Roberto Bolano's "Ambiguities"

Roberto Bolano

This morning's NY Times treats us to a brief article, "A Chilean Writer’s Fictions Might Include His Own Colorful Past," meaning of course, that some people think that Mr. Bolano was/was not a heroin user and was/was not in Chile on 9/11/73. It's hard to weigh in for either side of either question. Bolano was playing with what I call "faction," mixing fact and fiction, and he was not alone in Latin American fiction of the late 20th century to say that a piece of fiction was actually written by someone else (Ricardo Piglia wrote a piece by Roberto Arlt) or to create "ambiguities" (Juan Carlos Onetti seems to have reveled in this) about what was fact and what was fiction.

Part of the controversy might be financially motivated, an attempt to sell even more books-- "2666", published in English in 2008, and "Savage Detectives," published in English in 2007, both received wonderful reviews-- books to those who would like to speculate about the facts and hunt for clues:

But his widow, from whom he was separated at the time of his death, and Andrew Wylie, the American agent she recently hired after distancing herself from Mr. Bolaño’s friends, editors and publisher, are now challenging part of that image. They dispute the idea, originally suggested by Mr. Bolaño himself, endorsed by his American translator and mentioned in several of the rapturous recent reviews of “2666” in the United States, that he ever “had a heroin habit,” that his death was “traceable to heroin use” or even that he had “an acquaintance with heroin.”

The heroin controversy is fueled by a piece Bolano submitted to a Spanish magazine in response to a request for stories about the worst summer in his life. Others who submitted submitted autobiographical sketches. Was Bolano's, which by all accounts resembed Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"?

And the question of whether he was in Chile or still in Mexico City when he said or let others say he was in Santiago is based on friends in Mexico City and Chile who say he was/ was not actually with them or didn't know what he should have known about Chile if he had actually been there.

Roberto Fresan, interviewed by the Times, summarized the situation perfectly:

Rodrigo Fresán, an Argentine novelist living in Barcelona, said, “Roberto’s biography is going to be interesting to read, and I am thankful that I was only his friend and not the one who is going to have to write it.” Somewhat ruefully, others who know Mr. Bolaño only from his work have come to the same conclusion.

The Year End Lists

The New York Times says that it knows what the 10 best books of 2008 were. That's good. The list is a refinement of a year end list of 100 notable books for 2008. The top 10 includes Roberto Bolano's 2666, about which the Times says:

Bolaño, the prodigious Chilean writer who died at age 50 in 2003, has posthumously risen, like a figure in one of his own splendid creations, to the summit of modern fiction. This latest work, first published in Spanish in 2004, is a mega- and meta-detective novel with strong hints of apocalyptic foreboding. It contains five separate narratives, each pursuing a different story with a cast of beguiling characters — European literary scholars, an African-American journalist and more — whose lives converge in a Mexican border town where hundreds of young women have been brutally murdered.

There's also an excerpt, the first chapter.

I am delighted that Bolano is now receiving deserved attention. But, because he passed on in 2003, it seems too little, and too late. I know that the world of translated fiction moves at an erratic, sometimes glacial rate. But it is nevertheless sad for Bolano only now to have found a large, adoring readership in English.

Wonderful Writers You Might Not Have Heard Of: Cesar Aira

Cesar Aira

Maybe this should be an occasional series. I don't really know how many wonderful, creative Latin American writers' works I have come to admire, which strangely have received utterly insufficient notice in the US. These would include works by writers with too few English translations, and works revered in their writers' own countries, but virtually unknown in the US. The authors of these works, like the one in this essay, are the writers you might not have heard of.

Wiki tells the basics about Cesar Aira:

César Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition.

He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication –two to four novella-length books each year.

Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a “flight forward” (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the “continuum” (el continuo) of a constant movement forward in the fictional narrative. As a result his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and “subliterary” genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas; on the other hand, he frequently deliberately refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended.

I have to cite the Wiki and include the link because this is potentially confusing territory when it comes to Latin America literature. I don't want you to think I'm following in the footsteps of Roberto Bolano's novel, Nazi Literature In The Americas, which followed in the gigantic footsteps of Jorge Luis Borges, and that I'm possibly writing a review of a fictional writer's book that was, in fact, never really written. But could have been. Or that I'm following Ricardo Piglia's example and providing you with a fictional piece I'm attributing to someone (Piglia chose Roberto Arlt in his wonderful novel, Assumed Name) who didn't write it, when, in fact, I did. But I digress.

Cesar Aira is real. Rest assured of that. And he's an incredibly gifted, prolific writer, whom you might not have heard of.

An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter, written in 2000, is a beautiful, short (87 pages), brilliant, gem of a novella. It was a great read. I can't believe that so few people in the US know of the book or of its writer.

A jacket blurb:

An astounding novel from Argentina that is a meditation on the beautiful and the grotesque in nature, on the art of landscape painting, and on one experience in a man's life that became a lightning rod for inspiration.

The novella is about a fictional trip of Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858), an actual painter, and a painter colleague of his, to the pampas of Argentina to paint landscapes which, according to the theories of Alexander von Humboldt, will achieve a "physiognomic totality" of places he paints. Unfortunately, along the way, a grotesque and dreadful accident intervenes (you'll not get the details of this from me) and the accident completely and savagely changes Rugendas and his art and the journey. Rugendas is physically destroyed by the accident, but he continues nevertheless to paint.

Aira tells the story compellingly and unemotionally. His writing, even in translation, is elegant and fluid. And it's true that it goes ever forward. The book is a short, eye opening masterpiece. I am delighted to have found it, and I consider it in the class of Juan Rulfo's seminal work, Pedro Paramo. I consider it a "must read."

As far as I can tell, only two of Aira's novellas have been translated into English. The other is How I Became A Nun. What a sad state of affairs.

Magical Realism: A Group

The Algonquin Roundtable (a group you'd like)

Wouldn't it be great to be part of a group to discuss literature, in this case particularly magical realism and Latin American literature? I thought so, so I started a group at Goodreads.com. Anyone can join. And then anyone can post recommendations of books, reviews, material about authors, you name it. This is a good way to find great books you never heard of before and probably don't have anyone else to tell you about. Want to join? Click this.

A group like this isn't as much fun as sitting in a cafe in Madrid to discuss these books with expats, including the ghost of Roberto Bolano, or even sitting with the usual subjects at nearby Ralph's Pretty Good Cafe with a latte, but for now, it'll have to do. Sorry to say, I'm not expecting a better offer than this group, at least not with this subject.

Join up. Maybe it'll be fun. And if it isn't, well, we can always delete and/or ignore it.

How Did We Get Here?

Lately, the Dream Antilles has been about Guantanamo and torture. How did that happen? And isn't this, after all, supposed to be a lit blog? You know, a blog about books and literature and writing and fiction. Well, to be honest, the narrator here has a pebble in his shoe, a burr under his saddle. He's annoyed and irritated about torture. Of all things. So, of course, that expresses itself here. And alas, it's likely to continue to come up because your narrator doesn't seem to know how to ameliorate his aggravation. He keeps on ranting. He insists on posting essays on dKos and docuDharma about torture. Then he complains bitterly about the comments the supposedly liberal people at dKos post about his essays. He doesn't receive such a nettlesome response at docuDharma. He says he feels like his hair's on fire. Put another way, the narrator of this blog thought he was beginning a digression about torture, but now it's a whole, full time topic by itself, and he doesn't remember exactly what he was saying before he began meandering. Among the questions he has is why most people in the US, let alone Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, aren't apparently bothered by torture. Is it your narrator's job to continue to rage and prod on torture until something changes?

Meanwhile, he finished reading Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, which has fourteen different narrators. And at least two characters (Garcia Madero and Arturo Belano) who are autobiographical Bolanos. The book is about a circle of "visceral realist" poets in Mexico City and takes place also in Northern Mexico, Spain, Israel, and elsewhere. He enjoyed it thoroughly. Let me repeat that Bolano, it seems, has 14 narrators, each of which is convincing. Meanwhile, in your narrator's current writing project, his one narrator is having trouble finding and maintaining his voice. Bolano had an embarrassment of riches. Your humble narrator is toiling away, and his narrator is making his skin itch.

Your humble narrator also finished reading Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which has one narrator, Yunior, who goes from omniscient to being a character in the novel. This is actually a pleasure. Yunior begins outside this historical story of the Dominican diaspora in New Jersey and the DR, but emerges later as Oscar's roommate and Oscar's sister's lover. Oscar Wao, by the way, is supposed to be a Spanglish mispronunciation of "Oscar Wilde." Because Trujillo is so important to the plot (not to worry it will not be given away here) parts of the book resemble aspects of Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat and Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, but Diaz's story takes all of that to a different level. Diaz's narrator is charming, authoritative, smart, literary, funny, sly. Your narrator's narrator in progress, on the other hand , just isn't. At least not yet.

Both Bolano and Diaz are great reads, and both were recognized by being included in many lists of the Best Books of 2007.

Meanwhile, your narrator is stuck. He remains bothered by torture and his narrator's voice's lack of conviction and consistency. He hopes that things will improve on both fronts soon, but he's not holding his breath. Winter seems interminable.

Conflicted

I'll keep this short. I want to read Roberto Bolano's new book The Savage Detectives. Really I do. I love Latin American literature. And Amazon says this big novel is one of the top ten novels for 2007. But there's a small problem. And it's not the author's fault.

Friday I was in Ithaca, New York. I stopped in the Cornell Store and saw that they were selling the book for the list price, $27.00. This seems like a lot of money for a book, even though it's new and hardcover and I want it. When I got home, I found in my email box an advertisement from Amazon offering me this very book at 40% off, for $16.20. And I could get free shipping if my order totaled $25.00. How could this be? I wondered.

So I went to abebooks.com, my favorite used online bookseller, and I found used copies of the book beginning at $16.79 plus shipping. In other words, the used books (probably review copies) were more expensive than the new book from Amazon delivered to my mailbox.

I want to support my local, independent bookseller. That would be The Bookstore in Lenox, Massachusetts, which has been a community institution for more than thirty years. I love that bookstore. I have given readings there. I have attended readings there. Matthew, the owner, has good wine at readings. He has a great selection of books. He stocks books people love. And he's succeeded even though Barnes and Noble opened a store nearby. But I digress. I want to support my local bookseller.

But as far as Roberto Bolano's book is concerned, is my commitment to independent bookstores worth $11? For this one book? I'd like to think it was, but frankly, I can hear padlocks snapping shut on the front doors of most independent booksellers near here. That would be a terrible.

And now that Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, etc. are approaching, and the gifting season is upon us, people who give gifts probably want to stretch their gift-giving funds. I'm worried. Because all of that desire to save drives people to Amazon and B&N. And that's is a real danger not only for my friend's bookstore, but also for the lovely, lively, local, independent institution of bookstores generally.

Please think about this briefly before you shop. I don't want bookstores to go the way of the small town hardware store.

"The Real Thing And The Rarest"

Roberto Bolano

The title, "the real thing and the rarest" is what Susan Sontag said about the writer and poet Roberto Bolano (the n has a tilde). Bolano was born in 1953 in Chile. He died at age 50 in 2003. He wrote nine novels, short stories, and poetry. And he lived in the Chilean diaspora of Mexico and Europe before returning to Chile. Unfortunately, like me, you may never have heard of him during his life. What a tremendous loss not reading him would be.

How did I come to hear about him? I'm not sure how I found this April, 2007 article in the Nation. But after reading it, I decided to order a book. My local library system, the Mid-Hudson Library System, to my amazement has actually heard of Bolano and has four of his books in its catalog, but I am impatient when I think I'm on the brink of discovery, so I ordered a copy of Distant Star from my favorite used book resource Abe Books for fast delivery. And wow, what a "discovery" it was! I devoured the book and loved it, so I went ravenously and gluttonously on to By Night In Chile and Last Evenings On Earth.

Bolano's writing is spare, coruscating, smart, simply wonderful. A review by Wayne Koestenbaum in Bookforum speaks of his "addict[ion] to the haze that floats above Bollano's fiction". Francisco Goldman labels it "the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow". Whatever. It fills me with enormous envy. The kind of envy and jealousy that makes it hard to work on my own novel in progress. The kind of envy that makes me wonder about the adequacy and effectiveness of my own prose.

A very brief example. One of the short stories in Last Evenings, "Mauricio ("The Eye") Silva" begins

Mauricio Silva, also known as "The Eye", always tried to avoid violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but violence, real violence, is unavoidable, at least for those of us who were born in Latin America during the fifties and were about twenty years old at the time of Salvador Allende's death. That's just the way it goes.

You might give one of your first as yet unborn children or one of your less important extremities for such a beginning.

The story "Last Evenings On Earth" takes place during a vacation trip the narrator, like Bolano, a poet, takes with his father, a former Chilean boxing champion, from Mexico City to Acapulco in 1975, is brilliant, riveting, surprising and my favorite. Something menacing and dark lurks beneath the narration, simmering, but when it finally erupts the story is over. At the conclusion did I say, "Yes!" aloud, or did I just think it loudly?

It's summer and beach reading season in the Northern Hemisphere. In addition to The Dream Antilles, which I always recommend for this purpose, any of Bolano's books would be a just perfect.