Roberto Bolaño

[Daniel del Real]

The reviewer suggests that the seeds of a lot of what Bolaño wriote in his prose was already present in his poems.

I've read all of his poetry, most of it contained in the volume titled La Universidad Desconocida, which is the one Eric is refering to. We have to highlight here that even though Bolaño always claimed himself as a poet, the best of this work is not in this field. Although he has some good poems, the majority of his poetic ouvre goes from good to regular. However the poems are very important to understand a young Bolaño, to witness how the seed of the great novelist grew in the 80's. I'd consider that, unless you have read 5 or 6 books by him, it's not a good idea to read his poetry, that could appear as unconnected and without sense without further references.

And for you my bitter Bubba, I think it's good the big hype is finishing. True readers will remain and will keep reviewing his works. However you can't judge if the "hype" is diminishing simply by the fact no one has commented the thread lately. There are wonderful authors with almost no comments or even without a thread and that doesn't mean they are not read anymore.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Authors recommended by Bolano:

http://conversationalreading.com/the...-reading-list/

One recommendation I found particularly amusing:
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
“Dick is the one who, in Ubik, comes closest to capturing the human consciousness or fragments of consciousness in the context of their setting; the correspondence between what he tells and the structure of what’s told is more brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”

[Daniel del Real]

It's great they are publishing this book in English. I'm planning to read it this month. Bolaño had a very interesting peculiarity, he read a lot of the works of his contemporaries; he even read a lot of younger writers in Spanish. The was coherent with the lacks he felt he had when he was younger, and how difficult it was form him to let his voice speak out loud and be published. In this act I see a way to compensate all the lackings he had when he was a young Poet trying to open his personal path in Mexico City and later in Barcelona. The only sad thing about it is that now all the publishing groups are using Bolaño's words for the marketing of the books of those now, not that young and many not that good authors.

[Daniel del Real]

Una Novelita Lumpen (A Lumpen Novella, not translated to English yet), an early novel by Bolaño is being filmed in Rome and will be released next year. The movie will be directed by Chilean director Alicia Scherson who has directed a movie called Play that was awarded in 2007 in the Tribecca Film Festival.
Although it's not the best novel by Bolaño (actually one of the less good IMO) I think this is a natural choice for a movie, with a clean direct plot, very well defined characters and one of the less postmodern novels Bolaño wrote. It will be interesting to see what they can do with the story and what else they can give it with the production.
Here's the article.

http://www.informador.com.mx/cultura...-de-bolano.htm

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Interesting that it is called Il Futuro, i.e. "The Future", see here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1992156/

Imdb lists Rutger Hauer as one of the actors

[Daniel del Real]

I have no idea who this guy is, but he will be playing the role of Maciste who is a retired bodybuilder. He doesn't look strong enough.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I think there was some "hype" about him on this forum some time ago , you might know him from Blade Runner, the leader of the replicants. But I agree, he is not looking like a bodybuilder, retired yes, but not enough muscles... I like the novella btw, though I still have not read Bolano's more famous ones.

[Daniel del Real]

In what language did you read it?

[Rumpelstilzchen]

German translation by Christian Hansen. I also read other books in his translation: 2666 and Llamadas telefónicas.

[MichaelS]

The Third Reich is coming out at the start of 2012 in English, it's excellent

[Stiffelio]

Here's an interesting article about how Bolaño first got to be published in the United States.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...to-bolano.html

[Liam]

An unfinished Bolaño novel to be published in English translation in November. I'm not really a fan of this writer, so forgive me if I don't pass out from excitement, but those of you who are may want to look it up really quickly. From the blurb:

Begun in the 1980s and worked on until the author's death in 2003, Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño's last, unfinished, novel.

The novel follows Amalfitano--exiled Chilean university professor and widower with a teenage daughter--as his political disillusionment and love of poetry lead to the scandal that will force him to flee from Barcelona and take him to Santa Teresa, Mexico.

It is here, in this border town--haunted by dark tales of murdered women and populated by characters like Sorcha, who fought in the Andalusia Blue Division in the Spanish Civil War, and Castillo, who makes his living selling his forgeries of Larry Rivers paintings to wealthy Texans--that Amalfitano meets Arcimboldi, a magician and writer whose work highlights the provisional and fragile nature of literature and life.

Woes of the True Policeman is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense yet darkly humorous. Exploring the roots of memory and the limits of art, it marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.

...

One hopes that with the publication of this, his "final" novel the Bolaño-hysteria will finally begin to dissipate.

[MichaelS]

The Savage Detectives was ookaaay, I suppose. It was a good primer for Mexican slang at the very least. I really had to force myself through the final section though, I could not give a fuck about Cesárea Tinajero and the narrator and to be honest Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. The bits I liked had nothing much to do with them.

[Liam]

Bolaño fans (to whose camp I do not belong) can rejoice: his entire poetic corpus is to be published in English, translated by Laura Healy. A 760+ pp. New Directions tome:

[Stevie B]

I found this Bolaño piece online earlier today. I'm not sure if where it originated from or if it can be found in one of his books. I do know that no one can ever accuse Bolaño of not having opinions or of being unable to express them in a humorous way.

Now that I’m forty-four years old, I’m going to offer some advice on the art of writing short stories.
1. Never approach short stories one at a time. If one approaches short stories one at a time, one can quite honestly be writing the same short story until the day one dies.
2. It is best to write short stories three or five at a time. If one has the energy, write them nine or fifteen at a time.
3. Be careful: the temptation to write short stories two at a time is just as dangerous as attempting to write them one at a time, and, what’s more, it’s essentially like the interplay of lovers’ mirrors, creating a double image that produces melancholy.
4. One must read Horacio Quiroga, Felisberto Hernández, and Jorge Luis Borges. One must read Juan Rulfo and Augusto Monterroso. Any short-story writer who has some appreciation for these authors will never read Camilo José Cela or Francisco Umbral yet will, indeed, read Julio Cortázar and Adolfo Bioy Casares, but in no way Cela or Umbral.
5. I’ll repeat this once more in case it’s still not clear: don’t consider Cela or Umbral, whatsoever.
6. A short-story writer should be brave. It’s a sad fact to acknowledge, but that’s the way it is.
7. Short-story writers customarily brag about having read Petrus Borel. In fact, many short-story writers are notorious for trying to imitate Borel’s writing. What a huge mistake! Instead, they should imitate the way Borel dresses. But the truth is that they hardly know anything about him—or Théophile Gautier or Gérard de Nerval!
8. Let’s come to an agreement: read Petrus Borel, dress like Petrus Borel, but also read Jules Renard and Marcel Schwob. Above all, read Schwob, then move on to Alfonso Reyes and from there go to Borges.
9. The honest truth is that with Edgar Allan Poe, we would all have more than enough good material to read.
10. Give thought to point number 9. Think and reflect on it. You still have time. Think about number 9. To the extent possible, do so on bended knees.
11. One should also read a few other highly recommended books and authors— e.g., Peri hypsous, by the notable Pseudo-Longinus; the sonnets of the unfortunate and brave Philip Sidney, whose biography Lord Brooke wrote; The Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters; Suicidios ejemplares, by Enrique Vila-Matas; and Mientras ellas duermen by Javier Marías.
12. Read these books and also read Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver, for one of the two of them is the best writer of the twentieth century.

[Hamlet]

Very amusing StevieB... thanks for setting that out.

Chekhov, never heard of him?

[Stevie B]

What was Bolaño's beef with Camilo José Cela? Was Bolaño upset that he got the Nobel over other writers he felt we more deserving?

[Bubba]

Lord knows what Bolaño had against Cela. Maybe that he fought on the "wrong" side in the Spanish Civil War. Umbral, for his part, was a protégé of Cela's, so any aversion he had to Cela would naturally extend to his acolyte Umbral.

I haven't read a lot of Cela's stuff, and what little I have read I haven't always liked, but it is far less self-indulgent than such ridiculous novels (I use the term loosely) as 2666 or The Savage Detectives. Cela's dedication in San Camilo, 1936, a novel I haven't read, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end:

A los mozos del reemplazo de 1937, todos perdedores de algo: de la vida, de la ilusión, de la esperanza, de la decencia. Y no a los aventureros foráneos, fascistas y marxistas, que se hartaron de matar españoles como conejos y a quienes nadie les había dado vela en nuestro propio entierro.

For the kids of the draft class of 1937, all losers of something: of life, of illusion, of hope, of decency. And not for the foreign adventurers, Fascists and Marxists, who had their fill of killing Spaniards like rabbits and whom no one had invited to our funeral.