| By Night In Chile |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|07:38 am] |
 
It was back in 2007 that I first read about the work of Roberto Bolano (there should be a tilde over the n, but I don't know how to make that happen) at Matt Cheney's Mumpsimus site. I don't think the author's Savage Detectives was yet out in the US. I like a lot of the same books Matt does, and I'm always looking for good works in translation, so I picked up the two books you see above when the opportunity arose. Last Evenings On Earth is a collection of stories and By Night In Chile is a novel. I started with the collection and read a story. It was about two writers who spend their time entering writing contests in order to win money. A pretty enjoyable story, but, as it seemed at the time, no great shakes. After I finished it I put the book down and did not pick it up again until earlier this year. What drove me back to these books was the voluminous and incredible press garnered by, first, Savage Detectives and then 2666. I started again with the collection and this time blew through it in a couple of days. Coming back to it, I realized that what I had mistaken for a kind of incidental quality in the fiction, now seemed to me to be a kind of errant quality to the story telling. The stories were unpredictable, very much like life, and Bolano followed them as he would, not always in a strictly linear fashion. They had a quality of immediacy as if he was telling them to you, just having met him in the street after not seeing him for a while. The writing style was clear and economical, and he managed to switch gears quite frequently but without duress on my part as the reader, because he did so with so little fanfare. There were no crescendo endings, but the stories, when finished seemed satisfying and were exciting to read. As soon as I got a chance to read the novel, I did at the start of my summer vacation this year. From my very limited exposure to Bolano, just these two books, it appears to me that the theme he is most interested in is the conjunction of literature and politics. By Night in Chile is about a priest who has literary aspirations as a reviewer, critic and poet, and he tells his story over the course of one night, in a long rant, about the rule of Pinochet and the complicity of the Catholic church in the regime. The testament is visited by famous people of the time, Pablo Neruda, Ernst Junger, and the dictator, himself. Again, the telling has an errant quality, weaving together impressions and set stories about the social elite of Chile, about the priest's time in Paris, about a journey he takes to Europe at the behest of Opus Dei, about being ordered to give lessons on Communism to Pinochet and his generals. The book is not without humor or suspense, but the suspense isn't the kind that is built slowly and layered on. It is more a suspense that comes from knowing the story could go anywhere at any time. For instance, there is a long section where the priest travels to Europe and is asked to investigate how old churches and cathedrals keep the pigeons from shitting on the ancient structures. Pigeon shit apparently rots away the stone work. Each of the churches has a priest who has become a falconer and trains the bird of prey to hunt the pigeons. These twists and turns in the plot seem almost surreal at times. You don't wonder where all this is going because the journey is fascinating. I don't know if others would agree with this assessment, and I have only read two of the author's books, but they both, especially the novel, remind me of W. G. Sebald's work or Big Sur by Kerouac. During the read, one isn't sure where it's all going and/or why, but after the book is finished and put away, things become clearer and a real structure, although not easily ascertainable at first, becomes evident. I'd say check these books out if you are curious about Bolano. I'm inching my way toward the longer works. I now have another one on the docket to give a try -- Amulet. One thing the novel pointed out to me very clearly was that I had no more than the least cursory knowledge of Chile or its literature. The kind of stories he tells about artists and their works, stories that when told about contemporary American authors usually bore me are made exciting in the atmosphere of political strife that was that time and place. Believe me, I really have a hard time reading overtly political novels. Bolano's gift is his ability to capture this subject through everyday incidents and interesting characters without having to beat you over the head with it. Some day I might make it to 2666, but for now, these earlier, shorter works are well worth investigating.
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