A Note on Links
More Essays by Milan
Speaking of Distraction
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Another Review of The Novel: An Alternative History
The Orange Eats Creeps
The Unconsoled and the Annihilation of Plot
Siddhartha Deb has an outstanding piece in Harper’s about Roberto Bolaño. (Not available online.) I say it’s about Bolaño because, although it’s obviously occasioned by the publication of The Savage Detectives in English and is centered around this book, it considers TSD from the point of view of all of Bolaño’s translated works.
This is precisely what I feel is missing in a lot of the lengthier coverage of Bolaño this cycle.
I don’t count book reviews here because book reviews are, by definition, short and focus on just one book. To-date, most TSD reviews I’ve read have been pretty good in that they’ve made some interesting points about the book and have given readers a sense of what it’s like. This, I think, is what they should do.
But the essays should aspire to more than that. What I’d like to see from the lengthier essays is more along the lines of what Deb has done. He’s traced out Bolaño’s style and ideas across a number of works, starting with By Night in Chile (the first to be translated) up through Amulet and TSD. Although he goes into TSD in detail, he also gives me a sense of how the books work together, and delves deply into a number of Bolaño’s other works. In doing so, he puts forth a cohesive thesis about Bolaño that he returns to throughout the piece. (Perhaps coincidentally, the Ozick piece in Harper’s argues for more of precisely this sort of essay coverage in popular publications, like The New Yorker, NYRB, etc.)
I’m not sure I agree with his thesis completely, but I appreciate that he’s made the argument, and that he’s gotten me thinking.
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
It’s a shame the article is not online. Finding Harper’s over here is not quite easy. Let’s hope someone digitalizes it.
Hi Scott,
This is a slightly odd question but I used to go to Denison University in Ohio and I am damn sure there was a Scott Esposito there. At least I remember the name popping up almost everywhere. Maybe you’re more famous than you thought you were?
Whether it is you or not, please sate my curiosity and let me know. I now live in Australia.
Cheers, Marisa.
That’s exactly the distinction between literary criticism and a book review.
While I don’t always find this to be the case with The Believer coverage, I found Rodrigo Fresan’s piece on Roberto Bolano to be exactly what you describe – spanning the whole of Bolano’s work to give context to TSD. Only the first bit is online without subscription: http://www.believermag.com/issues/200703/?read=article_fresan
It’s worth a read and is what convinced me to take another look at Bolano’s work. I’m glad I did.
This is indeed a great article (and I’m now glad I took your word and suscribed just to read it – well, not really, the archive was a nice incentive too). Just one thing I would like to point out: it seems rather obvious to talk about exile when one considers the work of Bolaño. However, he made it very clear that he did not consider himself as an exiled writer or writing on exile. Invited in Vienna to give a conference about “Literature and exile”, he said “I do not believe in exile, most of all when exile is put together with the word literature” (the complete conference can be found in “Entre Parentesis”, a collection of articles and non-fiction writings).
On a last note, I think Deb has got something mixed-up when he says that, in “By night in chile”, Lacroix reads Greek and Latin classics to avoid having to face the fact of people being tortured in the basement of a house wherethe literati party. If I remember correctly, he reads the classics at the time of the coup. The “torture in the basement” happens later, even after he gave classes to the “junta”. This might not seem important at first, but I think Bolaño might have been making two different points that are lost if you take both scenes as being the same thing or representing the same idea.
fausto,
After reading TSD, I think I’d trifle with the way you are using Bolano’s definition of exile. Although I’d like to read the speech in full to be 100% sure, I get the sense that Bolano meant that writers are always exiles, so that the word loses meaning when talking about writers. This, at least, is what TSD implies, as its two main characters travel the world but never find a place where they feel they are not exiles.
Anyway, glad you liked the piece by Deb. It was a strong piece although I think I would disagree with his characterization of Western authors vs. authors like Bolano. For one thing, i don’t think Western authors have it nearly as good as he implies, and, secondly, Bolano seems an archtypical artist, a form that transcends nationality.
http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/lesser_sp07.html” rel=”nofollow”>Lesser in 3p on Bolaño.
Thanks for the pointer to Harpers, for this & Ozick.