Foundations: Roberto Bolaño's "The Skating Rink"

This doesn't happen with too many writers, but whenever I read a book by Roberto Bolaño, I feel a keen sense of excitement and anticipation, feelings that take me back to what I experienced when I first discovered The Savage Detectives. Since his death in 2003 and the rise in his international acclaim, the English translations of his works have been welcome, but I've long given up on trying to stay abreast with them, chronologically speaking. In the last few years, I've purchased more than a few of the original English hardcovers, some of which are still on my shelf waiting to be read, while I've realized I need to devote time to other writers, as much as I'd enjoy a Bolaño marathon. My last reading of his work (not including magazine/journal publications) was nearly two years ago, so I figured it was time to dust off one of the books I've had in my possession. In that time, a few issues have been raised regarding the sheer number of posthumous publications, which seem to appear at least once per year, but sometimes with two or three popping up every six months or so. He was stunning prolific, but does the weight of his output diminish his talent, since the publications include some of his "lesser" works? And, as I've touched upon before, did the rapid, near-universal praise that his work received lead to a sort of diminished appreciation? These thoughts can be valid as well as pointless. Even with his less-acclaimed work, there's at least a small literary value; he didn't write fluff or throwaway works, and the only "problem" I've personally encountered is trying to keep in mind the biographies of the characters who appear in various forms throughout his books. The idea of "smallness" works quite well in the Bolaño canon, especially when his themes are equally displayed in more compact works, just as they are in his longer ones. This holds true with The Skating Rink.

The novel is told by three male narrators in the seaside town of Z, outside Barcelona: Remo Morán, a business owner; Enric Rosquelles, an overweight civil servant; and Gaspar Heredia, a nightwatchman at a local campground. All three men are connected, both intimately and socially, with Nuria, a beautiful figure skater who has been dropped from the Olympic team. Other small but essential characters appear within the narrations: Carmen, an aging, eccentric opera singer; Caridad, a younger woman who constantly carries a knife, which is mentioned so often as to render obvious the clue in the ensuing mystery; and the Rookie, a seemingly dangerous man who hangs out in a small bar. Two major plot points are revealed right away, and the reader has to make sense of the ensuing "detective" story: Rosquelles, infatuated with Nuria, builds her a skating rink in an abandoned mansion, a scandal because the rink is believed to have been built with laundered public funds. This rink becomes a murder scene, and the three interlocking narrations become explorations of potential evidence. The three men have strong opinions of each other, and the challenge lies in determining who is telling the honest side of the story. The details alternate between blatant and subtle. For example, Moran makes two early mentions of Heredia, nearly identical save for one major detail:

"We were adolescents, all of us, but seasoned already, and poets, so we laughed. The stranger's name was Gaspar Heredia, Gasparin to his casual friends and enemies (Bolaño 1)."

"It's true: in May I found a job for Gaspar Heredia, Gasparin to his friends, a Mexican, a poet, and flat broke at the time (Bolaño 7)."

While the murder mystery is the focal point, the surrounding details are as fascinating in their own right. Originally published in 1993, The Skating Rink was one of Bolaño's first published novels, and for an early effort, it still manages to preview the styles and themes for which he'd become renowned: the eerie, sometimes detached account of murders, sociological and civic corruption and disorder, and creative characters devoted to living their lives as they personally see fit. In various stretches of the narrative, the reader can sometimes forget about the mystery aspect and get lost in the beautiful details, some of which become essential to the resolution.

"The music was the 'Fire Dance,' by Manuel de Falla, and I could see the skater's torso moving in time with it as she lifted her arms, doing a clumsy yet somehow affecting imitation of a devotee offering a gift to a tiny invisible deity. The rest--the ice, the girl's legs, her silver skates--were mainly hidden by piles of packing cases left there to block the way and make the place look like an amphitheater when viewed from the rink, although as I made my way around them, they seemed to form something more like a miniature labyrinth. For a start all I could see was the girl's back, her arms curved in an ethereal embrace and the spotlights shining onto the ice, which reminded me of the lights around a boxing ring in Tijuana (Bolaño 61)."

Some of the passages exploring the down on their luck characters are striking, insofar as they create an aura of small-town life that reveals the universality of the downtrodden. I don't know how much of this is from Bolaño's original writing or Chris Andrew's translation, but it adds an atmosphere that would be right at home in an American mystery novel or film:

"I'm a rookie in this hell-hole of a town, said the Rookie when I asked him how he got his name. A rookie, a newbie at the age of forty-eight, a hick who doesn't know his way around the traps, and has no friends to help him out. He earned a bit of money salvaging stuff from dumpsters, and spent the rest of the day hanging around bars away from the beach, on the edges of Z, where the tourists don't go, or clinging like a limpet to the ever-unpredictable Carmen (Bolaño 89)."

The political scandal also has distinct airs that would be right at home in film noir:

"And if they ignore you, what will you do? If who ignores me, cutie? The people at City Hall, the mayor's man, everyone...Carmen burst out laughing, her teeth were chipped and uneven, and most of her molars were gone, but her jaw, by contrast, was strong and well-formed, the sort that holds firm when things are falling apart. You don't know what I have on them, she said, you don't know what a fuss I'm prepared to kick up. You and Caridad? Me and Caridad, said the singer, two heads are better than one...(Bolaño 94)."

Given my previous mention of the similarities that surround Bolaño's works, it's too easy to make connections between this early work and his later ones. However, for anyone even partly familiar with his writing, it's impossible not to think ahead to his later, more detailed works. For example, one of the chapter openings feels as if it was directly lifted from 2666:

"The days that preceded the discovery of the body were undeniably strange: freshly painted inside and out, and silent, as if we could somehow all sense the imminence of a calamity. I remember during my second year in Z, the body of a teenage girl, almost a child, was found in a vacant lot; she'd been killed and raped. The killer was never found. Around that time there was a series of murders, all fitting the same pattern: they began in Tarragona and moved up the coast, leaving a trail of bodies (girls killed and raped, in that order) all the way to Port Bou, as if the killer was a tourist on the way home, but a very leisurely tourist, because a whole summer season elapsed between the first and the last of the crimes (Bolaño 99)."

Again, these details are more or less related to the plot, and the revelation of the killer almost becomes an afterthought toward the novel's end; it's the attention to those details, both big and small, that makes The Skating Rink such a satisfying work. Sympathy for the characters come and go, along with the realization that, as a reader, you're trying to determine the motives and potential lies of the narrators. Therefore, the book is a murder mystery in name only. There's so much more beneath the surface, and getting lost in the asides is not a distraction. Returning to my introductory note about reading the works of Roberto Bolaño in chronological order: it would have been fascinating to read this work before The Savage Detectives and 2666. The hallmarks--poets, murders, and conflicting narrations--are there, and while The Skating Rink is not at all an introduction, it's a fascinating look at the ways Bolaño handled encompassing themes in a tidy format before moving on to more complex works. Yes, this is a murder mystery, but the build-up offers more satisfaction than the resolution. I've read and enjoyed his shorter works before, but since I finished it, this novel has stayed with me more.

Work Cited:
Bolaño, Roberto. The Skating Rink. Copyright 1993 by The Heirs Of Roberto Bolaño. Translation copyright 2009 by Chris Andrews.

The Immensity Of Spaces: "Antwerp"

"When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after--memoria hospitis unius diei praetereunitus--the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me. I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me?"--Pascal (opening quote of Antwerp)




My readings and essays have been unusually current in the past month, and the review I'm posting to open September is no different. After my readings of David Mitchell and Gary Shteyngart, and before I began reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, which was published last week, I decided to bridge the gap with a look at Roberto Bolaño's Antwerp, a very slim early novel, one of several published this year by New Directions. Reviews and fanfare of this work are very minimal; casual Google searches have yielded few discussions or analysis, but I happily stumbled upon another book blog called The Mookse and the Gripes. In addition to being an excellent contemporary resource, the author of the site's Antwerp review made a simple statement, but one that highlights some of the critiques of Bolaño: "I always have doubts when I approach Bolaño, like I’ll realize what many suspect: that there’s nothing there." In past reviews, I hinted at the overwhelming speed at which the late author's works have been published. While I've long been a furious supporter of Bolaño's works, I can see the argument. He considered himself a poet more than a novelist, and many of his novels, even his greatest ones--The Savage Detectives and 2666--are long on beautiful stretches of narrative that may or may not advance the plots of the given works. As I found in Antwerp, even his sketches can be read as poetry in novel's clothing.

The novel (or, more appropriately, novella...or, even more appropriately, poetic novella) was published in English this year, and represents one of the earliest pieces by Bolaño. As he writes in the introduction: "I wrote this book for myself, and even that I can't be sure of. For a long time these were just loose pages that I reread and maybe tinkered with, convinced I had no time. But time for what?" It's composed of fifty-six chapters, none of which exceed two pages in length, and revolves around distinct yet intentionally blurry characters. Bolaño himself appears as the narrator, alongside a hunchback, an Englishman, a young woman in a possibly dangerous sexual relationship with a police officer, and unsolved murders at a campground. The natural inclination is that Antwerp is a mystery novella, but the reader isn't meant to solve anything. The characters come and go, and the initial confusion is filled in with incredibly detailed descriptions.

"The Englishman spotted him through the bushes. He walked away, treading on pine needles. It was probably eight o'clock and the sun was setting in the hills. The Englishman turned and said something to him but he couldn't hear a thing. It occurred to him that it had been days since he'd heard the crickets chirping. The Englishman moves his lips but all that reached him was the silence of the branches moving in the wind. He got up, his leg hurt, he felt for cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket (Bolaño 40)."

There are also semi-philosophical musings that, depending on one's appreciation of Bolaño, can be viewed as insightful or nonsensical:

"To name is to praise, said the girl (eighteen, a poet, long hair). The hour of the ambulance parked in the alley. The medic stubbed out his cigarette on his shoe, then lumbered forward like a bear. I wish those miserable people in the windows would turn out the lights and go to sleep. Who was the first human being to look out a window? (Applause.) People are tired, it wouldn't surprise me if one of these days they greeted us with a hail of bullets. I guess a monkey. I can't string two words together. I can't express myself coherently or write what I want. I should probably give up everything and go away, isn't that was Teresa of Avila did (Bolaño 12)?"




The quote on the back of the English publication of Antwerp is one that has been quoted numerous times. Bolaño stated that Antwerp was "the only novel that doesn't embarrass me." While this may be an unabashed defense of the writer, I feel that two different hypotheses could be used to counteract any criticism levied on this title. One, he never intended to have it published. As he said in the quote I cited above, it began as a scattered collection. Perhaps (and this is obviously just my own opinion) he viewed Antwerp as less embarrassing is precisely the same reason it might be viewed as one of his lesser works. It's definitely his least "novel-like" story, and while it may be the trials and errors of someone discovering his literary voice, there's a definite atmosphere of someone more inclined to poetry attempting to fashion a novel. Two, it reads like a personal notebook draft. Yes, it could have been edited and shaped into a more coherent, "tidy" work, but it holds up well on its own, and virtually demands re-readings (I'm currently up to two, not including multiple looks at the varying chapters). Will this only appeal to Bolaño completists? Perhaps. But even in his younger years, his intelligence, gift for descriptions, and confidence are very evident. One of the best examples is Chapter 20, entitled "Synopsis. The Wind." In the chapter, which I'll cite in its entirety, Bolaño sums up the plot of Antwerp, adds a few poetic flourishes at the end, and seems to present it as a tongue-in-cheek look at the book as a whole. I do recommend Antwerp, because in all of its confusion and possible meanings, it requires a lot of thought, and at the very least, provides wonderful poetic inclinations and healthy surrealism, depending on a reader's state of mind.

"Synopsis. The hunchback in the woods near the campground and the tennis courts and the riding school. In Barcelona a South American is dying in a foul-smelling room. Police dragnets. Cops who fuck nameless girls. The English writer talks to the hunchback in the woods. Death throes and an asshole from South America, on the road. Five or six waiters return to the hotel along a deserted beach. Stirrings of fall. The wind whips up sand and buries them (Bolaño 29)."

Work Cited:
Bolaño, Roberto. Antwerp. Copyright 2002 by Roberto Bolaño. Translation copyright 2010 by Natasha Wimmer.

Courage and Mirrors

A lot of my recent posts have been devoted to readings of authors who I've written about before, done in the interest of both making connections between texts and creating a sort of personal and open bibliography in the number of essays that I've written. I'm hoping that, for myself and others who frequent this blog, in due time there will be a decent number of links and multiple reviews of singular writers, available for both entertainment and literary purposes, with notes and essays representing my humble views on said works. With these ideas in mind, I recently finished reading Amulet (first English translation published in 2005), one of the smaller novels by one of my favorites, Roberto Bolano. I've given his writings the most attention here, at least in terms of the number of essays that I've posted on given writers and their works. Of course, I haven't been alone in singing his praises, nor do I claim to have "discovered" him before he became relevant in mainstream literary consciousness. Awhile back, I remember reading an essay on Bolano's works as a whole, with the underlying question being "how much attention is too much?" Despite his undeniable literary merits and his gifts of storytelling in his lifetime (1953-2003), it's sometimes hard to see through the haze of celebratory fireworks. While I've done my own reviews with scholarly intentions, there have been times where I've been lost in my own gushing over his novels, reveling in the excitement of having personally discovered such a talent. In both deep and superficial ways, it's one of the joys of arts and literature.

Amulet tells the first person account of Auxilio Lacouture, an eccentric woman who calls herself "the mother of Mexican poetry." She hails from Uruguay, but ends up in Mexico City, "exactly where my wanderings took me." Her story is reliable as a whole, but there's an unmistakable feeling that she either embellishes some of her details or skims over some important parts. This may seem oxymoronic, but this passage towards the beginning of the work could be read as an example of glossing or of succinct, logical details. After moving to Mexico City, she becomes an impromptu housekeeper for two revered Spanish poets:

"I orbited around those two great Spaniards, those universal minds, moved by a poet's passion and the boundless devotion of an English nurse or of a little sister looking after her older brothers. Like me, they were wanderers, although for very different reasons; nobody drove me out of Montevideo; one day I simply decided to leave and go to Buenos Aires, and after a few months or maybe a year in Buenos Aires, I decided to keep traveling, because by then I already knew that Mexico was my destiny and I knew that Leon Felipe was living in Mexico, and although I wasn't sure whether Don Pedro Garfias was living here too, deep down I think I could sense it (Bolano 3)."

The majority of the novel revolves around the stories and flashbacks had by Lacouture during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre of Mexican students and protesters by the Mexican government. When the massacre starts, Lacouture is in the women's bathroom of the university, and ends up hiding there for twelve days, during which she shares her stories and experiences some equally scary but intriguing hallucinations. Given the scale of the killings, her account of the happens is almost creepy in its simplicity, as if she cannot fully comprehend what's happening. Bolano shows great skill in this rendering, given that psychologically, some people would be in such shock that clarity becomes heightened.

"What did I do then? What anyone would have done: I went to a window and looked down and saw the soldiers, then I went to another window and saw tanks, and then to another, the one at the end of the corridor (I bounded down that corridor like a woman raised from the dead) and there I saw trucks, and the riot police and some plainclothes cops bundling the students and professors they'd arrested into the trucks, like something from a movie about the Second World War...but with little phosphorescent figures (Bolano 25)."

The bathroom scene struck me as vaguely familiar, and then I realized that Lacouture was one of the dozens of "interviews" in Bolano's novel The Savage Detectives. The links between these two novels doesn't stop there, but also reflect themselves with Lacouture's meetings and friendship with one of the main characters in The Savage Detectives, Arturo Belano. Lacouture is open about her sexual encounters with the poets she meets, but she becomes more of a mother figure to the young Belano. There's a vague distance between the two, but also signs of immediate respect. Belano was such a central figure in the other novel, and in Amulet it's compelling to have even further personality sketches.

"I went over and talked to him, covering my mouth with my hand, and he looked me in the eye, looked at the back of my hand, and didn't ask why I was covering my mouth [Lacouture's teeth had fallen out], but I think he guessed straight away, unlike the others, I mean he guessed the deeper reason, the ultimate dignity that obliged me to cover my lips, and it didn't matter to him.
That night I made friends with him, in spite of the difference in our ages, and all the other differences! I was the one who introduced him, some weeks later, to the poetry of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and T.S. Eliot (Bolano 38)."

A friend of mine who introduced me to the works of David Mitchell pointed out Mitchell's habits of inserting characters from his previous novels into his later ones, creating a web of interconnections, even if a specific character is only minor in one work yet central in another. However, and this is not to slight Mitchell's use of the device, Bolano uses it more to create a fuller fictional bibliography and history in his novels. In Nazi Literature in the Americas, he created fictional essays and lists of book publications that read like a real encyclopedia; in his other novels, he's attempting to create a real world in the midst of fiction, not making his characters grander than they need to be, but showing how "real" they are, even in simple storytelling.

Amulet has been (mistakenly) called a companion piece to The Savage Detectives, but with the end of the novel, it's clear that Bolano's preferences for poetry have taken over, and as beautiful as the writing is, the hallucination scenes are almost too abrupt, turning into a poem-like closure, but one that's not emotionally connected to the storytelling side of the story. Lacouture, for all of her happenings, becomes at best an enigma, a sort of mouthpiece for Bolano's expertly crafted assortment of the Mexican poetry scene. Despite being abrupt, the final pages are haunting, leaving themselves open to much interpretation, from the blood-stained history of Mexico to its academic/poetry scenes, and to the combination of the two. Her hallucination involves children singing as they fall into oblivion, and whether this is done out of stupidity or innocence, the effect is beautifully chilling. I'll close with one of the final paragraphs. In addition to what I've stated above, the literary metaphors are obvious, but not in an expected way, but instead heartbreaking.

"So the ghost-children marched down the valley and fell into the abyss. Their passage was brief. And their ghost-song or its echo, which is almost to say the echo of nothingness, went on marching, I could hear it marching on at the same pace, the pace of courage and generosity. A barely audible song, a song of war and love, because although the children were clearly marching to war, the way they marched recalled the superb, theatrical attitudes of love (Bolano 184)."

Work Cited:
Bolano, Roberto. Amulet. Copyright 1999 by the Heirs of Roberto Bolano. Translation copyright 2006 by Chris Andrews.

Blushing Less

A brief note before I get into thoughts on Roberto Bolano's poetry. In the past, this post would have immediately been filed under a "Casual Friday" heading. While I do plan on keeping that theme available for more light poetry topics, I'm more embarrassed by it than not. In the past few months, my scope, appreciation, and understanding of poetics has increased dramatically. While I do not claim to be any kind of expert or scholar in this field, I've found myself reading much more of the form as well as writing my own at a pretty substantial pace. These feelings began to take shape after I wrote my last poetry update on John Berryman. Not only was I not pleased with the quality of my analysis, the idea that I had casually lumped an esteemed poet into such a flippant categorization ultimately meant that I was at best missing the point and themes of the poems, and at worst I was demeaning the writer and not taking the proper time to engage myself with the nuances of various poetic forms.

Now, keeping this personal criticism going, I felt even worse about all of this after I read The Romantic Dogs, the first English language collection of Roberto Bolano's poetry. I've written about and studied his novels in great depth, with great time, and given that Bolano considered himself a poet above all else, perhaps I should have stumbled across this collection a lot sooner. A few months ago, I wouldn't have given a second thought to referring to the late Bolano as a "novelist." Even after more studying of his life and works, I might have upgraded (only to prolong the inevitable) this to referring to him as a "writer." Now, with a decent understanding of his mission, along with a few weeks of reading his poetry, it's more respectful, not to mention apt, to refer to him as a "poet." This is how he referred to himself during his lifetime ("The poetry makes me blush less"), so, at least for myself, that is how I will signify him, from here and into the future, encompassing any writings and essays in which he is my subject, poetically or fictionally.

With all of this said, I could not help but notice a striking similarity between some of the subjects of his poems as well as the subjects (and obvious/latent themes) in the novels of his that I have read. I'm not attempting to make the fatal mistake of blurring of confusing the distinction between a writer's poetry and fiction, especially given that Bolano clearly found fiction to be a sort of lesser art, a lesser canvas for his messages and talents. However, I found it virtually impossible to NOT think of the novel The Savage Detectives as I read the poem "The Lost Detectives."

"Detectives lost in the dark city.
I heard their moans.
I heard their footsteps in the Teen Theater.
A voice coming on like an arrow.
Shadows of cafes and parks,
Adolescent hangouts.
Detectives who stare at
Their open palms,
Destiny stained by their own blood.
And you can't even recall
Where the wound was,
The faces you once loved,
The woman who saved your life (Bolano 47)."

Considering that the novel focuses on two wandering, conflicted, yet self-assured poets through their travels and exploits in Mexico and beyond,

"Shadows of cafes and parks,
Adolescent hangouts"

acts as a brief glimpse into the dizzying scenes in The Savage Detectives. On the flip side, as I write this, I'm also reminded of Juan de Dios Martinez, the earnest yet equally conflicted detective featured in the novel 2666.

"Detectives who stare at
Their open palms,
Destiny stained by their own blood."

Of course, making these kinds of simple connections might seem almost too easy, but to me, it shows how Bolano's devotion to poetry was manifested into his novels. While I'm still in the process of reading his complete bibliography, I can only imagine that his other novels can be tied into some of his other poems, not limited to the pieces that appear in The Romantic Dogs. However, to respect his work as a poet, I'd like to close with a look at one of the poems as its own piece, separated from any connection to his fictional works.

"RAIN"

"It's raining and you say it's as if the clouds
were crying. Then cover your mouth and speed up
your step. As if those emaciated clouds were crying?
Impossible. So then, why all this rage,
This desperation that'll bring us all to hell?
Nature hides some of her methods
in Mystery, her stepbrother. And so, sooner than
you think, this afternoon you consider
an afternoon of the apocalypse, will seem nothing but
a melancholy afternoon, an afternoon of loneliness lost
in memory: Nature's mirror. Or maybe
you'll forget it. Rain, weeping, your footsteps
resounding on the cliff-walk. They don't matter.
Right now you can cry and let your image dissolve
on the windshields of cars parked along
the Boardwalk. But you can't lose yourself (83)."

While the gender of this poem's subject is left undefined (and at first glance irrelevant), it's not out of the question to think that the subject is a man. Bolano was adept at, whether through stereotype (crude, unemoting thugs) or reality (a gifted ladies' man who happens to be bisexual), masculinity in all its forms. However, ultimately the gender is not important, since the happenings are universal. Melancholy, rainy afternoons can fill anyone with a sense of foreboding, dread, or keen awareness. The imagery of Mystery being Nature's stepbrother is almost perfect, and could very well nod towards the sometimes dysfunctional relationship between science and spirituality (perhaps I'm reaching just a bit, but I feel there's some stock in that reading of the line).

No matter who you are or how you view yourself emotionally, there are some days and moments in which a simple thing (such as a humanized view of a cloud, in this instance) can trigger deeper, more complex thoughts. Ultimately, this is the genius of Roberto Bolano the poet. He can accurately depict all things local, political, and creative, yet at the core of these ideas is the simplicity and the complexity of all human emotions.

Work Cited:
Bolano, Roberto. The Romantic Dogs. Copyright 2006 by The Heirs of Roberto Bolano. Translation copyright 2008 by Laura Healy.

Heroic Art, Superstitious Interpretations

After roughly two months, I recently finished reading Roberto Bolano's 2666, probably the most exciting, heralded novel of 2008 (the English translation). After a reading of any text, I always allow a day or two before attempting to write about it. This personal rule seems imperative in the wake of this novel, given its sheer size, in terms of page length and in terms of information. Anybody reading this opening paragraph will be forgiven for thinking that these sentences seem more appropriate for a tenth-grade term paper. There is simply no way to pick an appropriate starting point for an analysis of 2666. As with Bolano's previous novels, the pages demand attention and multiple readings.

A brief sketch of the events presented in its pages will give an idea of how vast and intertwined the novel is as a whole. Four professors, scholars of a reclusive, mysterious writer named Benno von Archimboldi, try to find the writer (and ultimately themselves) in a flurry of conferences, intercontinental travel, sex, nightmares, and the fictional Mexican town of Santa Teresa. Another professor is both bemused by his unstable ex-wife, haunted by voices, and seemingly on the verge of insanity (or perfect clarity). A New York journalist gets caught up with a mysterious woman while on assignment to cover a boxing match in Mexico. Hundreds of women, mostly working class teenagers and women in their twenties, are brutally raped and slaughtered. A young German writer experiences war and complex relationships (both familial and social) in World War II and the ensuing fifty years until the present. As is expected from Bolano, these characters and developments are presented both as singular entities as well as painstakingly connected fabrics. However, despite the connections, the passages can be looked at individually. In fact, Bolano's intention was for the five chapters to be published one at a time as a way to provide financially for his family. Luckily, his heirs (as noted in a brief introduction to the text) saw the need for 2666 to be published as a whole.

The opening chapter is a wonderful example of Bolano's gift for varying literary styles. The adventures (and misadventures) of the four professors spin between academic mystery, cinematic love affairs, and Bolano's incredible attention to detail. Take this passage, which is rendered carefully described and ends on a wonderfully abrupt note:

"Three days after the meeting with Archimboldi's publisher, [Pelletier] showed up in London unannounced, and after telling Liz Norton the latest news, he invited her to dinner at a restaurant in Hammersmith that a colleague in the Russian department had recommended, where they ate goulash and chickpea puree with beets and fish macerated in lemon with yogurt, a dinner with candles and violins and real Russian waiters and Irish waiters disguised as Russians, all of it excessive from any point of view, and somewhat rustic and dubious from a gastronomic point of view, and they had vodka with their dinner and a bottle of Bordeaux, and the whole meal cost Pelletier an arm and a leg, but it was worth it because then Norton invited him home, officially to discuss Archimboldi and the few things that Mrs. Bubis had revealed, including, of course, the critic Schleiermacher's contemptuous appraisal of Archimboldi's first book, and then both of them started to laugh and Pelletier kissed Norton on the lips, with great tact, and she kissed him back much more ardently, thanks possibly to the dinner and the vodka and the Bordeaux, but Pelletier thought it showed promise, and then they went to bed and screwed for an hour until Norton fell asleep (Bolano 29-30)."

The longest chapter of the novel describes with sickening (yet coldly detached) descriptions of the rapes, murders, and tortures of dozens of working class women in Santa Teresa. These passages sometimes last no more than a paragraph, moving almost like the killer(s)--quick, accurate, and moving on to the next victim very matter-of-fact. Suspects are arrested and released, most of whom are clearly innocent, but victims of a corrupt, ineffective Mexican police system. However, in the middle of this chaos is probably the second-most important character, police investigator Juan de Dios Martinez. While he genuinely wants to have the murders solved, he understands the impossibility of that happening, especially with the lackluster colleagues at his disposal. He's detached, yet his emotions come achingly close to being expressed. It's the classic cliche of the veteran American police officer/detective, familiar from the days of pulp novels as well as modern cinema and television. However, Bolano creates Martinez originally, with a Mexican backdrop, and even adds the occasional North American police officer as a subtle point of comparison. Martinez has feelings for the director of a mental hospital, an older woman partly involved in the murder investigation. His obvious emotions towards the case are mirrored in the emotions he wants to express to the woman:

"Sometimes Juan de Dios Martinez would sit and think how he wished he knew more about the director's life. For example, her friendships. Who were her friends? He didn't know any of them, except for a few employees at the psychiatric center, people the director treated warmly but also kept at arm's length. Did she have friends? He suspected she did, although she never talked about it. One night, after they had made love, he told her he wanted to know more about her life. The director said he already knew more than enough. Juan de Dios Martinez didn't insist (423)."

The final chapter partly takes place in Nazi Germany before fast-forwarding through fifty years of developments that tie up the mysteries while leaving some obvious questions unanswered. One of the scenes has a wonderful discussion of culture that is reminiscent of the closing library scene of Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler:

"Hoensch said that culture was a chain of links composed of heroic art and superstitious interpretations. The young scholar Popescu said culture was a symbol in the shape of a life buoy. The Baroness Von Zumpe said culture was essentially pleasure, anything that provided or bestowed pleasure, and the rest was just charlatanry. The SS officer said culture was the call of the blood, a call better heard by night than by day, and also, he said, a decoder of fate. General Von Berenberg said culture was Bach and that was enough for him...The life of a man is comparable only to the life of another man. The life of a man, he said, is only long enough to fully enjoy the works of another man (683)."

These final two sentences of the passage seem open to interpretation, and to me, they fit well into the meaning of Benno von Archimboldi, and therefore, the complete arc of 2666. His life is written about both in detail and with mystery, his writings and existence shaping (both intentionally and otherwise) the lives of the other men and women of the novel. The professors whose stories begin the tale are not content to know Archimboldi's life through his work. Their research and determination are staggering, with the occasional dead end, but their lives are comparable to the life of Archimboldi. Deep down, their lives are long enough to enjoy his works.

2666 continues a theme that I've noticed in literature both past and present, a theme hinted at in my mention of If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. There is probably a term for this that has simply slipped my mind, and it's the idea of novels presenting characters and events so detailed and definitive, yet completely open to other strains of interpretation, and perhaps contradiction. This work does not have the romance of The Savage Detectives, yet this is worth the hype of being considered Bolano's masterpiece. The themes of literature, identity, and landscapes are classic, yet he shapes them as a stunning maze. As I mentioned above, these descriptions may not be as strong as they should be, but multiple readings of 2666 will undoubtedly bring more to these discussions in the coming years.

Work Cited:
Bolano, Roberto. 2666. Copyright 2004 By the Heirs of Roberto Bolano.

NOTE:

The Underrated Blog-a-Thon starts on Monday! Click the link for full details, and multiple submissions are welcome. If you're contributing, either shoot me an e-mail or post a comment on the original announcement link (here). I can't wait to read the contributions. Let me know if you have any questions. Also, it runs until Friday, so there's a bit of breathing room if you'd like to contribute, but don't have any ideas at the moment.

Evil Geniuses

Last month, in an attempt to brush up on philosophy texts that have flown under my radar, I read Martin Heidegger's Poetry Language Thought. I remembered that his other works were touched upon briefly in some of my college courses, and recent research on him brought up something that I had totally forgotten about--his link to Nazism. I don't know the full history of his relationship to that ideology (save for some very generic bullet points), I do know that some of his supporters attempted to soften the blow of such a connection. There are two very distinct points of view at play here: one side will say that in Europe during World War II, the choice was very clear, that one could choose to superficially "accept" Nazism or lose their well-being (or life) otherwise. The other side will say that any acceptance equals guilt, regardless of whether or not a person was trying to save his or her own life. My point is that Heidegger wrote some of the most influential philosophy texts in history, yet will always be linked to one of the most horrendous "philosophies" in history as well. It's a staggering dynamic--how can an outside observer balance someone's contributions along with someone's evils, especially with something as evil as Nazism? This being said, had Heidegger been a fictional character, he very well would have been one of the many composites in Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature In the Americas (first published in English in 2008).

I went into reading this Bolano text trying to be as impartial as possible, given the fact that I was still feeling the amazing awe of The Savage Detectives. Nazi Literature In the Americas is a vastly different work, both in themes and length. Instead of providing us with hundreds of pages devoted to exploring the lives of imaginary, generally admirable (though faulted) writers, Bolano writes very brief biographical sketches of writers from North, Central, and South America, all of whom (explicitly or not) are connected to Nazism or Nazi sympathies. While these are fictionalized descriptions, readers cannot help but get caught up in Bolano's attention to detail, describing, in precise detail, the writers and lifestyles of these artists. In the same sense of The Savage Detectives, I found myself admiring the prodigious outputs and hedonistic tendencies, since the idea of Nazism is not pointed out on every page. At times, it came as a suckerpunch, nodding along with the lifestyles, only to be reminded of the sometimes latent theme of evil. This is where my introduction on Heidegger comes into view--the writers in Nazi Literature In the Americas are brilliant, yet the idea is that a seriously faulted ideology is lurking below the surface.

Bolano also employs the "dust-fucker" style of comparisons (for the origins and explanations of this term, click here). Again, as evil as Nazism is, some of the writers in the novel are more extreme than others--in short, Bolano has characters who are even worse Nazis than others. Take these passages, for example:

"The failure of her marriage plunged Luz into despair. She took to drinking in dives and having affairs with some of the most unsavory individuals in Buenos Aires. Her well-known poem "I Was Happy With Hitler," misunderstood by the Right and the Left alike, dates from this period (21)."

"...[Borda's] mere existence, in short, brought out the basest, most deeply hidden instincts in the people whose paths he crossed, for one reason or another, in the course of his life. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that any of this demoralized him. In his Diaries he blames the Jews and usurers for everything (109)."

In the hands of a lesser writer, a book such as this could have merely turned into a catalogue of depraved individuals. With Bolano, the degrees of repulsion are almost scientific. As with the two cited examples above, a reader acknowledges that the two fictional writers have ideological faults, but have to acknowledge that the writing of a poem is a "lesser evil" than a blatant written hatred of an entire people.

At the end of the novel, Bolano stunningly crafted a detailed bibliography of the writers, including ones not described in the book. In addition to admiring the minute detail, I was taken aback by the bibliography's title: "Epilogue For Monsters." With three words, any earlier rationalization is thrown away, since every party is guilty. The effect is very similar to the final line of James Wright's poem Lying In a Hammock On William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota: "I have wasted my life." Everything that comes before it, while essential, is overtaken by a single line. This literary skill, especially compared with the vastness of The Savage Detectives, reaffirms my belief that Bolano is one of most important writers of the past twenty years. I cannot wait to take on his final work, 2666.

Work Cited:
Bolano, Roberto. Nazi Literature In the Americas. Copyright 2008 by the Heirs of Roberto Bolano. Translation copyright 2008 by Chris Andrews.

Diving Into the Abyss

"While we search for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, the new, that which can only be found in the unknown, we must continue to turn to sex, books, and travel, even knowing they will lead us into the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place we can find the cure." --Roberto Bolano

It's been probably four months in the process, but I've finally finished reading Roberto Bolano's 1998 novel The Savage Detectives (first published in English in 2007). Once or twice, I've mentioned it in one of my postings here, probably as a reminder to finish it. Other readings and writings interfered, and my hope was to have written an essay about the book awhile ago. Many an evening I'd be reading a different book and glance at the off-white spine of The Savage Detectives on my desk, feeling irked that I wasn't focusing on it. Now that the story has been bouncing around my head in a completed fashion for the last couple of days, I've realized a few things. One, without hyperbole, it's one of the greatest books I've ever read. Two, now that I look back, I've excitedly mentioned it in roughly ninety percent of the e-mails I've sent in the past couple of months. Finally, and most importantly, there was no need to kick myself for not finishing it sooner. The reading, much like the events of the novel itself, is about the journey rather than the set destination.

The following description will pretty much read like every available summary of the book, whether in print or online: Three Mexican poets (Arturo Belano, Ulises Lima, and the primary narrator, Juan Garcia Madero) devote their lives to writing poetry, living and experiencing everything they can for the sake of poetry, and eventually searching for an elderly, elusive poet (Cesarea Tinajero). Most of the book is composed of interviews and testimonies of the people they've met, known, or merely crossed paths with at various points. Since Belano and Lima are so uncompromising in their self-proclaimed Visceral Realist poetry movement, the interviewees have mixed opinions about them, ranging from admiration to unabashed loathing. And yet, the book is about so much more, especially the necessity for poetry (and all writing styles, in my opinion) to be a lifestyle and a mission, not just a product.

"For Bolano and the others, rejecting a career in poetry was a way of taking poetry as seriously as life itself--and vice versa. If the author lived what he wrote in this spirit, Bolano liked to say, the reader would naturally feel the urgency and live it too (Wimmer xiv)."

Admittedly, this barely scratches or truly identifies the book entirely, but doing so would be impossible. Bolano (who died in 2003) created a treasure for readers with willing time and energy--The Savage Detectives requires several readings (which alone could take months or years, depending on time), references scores of real poets and writers (as well as fictional ones), and has metaphors that run wild. I know, after a single reading, that I've missed several pages' worth, simply due to my sore deficiency in Latin American literature. Also, creating a list of the characters would take up a full sheet of notebook paper, probably including the margins.

I mentioned hyperbole in the first paragraph, and the paperback edition of the book is rife with examples: "mesmerizing, glittering, utterly unique," to name a few. As much as I have a problem with book and film blurbs, the descriptions fall into the same category of trying to summarize the novel's contents. There is simply no way to adequately describe it with just a few adjectives. Since it's a partly autobiographical, and it's meant to represent the true meaning of poetics (according to Natasha Wimmer's wonderful introduction), a reviewer cannot be blamed for having to rely on grand descriptions. Before I realized myself that descriptions of this work are tricky, I went online to find opinions and reviews. One blog complained about keeping track of the characters, and someone commented on the blog expressing irritation of not knowing "the point" of the book.

"Bolano...had always been fastidious in his work habits (Wimmer xxiii)." Since we know of his great attention to details, it's obvious that nothing is intentionally vague in the pages. The dozens of characters are essential, even if they only appear once or twice. On top of that, as wonderfully dense as the book is, there is nothing out of the ordinary as far as his descriptions or the novel's layout. To me, it's a sign of Bolano's genius and restraint. With so much narrative available, he could have easily added more metaphors and cross-sections, creating a Rubik's Cube of Pynchon or Gaddis-like proportions. It's as if he wanted to challenge any potential critics. "If you think this is confusing," he might have said, "you should see what else I'm capable of doing."

This isn't supposed to be an overt review of The Savage Detectives, since it has been available in English for over a year. As I've mentioned, reviewing it would be a Sisyphean undertaking. This essay is more of an appreciation of the power of writing and literature, both in the book and reflected in Bolano's lifestyle. An understood rule is that a reader should never confuse the author with the written product, but an exception can be made in this case. Bolano was the true definition of a poet/writer--traveling, living, experiencing, and cavorting. Artists of all mediums should look to him as a model, since he came awfully close to personifying the answer to the age-old question, "What is art?"

Appreciation also has to be given to Natasha Wimmer for her exceptional translation and important introduction. I don't read Spanish, and even if I did, I do not have an original copy of The Savage Detectives. However, while reading, I had the fullest confidence that nothing had been lost in translation, since even in English, the book maintained a wonderful lyricism that is no doubt multiplied in the original Spanish copy. While Wimmer's introduction might seem like a basic short biography at first, she provides much needed insights into Bolano's personality. Read the introduction for a second time after finishing the book--it's amazing how various passages from the novel will come to mind.

Finally, during my browsing for articles on The Savage Detectives, I found this video clip. The title is "SirJack Recommends The Savage Detectives." I was hoping that the dog would do something cute like pull the book off the shelf, but it's a strangely compelling clip nonetheless. Probably because the dog is so cute, even while doing nothing.

Work Cited:

The Savage Detectives. Copyright 1998 by Roberto Bolano. Translation copyright 2007 by Natasha Wimmer. Introduction copyright 2008 by Natasha Wimmer.