Some things happened in this book, though I don't know what. I read and was pissed off with each page I began reading for the day, hypnotized by the third. The language is clear and precise and bright, and you can see everything. Sentences smack like water balloons exploding on walls, impossible ...
Bolaño does have a way with words or at least the English translation is so. Both the short stories and the essays are a bit rambling so I'm not sure what, if any, point is being made. From statements in his final essay in this book I assume that would be a good outcome in his mind, that the read...
Roberto Bolaño is a novelist whose work I return to frequently. He has progenitors in Borges, Kafka etc, but feels distinctly separate from them as to become something unique. Since his untimely death in 2003, Picador in the UK has slowly been releasing everything Bolaño wrote, it seems. These...
Es decir, para el poeta de Igitur no s��lo nuestros actos est��n enfermos sino que tambi��n lo est�� el lenguaje. Pero mientras buscamos el ant��doto o la medicina para curarnos, lo nuevo, aquello que s��lo se puede encontrar en lo ignoto, hay que seguir transitando por el sexo, los libros y los ...
Book as deck of cards - each is labelled with an "ultimate": Death, Infinity, Soul, Destiny, Courage (there are two cards, or seven, that contain this word). On the Joker is a picture of the uncomfortable, rotten Earth, with burn marks on México and Chile. Take this deck of cards, shuffle them, c...
I never liked verse growing up. I'm not sure why, but the romantic poets all bugged me, and so did Shakespeare. Robert Frost was OK. He was cool and a little reserved. Robert Service, too, was tough and pretty funny. But I thought of the two Roberts as exceptions to the rule. The rule being that...
Forgot to add this. Looking over the Bolano background since it's one of my assignments for class.Read this awhile back, in an afternoon or two I think. It's a fine collection. Often wild, a little shocking, rich in language and imagery exact and voluble in equal measure. Like the prose but m...
a part i enjoyed, from the middle of the poem "La Francesa":I don't want to die, she whispered while escaping / In the shrewd darkness of the bedroom, / And I really didn't know what to say, / Except to caress her and support her while she moved / Up and down like life, /Up and down like the poet...
Listened to the book on CD. The narrator (a Shakespearean actor from Oregon) was excellent. This book was nothing like anything else I've read before. It has a story and then it doesn't; the literary references are sometimes too much even for the most voracious readers; the style is at times crud...
I read The Savage Detectives last year and ever since I wanted to read more Bolano. Woes of the True Po9liceman starts off very promisingly. Any person who really loved reading a Bolano novel would love it. But then there occur many very interesting parallel stories which do not meet cohesively b...
Reading some reviews about this book after I read it makes me realise why I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Not that it really mattered of course as there is some brilliant writing and I was quite content for this book to wash over without extracting much meaning. Now I know it is made up of ...
A un discípulo de Mesmer le encargan que cure el hipo que sufre un sudamericano pobre abandonado en un hospital de París en la primavera de 1938. En apariencia, nada puede pasar. Sin embargo el mesmerista Pierre Pain se verá envuelto en una intriga en donde se planea un asesinato ritual de propor...
A cuatro profesores de literatura, Pelletier, Morini, Espinoza y Norton, los une su fascinación por la obra de Beno von Archimboldi, un enigmático escritor alemán cuyo prestigio crece en todo el mundo. La complicidad se vuelve vodevil intelectual y desemboca en un peregrinaje a Santa Teresa (tras...
(This review has some vague spoilers, just as a warning. It’s really tough for me to do a proper analysis without spoilers.)This is a brilliant book. This is a frustrating book.This is due to the brilliance and the frustration of its second section, the largest section of the Chilean born Roberto...
Perfect bedtime reading. Short chapters, all to the point. I loved this book while I was reading it, and then discovered an even profounder respect for this book when I was typing up my notes about it. It combines a penchant for indexicality with fervent imaginings and astute critical intelligenc...
at long last. the late roberto bolaño envisaged himself a poet above all else. despite being accomplished as both a novelist and short story writer, bolaño only ever took to fiction following the birth of his son lautaro - and only then to secure the financial well-being of his family. as a fo...
Pronoy Sarkar reviewed Antwerp on OfftheShelf.com. When Writers Write For Themselves by Pronoy SarkarAntwerp is a funny little book. It’s comprised of 54 sections and is hardly eighty pages in length. I say “sections” because chapters suggest something complete, a beginning and an end, an unfoldi...
The Final Bolaño Novella"Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime": so Bianca begins her tale of growing up the hard way in Rome. Orphaned overnight as a teenager - "our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us" - she drops out of school,...
I used to be at peace with myself. Quiet and at peace. But it all blew up unexpectedly. That wizened youth is to blame. I was at peace. I am no longer at peace. There are a couple of points that have to be cleared up. So, propped up on one elbow, I will lift my noble, trembling head, and rummage ...
And then, when I was in his arms and he was bearing me off through the darkness, or when I was under him or next to him, in the bed or in the gym, every inch of my body slathered with lotion, I would give thanks that I hadn’t found the safe, at least not yet. And sometimes I imagined sleeping the...
The city of common sense. That’s what the people of Barcelona used to call their city. I liked it. It was a beautiful city and I think I felt at home there from the second day on (if I said from the very first day I’d be exaggerating) but the club wasn’t doing so well, and people started going ki...
It was a terrible experience. When I took her to the airport I was a wreck, and Olga (that was her name), she was a wreck as well. We cried all the way, we didn’t stop for a minute. She kept sobbing that she wanted to stay with me, the poor thing. Just as well there were no photographers. Even so...
FORTRESS EUROPA. OMAHA BEACHHEAD. SUMMER 1942 . I walked the beach when all was Dark, reciting the names of the forgotten, names languishing on dusty shelves, until the sun came out again. But are they forgotten names or only names in waiting? I remembered the player as viewed by Someone from abo...
—Petronius One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen One This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won't appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, ...
I bled money from stones; no one bothered to check on where the consignments or parts of consignments were going. Suspicion is a way of life in this town but nobody dared to suspect me. I didn’t lie, or not systematically. I managed to convince Pilar and three councilors that my project would be ...