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For me, The Part About the Crimes feels like an indictment. Bolano is pointing a finger not (only) at the apathetic officials and corrupt institutions that fail in their task of protecting the weak, but also at the rest of us, the cultured, sophisticated, enlightened and privilleged people of the world. Like Conrad, Bolano too is describing a journey into the heart of darkness. It starts with the complacent, self-absorbed critics who are blind to the horror unfolding around them, moves its focus to the impotent South American intellectual who has lost his voice, and then follows the American journalist who knows something is wrong but hesitates to get involved.

Bolano's juxtaposition of the literary with the horrifying is startling and subversive because we ourselves are implicated.

Ah, but the critics are not complacent. They nearly beat a man to death. They are tied into the violence, in their own way.

Interesting point of view. I think you may be on to something. Throughout this book, I keep thinking about what are we learning, what insights is Bolano giving us, if any? Your suggestion is helpful in trying to answer these questions. Certainly something to think about.

I'm not sure if Bolaño is really indicting all of us. I don't think he's preaching as much as asking us to fathom an unfathomable situation that he doesn't have answers for either. He created a perception of himself as a revolutionary, supposedly participating in Allende's movement in Chile at the time of the Pinochet coup, but many of his acquaintances have said he was not actually there. I would feel kind of slighted if Bolaño claimed to be a kind of revolutionary (while not actually participating), and then indicted all of us for doing nothing about the women in Mexico (while writing from a probably comfortable home in a seaside town in Spain, although most of his life he was pretty poor). I'm not trying to criticize Bolaño by saying this, but I think that maybe he did not think so highly of himself or his writings, and might be uncomfortable if people made him out to be a saint. I think he's created a fictional world that is far too real, and wonders like the rest of us if this kind of violence will always be a part of our species, and if there's anything we can do to put an end to it, or if we'll just keep on eliminating each other until it's over.

Not a saint. But maybe a little like a bilbical prophet who sees the evil in the world and stands in the marketplace saying the things that no one wants to hear.

In my opinion, a writer's abilitly to see and say things that make us uncomfortable is one of the reasons society needs writers.