INTERVIEW BY CARMEN BOULLOSA, TRANSLATED BY MARGARET CARSON FIRST PUBLISHED IN BOMB, BROOKLYN, WINTER 2002 Roberto Bolaño belongs to the most select group of Latin American novelists. Chile of the coup d’état, Mexico City in the 1970s, and the reckless youth of poets are some of his frequent subj...
Born in 1945, he published two books before the coup, one in Concepción (with a print run of five hundred) and another in Santiago (five hundred copies again). Together, they came to less than fifty pages. His poems were short. Like most of the poets of his generation, he was influenced by Nicano...
The Vocation 1. I was seventeen years old and my days, and I mean all of them, were a continual shuddering. I had no distractions; nothing could dissipate the anxiety that kept building up inside me. I was living like an interloping extra in scenes from the passion of St. Vincent. St. Vincent—dea...
THE GUN TO HIS MOUTH Screen of blond hair. Behind it the hunchback draws swimming pools, commuter towns, empty streets. Tact or courtesy stems from proper behavior in each situation. The hunchback draws a person with a kind face. "I lay there on my back in bed, I heard the crickets chirp and some...