The Incredible Roberto Bolaño

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josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
I recently read "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolano. What a book! The antithesis to the overeducated, Iowa Writer's Workshop, MFA graduate book. The last great novel of the twentieth century. Anyone else read it, or anything else by the same author, or have any related thoughts?
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
Right, have got a book of his short stories and just started it. Compelling thus far (about 10 pp in).
 
M

mind_philip

saw the light
So fucking true... 'The Savage Detectives' is easily the most compelling novel I've read in the last ten years (the only book that comes close being 'Independence Day' by Richard Ford). I'm very pleased that a copy of '2666' landed on my desk this morning...
 
H

heroesandvillains

Lono ̴
Yes, as I said in the 'what are you reading' thread, 2666 is essential reading. I bought the wonderfully constructed 3 volume paperback set, much easier to handle than a daunting 900+ page tome.

Has it not been published in the UK yet?
 
O

Octopus?

Well-known member
heroesandvillains said:
Yes, as I said in the 'what are you reading' thread, 2666 is essential reading. I bought the wonderfully constructed 3 volume paperback set, much easier to handle than a daunting 900+ page tome.

Has it not been published in the UK yet?
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It's absolutely incredible - I'm on "The Part About the Murders" and every page has been incredibly written. He was definitely one of the best prose stylists operating anywhere.

The thought that this was just his first draft is astounding.
 
M

mind_philip

saw the light
heroesandvillains said:
Yes, as I said in the 'what are you reading' thread, 2666 is essential reading. I bought the wonderfully constructed 3 volume paperback set, much easier to handle than a daunting 900+ page tome.

Has it not been published in the UK yet?
Click to expand...

This was the edition I got - it's a thing of beauty, isn't it?
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Octopus? said:
It's absolutely incredible - I'm on "The Part About the Murders" and every page has been incredibly written. He was definitely one of the best prose stylists operating anywhere.

The thought that this was just his first draft is astounding.
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Interesting you should say that - when I was reading the Savage Detectives it seemed very much me that Bolano's style was a kind of anti-style. That is, there was a rawness there, of the kind you don't see in more polished writers, obsessively crafting and recrafting sentences. This I think was Bolano's power. I think he wrote the book in five minutes.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i hate long books but im intrigued. some one give me a quick run down of what this fella is about please.
 
M

mind_philip

saw the light
The problem I have with describing The Savage Detectives, is that all the things I love about it - the exuberance, the unashamed romanticism, the idealisation of youthful & poetic ambition despite the inevitability of fucking up - these are all things that if someone said they were the signal qualities of a book, you'd probably rightly dismiss it as a piece of wank. However, just this one time, you'd be absolutely wrong.

Bolano writes like someone who manages to be a lot wiser than you without being a cunt about it. I can't think of much higher praise than that for a novelist.
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
He seems very honest about what he doesn't know... and he doesn't get in the way of his story. That's one of the strange things - he isn't a narrator in this book, so much as a witness. And he's not trying to tell you anything, he just wants to say something.
 
H

heroesandvillains

Lono ̴
This radio review Posthumous Praise really hits it on the spot.

His books celebrate those devoted to the grand existential leap of literature, both the search for meaning that is the writer's task and the brave, often foolish lives of those obsessed with work that doesn't offer you any security. Yet what makes Bolano great is that he's never blind enough to believe that literature is a religion or that it can transcend earthly existence. He never lets us forget that, beneath writers' vaulting words, the world still exists in all its pain, struggle, inequality and violence.
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It is also very true that whenever someone asks me what one of his books is about or why I enjoy him so much, I really come to a loss of words.

I've had friends pick up 2666 and try to read a couple of pages and say

'You know what he's talking about, you know all these names and places?" and all I can say is "No, really he's made almost all of them up."

Bolano's obsession with names is fascinating, there are some pages in Savage Detectives and 2666 that are just lists upon lists of names either real or imagined, like he just sat down and wrote whatever names came to his mind. (One of his characters in 2666 does such a thing, subconsciously doodling geometric shapes with various philosophers and literary figures at the angles, it's strangely effective in portraying the character's slow descent into madness).

I'd really like to get a hold of some of his poetry but I'm not sure how much of it(if any) was ever published.

For a quick taste of his style here's one of my favorite early paragraphs from 2666.

Around this time, Pelletier and Espinoza, worried about the current state of their mutual lover, had two long conversations on the phone. Pelletier made the first call, which lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. The second was made three days later by Espinoza and lasted two hours and fifteen minutes. After they'd been talking for an hour and a half, Pelletier told Espinoza to hang up, the call would be expensive and he'd call right back, but Espinoza firmly refused. The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later they would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The word euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. Then the conversation proceeded more smoothly. Pelletier told Espinoza a joke in German and Espinoza laughed. In fact, they both laughed, wrapped up in the waves or whatever it was that linked their voices and ears across the dark fields and the wind and the snow of the Pyrenees and the rivers and the lonely roads and the separate and interminable suburbs surrounding Paris and Madrid.
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empty mirror

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
Now that I am in between books, this Bolano cat looks incredibly intriguing. Sadly, he's apparently hot right now, as far as libraries are concerned, all his work is checked out, and largely, a hot commodity.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
doesn't look like my cup of tea. which is a relief, anything over 300 pages is beyond me, unless there really are exceptioanl circumstances.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Well, I doubt I'd read this either, but Luka Vandross is a closet sophisticate and he's just being idle. Nothing over 300 pages? Give me a break. That would rule out Finnegans Wake.
 
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