four reasons i dig this book:1. maggie swung her tail and knocked over a glass of merlot. like a sponge, the back half of tierra del fuego soaked it up and now the pages are deliciously crinkled and warped and stained red. as w/all of us, i'm wildly romantic about books -- coffee rings, wine stains, yellowed pages, dusty fingerprints... all good stuff.2. blurb from ALVARO MUTIS. author of one of the best books ever written and all-around badass. if y'all haven't read the adventures and misadventures of maqroll... whew. get to it. ASAP. it's astonishingly great. (the blurb, btw:"Francisco Coloane is the Jack London of our time")3. the stories are great. reminiscent of monsieur london, but less on the macho, more on the weird. like a hybrid, maybe, of london and lynch. lyndon. or lonch. they're all set in a mountainous region of chile and feature warriors, hunters, cowards, drunks, scientists, gamblers, bandits, and amateur philosophers. many story-within-a-story here and lots of loose ends -- although, it must be said, a few of the tales would benefit from more of an ambiguous ending; after creating truly strange landscapes, coloane can, at times, feel too much a need to explain exactly what's going on, thus smashing the mystery of the preceding pages. 4. blurb from PABLO NERUDA: "Long arms, arms like rivers, are necessary to fully embrace Francisco Coloane. Or perhaps it's necessary to be a squall of wind, gusting over him beard and all. Otherwise, take a seat across the table from him and analyze the question, study him deeply, you will surely end by drinking a bottle of wine with Francisco and happily postponing the matter to some later date."
What a delightful collection of short stories. Coloane weaves tales of sheepherders, sailors, builders, gold miners and others set in southern Chile. Humor, suspense, bravery and craziness drive these wonderful stories of adventure in a beautiful, bleak and challenging part of the world. The stories seem to be set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and provide some interesting history. Labor strikes, mining the beaches for gold using tidal hydraulics, the tenuous link of coaster steamers to isolated towns and outposts. I will definitely look for more works by Coloane that have been translated into English.
What do You think about Tierra Del Fuego (2008)?
This left a palpable yet ghostly impression in my mind. These are stories of extreme geography: ice, mountains, desert. Alvaro Mutis calls Coloane the South American Jack London; I think this may be understating the case. The story 'How the Chilote Otey Died' is an all-time classic, a picture of true heroism - if a story could be an anthem this is it. The rest vary in tone and rove around restlessly and turn up surprises enough to suggest that Coloane may have a fair few more tricks up his sleeve than can be contained in these 180 pages.
—Ben Winch
