Comments on: Week 2: Bolaño and the Academy

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:56:38 +0000

WOW, yes. I really felt such an echo of Wallace at the end, there, too. He made the same point several times–”like me because I’m clever,” from an interview, it’s but exactly the same thing.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:51:07 +0000

their coded stutterings speaking only two words: love me, or maybe two words and a phrase: love me, let me love you Compare: "This thing I feel, I can't name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?" — this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it's perilously close to "Do you like me? Please like me," which you know quite well that 99% of all the interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obscene. From DFW, "Octet" in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

By: Terrell Williamson

Terrell Williamson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:50:09 +0000

Sad, indeed. I enjoyed reading The Romantic Dogs, though ironically I’m sure that I would never have come to Bolano’s poetry, but for his incredible, hallucinatory prose. His short novels read very differently from 2666 and The Savage Detectives. By Night in Chile reads like one long prose poem.

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:37:57 +0000

Oh sure, I understood this … (sorry to sound so unclear.) What I meant to ask was, if Bolaño felt a sort of kinship to Edwin Johns through having had to give up poetry for the sake of his relatively profitable fiction, how did that manifest? As soon as I mashed the ‘send’ key on my last I realized that of course, writing fiction is such a ton of work that it really the just the time required would necessarily have stolen poetry from him, in a way … it’s such an interesting (and sad) insight.

By: Terrell Willliamson

Terrell Willliamson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:51:16 +0000

I don’t think there’s any question that Bolano turned to writing fiction to provide for his family and their future. My point is not that Johns is some sort of simulacrum for Bolano, but that knowing what I have read about his life that Johns character evoked for me Bolano’s decision to start writing fiction for the money. Just offered for what it’s worth.

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:15:47 +0000

Gee, that is an incredibly interesting theory about Edwin Johns! But did writing novels make it impossible for Bolaño to write poetry? I’d love to know more about this. And another thing! How impossible is it to imagine circumstances in this country in which someone could say, well, I had best figure out how to provide for my family–okay, I guess I will condescend to write a huge, sprawling, learned novel(!?) Problem solved?!

By: Terrell Williamson

Terrell Williamson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:37:43 +0000

Great insight. Thanks for the translation of the Bolano email. Wish I could read the eulogy as well. From the little bit I know about Bolano (sorry, I’ve given up on the tilde; just too much trouble), he was an autodidact, it seems. He mostly held odd jobs while he mainly wrote poetry. He turned to writing fiction to support his family. In reading the portions about Edwin Johns, it occurred to me that Johns’s cutting off the hand with which he painted “for the money” is akin to Bolano’s giving up writing poetry to focus on fiction “for the money” to support his family. (Although I not sure he gave up writing poetry. There’s only one volume in translation, though I think several more are in the works.)

Keep up the excellent posts.

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:10:50 +0000

Thanks you guys … Dan, so far I have found the emotional center of the book is in the narrator. His detached, satirical and yet warm commentary already feels like it’s coming from an old friend.

This is my first go at Bolaño, and I decided not to read ahead in preparation for our adventure (mainly because I am a big blab, and would find it difficult to prevent spoilers!)

By: Dan Summers

Dan Summers — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:52:40 +0000

Whatever his relationship to the academy, he certainly writes with an insider's knowledge of the foibles therein. And if he was an auto-didact, he was a remarkably successful one. 2666 is a remarkably erudite book. I don't have nearly enough of a sense of 2666 to comment much on Bolano's sentiments, in general. (This is only my first time reading it.) As a devoted fan of Wallace (and you certainly know your readership), one of the things I loved so much about his writing is the meaning he attached to all of his characters, no matter how minor. So far, it feels like the individual characters in 2666 are bleached of their meaning, an effect I think is obviously intentional, so I haven't found an emotional toe-hold yet.

By: miette

miette — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:16:58 +0000

You’ve just convinced me that it’s time to sit down and learn Spanish. Thank you. Fresán has been on my mile-long reading list, but with that quote I may have to dig it out and move it to the top.