What do You think about Nazi Literature In The Americas (2008)?
Christopher WilsonBaltimore (Maryland), 1977 -- Kalamazoo (Michigan), 2055In 2008, Wilson was enthralled by the story of the New Jersey couple who publicly feuded with a timid grocery store establishment that unconstitutionally refused to bake a swastika cake for their son, Adolf. It was during this time that Wilson decided to fight political correctness through baby names. Having spent the greater part of the previous decade toiling away in the federal government, Wilson had developed a predilection for acronyms. With a son named Connor in tow and another boy on the way, Wilson decided that he would attack the liberal establishment with more subtlety than his predecessors. He named his second son Oliver. Then came the twin girls, Maddie and Molly. Then came Udolf (a rather obvious hint) followed by Nancy, Irene, and Samuel. From all accounts, Wilson's wife was unaware of his ulterior motives up until the day she died giving birth to their ninth child, Miles. With his message far from complete, Wilson spent the next year courting young women with wide hips. He eventually married an Argentinian woman who claimed to be Diego Maradona's second cousin. Within weeks she was pregnant and within a few more weeks her stomach had grown to four times its original size. Wilson and his new bride soon discovered that she was pregnant with quintuplets. After giving birth to the litter of babies, Wilson's second wife died from childbirth complications involving amniotic fluid entering her bloodstream. Exhausted and overwhelmed at the thought of finding another wife, Wilson decided to cut his message short. He gave the quintuplets the following names: Brandon, Lauren, Oscar, Wyatt, and Sharon. Wilson never revealed what his original message was going to be but insisted that the message as it stood was able to get his point across, albeit less eloquently than he had originally planned.Wilson spent the latter part of his life writing poetry and spending no more than a year in any one city. His poem "Wizard" hinted that his nomadic life was another one of his subtle acronym messages. The last three known cities where he lived were Kansas City, Missouri, Kennebunkport, Maine, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he died from skin cancer.
—Chris
When Amalfitano subjects his pharmacist to a short mental screed about the drawbacks of writers' minor works in 2666, this is exactly the kind of thing he's talking about. A series of biographical sketches of fictional western-hemisphere writers with far-right sympathies, it'll take you no more than two or three hours to read. In its personalization of its characters' politics, it offers a bit of a clue to Bolano's modus operandi; it's just not as inventive as you'd like it to be, and not as inventive as its great premise lead me to believe it was going to be, anyway.You can look at it as a bunch of habits of thought to avoid, or as an archaeological study of the aftershocks of World War II and the wars of ideology that followed. The Phalangists and fanatics herein are sometimes cliched - especially the two repressed homosexual poets who join the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War - but more often surprising, like the Haitian plagiarist and the murderer who writes nihilistic verse across the sky. There are plenty of Fascist versifiers who you're supposed to sympathize with, like the woman who turns to pieties of the far Right in her efforts to liberate herself from a Communist husband who beats her. Juxtaposed against the more cynical exploitation of literature by some untalented hacks (like the soccer-fiend, poetry-writing gang members) and the out-there efforts of the P.K. Dick-like writers who use Nazism as more of an aesthetic than political dictum, you get the feeling Bolano is trying to tell us: yes, these people are all nutjobs, and a lot of them are truly ill-intentioned, but some of them had their reasons. The very tippy-toe end - which has an actual plot, one I won't spoil - suggested to me that the smug, routine abhorrence of fascism should perhaps not preclude a touch of mercy.You just don't need a book to do that, and doing so seems a little beneath Bolano in the first place.I'd actively discourage people interested in Bolano's work from reading this first, but I'm still glad I've read it - the continuities between this and the world of 2666 (paging General Enterescu?) make it worthwhile as a coda, at least, and there are hints of the wry third-person voice Bolano got so good at later.
—Conrad
Nazi Literature in the Americas, by Roberto Bolaño, New York, 2008. A collection of faux-criticism and thumbnail biographies of authors who never existed beyond the pages of this book (and others in his oeuvre). The style is direct, written for the public rather than the academic and marred by only a handful of clichés (which may have mushroomed up in translation). Humor is dry but ever-present. Much of the text is told in summary and therefore a bit distant but an occasional "scene" slips through, most remarkably in the final "chapter" entitled The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman, where Bolaño steps out from behind his writing desk and gives himself a part to play. On page 92 we learn that what we are reading is more than satire or post-modern fun but also (mildly) science fiction. Later, deep within the index, we know that Nazi Literature in the Americas has been "published" sometime after 2040. What we don't know is why. This book will be compared, no doubt, to Pale Fire but it does not puzzle and pester us in the same way. It does not surprise us in the same either. The title may cause discomfort to family members. Your Jewish wife, for example, might give you one of her "looks." Reassure her by reading (craftily selected) passages aloud. Though, because of its form, it will never be called a "page turner" (except in jest), any intelligent reader will profit from turning its pages. Borgesians should be particularly delighted. And there is at least one imaginary book described within that I wish really did exist: Poe's Room, an artless "response" to his Philosophy of Furniture.Boloño, Roberto. Santiago, 1953 - Blanes, 2003. Chilean author who, until recently, was mostly unknown in the United States. However, since the success of his The Savage Detectives, he has become the (I can't believe I'm going to use this word) literati's "must read."
—Brent Legault
