/s400/914.jpg

Got to hit my library again :)

i have the passion according to gh next to my bed right now, ive tried to get into it but really can't.

try this on for a first paragraph:

------ I'M SEARCHING, I'M SEARCHING. I'M trying to understand. Trying to give what I've lived to somebody else and I don't know to whom, but I don't want to keep what I lived. I don't know what to do with what I lived, I'm afraid of that profound disorder. I don't trust what happened to me. Did something happen to me that I, because i didn;t know how to live it, lived as something else? That's what I'd like to call disorganization, and I'd have the confidence to venture on, because i would know where to return afterward: to the previous organization. Id rather call it disorganization because I don't want to confirm myself in what I lived - in the confirmation of me I would lose the world as I had it, and I know I don't have the fortitude for another.

My reaction would be to keep reading to know what happened to her and how she lived, but maybe that's just me..

it goes on in that vein, i find it a real slog. the fact that i started it after reading the unnameable and it somehow makes that book seem a light, breezy read is pretty daunting to me. going to read something a bit easier instead, got mao II by delillo sitting around so might give that a bash instead.

back on topic, ive read one of stories alluded to in that piece about that new bolano collection (the one featuring necrophilia), but not the others. the way his stories are collected in spanish and english differs, i have a collection called cuentos that comprises a large chunk of his published short fiction but i really want to read the rest. i may even prefer his short stories to his novels, altho ive only read 2666 and savage detectives.

and 2666 is p much my favourite book of the last few decades so maybe im talking shite.

probably tied with infinite jest, jesus my taste is insufferable!

the third reich!!!

i never thought about it but nazis were kind of a wellspring for this guy huh

only totally

Certainly. His fascination w/Ernst Junger (a favourte of Adolf and the question of whether he was a fascist or not) ties into that.

at 135 pages i am less into the third reich than i was at 35 i guess

yup that was definitely a desk novel

So in 2666 and related narratives people struggle with something they're in the midst of, a part of living and killing history on the other side(s) of a curtain, just across the border. Call it Murder, Inc, but a non-profit, just played for kinky kicks, apparently. A hobby of gangsters, maybe. Nothing personal, just insatiably twisted. Spooky in a way a grand visionary conspiracy isn't. Not that the Nazis etc. don't figure, but we keep coming back to Santa Teresa. All those invalid writers in asylums, etc, have connections, even though they don't know it, and despite their lines of magnetism (they're figures of fascination for other characters), those are the same lines that lead us back. Even Archimboldi, who's lived through so much, and still roves the periphery of Europe at 80, is drawn into Santa Teresa, to sort it all out, or deal with it as he can. Disappears into that, as far as we know now (but I haven't read Woes of the True Policeman yet). It's the way things are.

As it still does occasionally, 2666 is finding its way through the traffic in my head tonight: the onslaught of monologues, but not to overload like in those early DeLillos: all the words find their voices again, still testifying, still trying to drown out the silence (of the killers, for instance, but also everything else waiting indifferently, obvliously, and thus ominously, at least for those of us who need the attention,or think we do)

this book is pretty unforgettable, i agree. i prefer early delillo though, to bolano's relentless, seemingly humorless bleakness. he really wants the reader to feel, palpably, the overwhelming cruelty that exists in the world, which is irreconcilable with most of the ways that people like to think about things. and this is, in a way, an ethical project... especially if it can sensitize people to the suffering of others in a way that allows them to be better "global citizens" or something. the issue is that, for bolano, a disillusioned ex-marxist iirc, i suspect this is impossible... that we are already too far gone, already living in the apocalypse but just don't realize it. so in this sense, the book feels -- at times -- somewhat gratuitous, even sadistic. but that's a part of why it's so powerful.

(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

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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