Comments on: Week 3: Institutionalized

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:16:43 +0000

Incredible article, thank you (to say nothing of the comments!) The ‘outsiderhood from within’ really is intimately related to this book. What I really want to know is: how can we have so many kids who need teaching, and so many teachers out of work?

By: Jenny

Jenny — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:18:49 +0000

A recent article that has been circulating among American academics lately is The Big Lie About ‘The Life of the Mind,’” and it seems along the exact ideas Bolaño is introducing here.

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:30:06 +0000

Heh! There is much in what you say, Señor. But are we to assume that the book in question will be improved by having been hung out to dry? I may keep this intelligence from my daughter, who is certain to find the idea appealing with regard to her own boring textbooks.

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:06:49 +0000

Yes. This did not escape me … the question of how society at large is going to manage the philosophers (a tricky business, no matter what) appears also in Plato, whose idea it was to send the philosophers back into the cave, there to govern (even if unwillingly, out of a sense of duty.)

I guess you could say that the critics are this type of guy … philosophers who have no intention of having anything whatsoever to do with the cave.

By: Señor Steve

Señor Steve — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:34:46 +0000

My goodness, Maria, here are your own words:

In his own sad, funny, clever way he’s saying that aware, thinking people have a real responsibility to engage with the world, and to improve it if they can.

That is perfectly relevant to the book on the clothesline. Amalfitano is forcing that vapid text regarding the purported unexplored profundity of geometry to engage with the real world.

And I was so fascinated to learn that the folks in Chile call clothespins perritos.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:11:40 +0000

Ah, well then maybe it will become more clear to me as I read more of The Part About Amalfitano. I’ve only read the first few pages.

It’s good to hear, Maria, that I am not alone. Even better that I’m in the company of someone who seems to have such a deep grasp of other things in the book.

By: Señor Steve

Señor Steve — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:10:24 +0000

A brilliant exploration of that passage, Maria. The only thing I would add is that Amalfitano gives an explanation of the specific mechanism of this intellectual malaise as it manifests itself in Mexico and contrasts it with the situation in Europe. It has to do with the intellectuals’ relationship with power, he says. The meat of this is in the passage that begins:

In Mexico, and this might be true across Latin America, except in Argentina, intellectuals work for the state. It was like that under the PRI and it’ll be the same under the PAN. The intellectual himself may be a passionate defender of the state or a critic of the state. The state doesn’t care. The state feeds him and watches over him in silence. . . .

By: Señor Steve

Señor Steve — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:38:32 +0000

And they are loyal allies in an intellectual battle about which they are passionate. So the Wild Man will simply sit here scratching himself patiently while he awaits you installment on the subject, Maria.

By: Señor Steve

Señor Steve — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:32:03 +0000

I am totally enamored with the whole conceit of hanging out the book, Ben. However, I am very new here and am still getting the hang of how the progression of discussion is supposed to work. That whole thing is a central aspect of The Part About Amalfitano. Bolaño includes Calvin Tomkins’s description of Marcel Duchamp’s Unhappy Readymade there.

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:51:55 +0000

TOTALLY baffled by clothesline.