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ROBERTO BOLAÑO
(Chile 1953-Spain 2003)
Points to consider:
1. “La ciudad letrada” – The idea of ‘the literary’ in context.
2. … and its decline and fall
3. La literatura nazi en América: satire; re-reading Borges
4. Estrella distante: literature and evil; the post-Boom detective novel
5. Drawn into the deadly logic of the Cold War, the military of the Southern Cone and Central America
became engaged in a war on communism that would not only destroy civil society but also facilitate
the transition from welfare states to the porous neo-liberal state by removing certain obstacles – the
bargaining power of workers, the dreams of a liberated society. This epochal change was brutal.
Repression, censorship and forced exile ended the utopian dreams of writers and projects of literature
and art as agents of “salvation and redemption”. Insofar as military governments represented their
regimes as essential to the crusade against communism, they were certainly in the Cold War; what
makes the Latin American situation so distinct is that those same military governments left older
structures, both culture and political, in fragments. Terms such as “identity”, “responsibility”, “nation”,
“the future”, “history” – even “Latin American” – had to be rethought. (Franco: 12)
6. In the market-driven neoliberal states of the 1990s, the intelligentsia would find it difficult to
reimagine forms of resistance for they could no longer assume a position as sharpshooter from the
outside. (Franco: 13)
7. Literature is a protagonist in this drama of loss and dislocation not only because it articulated the
utopian but also because it is implicated in its demise. (Franco: 1)
16. …para un público compuesto por altos oficiales y hombres de negocios acompañados por sus
respectivas familias […] dibujó, justo pocos minutos antes de que la noche lo cubriera todo, una
estrella, la estrella de nuestra bandera, rutilante y solitaria sobre el horizonte implacable. Pocos días
después […] escribió un poema que un espectador curioso y leído calificó de letrista. En uno de sus
versos hablaba veladamente de las hermanas Garmendia. Las llamaba “las gemelas” […] quien lo
leyera cabalmente ya podía darlas por muertas. (41-2)
17. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. (Walter
Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Illuminations: 248)
18. Freud on the Uncanny: "Unheimlich [Uncanny] is the name for everything that ought to have remained
secret and hidden but has come to light."
19. Wieder, según Bibiano [nos contó], quería decir “otra vez”, “de nuevo”, “nuevamente, “por segunda
vez”, “de vuelta”, en algunos contextos “una y otra vez”, “la próxima vez” en frases que apuntan al
futuro. Y según le había dicho su amigo Anselmo Sanjuán, ex estudiante de filología alemana en la
Universidad de Concepción, sólo a partir del siglo XVII el adverbio Wieder y la preposición de
acusativo Wider se distinguían ortográficamente para diferenciar mejor su significado. Wider, en
antiguo alemán Widar o Widari, significa “contra”, “frente a”, a veces “para con”. Y lanzaba ejemplos
al aire: Widerchrist, “anticristo”; Widerhaken, “gancho”, “garfio” [...] Widernatürlichkeit,
“monstruosidad” y “aberración” [...] E incluso Weïden también quería decir regodearse morbosamente
en la contemplación de un objeto que excita nuestra sexualidad yo nuestras tendencias sádicas. (50-51)
20. El loco Norberto, agarrado a la cerca como un mono, se reía y decía que la Segunda Guerra Mundial
había vuelto a la Tierra, se equivocaron, decía, los de la Tercera, es la Segunda que regresa, regresa,
regresa. (37)
21. To have formulated meanings that were merely contrary to the dominant point of view, without taking
aim at the larger order of its signifying structures, would have meant remaining inscribed within the
same linear duality of a Manichean construction of meaning. (Richard 2004: 4)
22. Ninguno de los juicios prospera. Muchos son los problemas del país como para interesarse en la figura
cada vez más borrosa en un asesino múltiple desaparecido hace mucho tiempo. Chile lo olvida. / Es
entonces cuando aparece en escena Abel Romero y cuando vuelvo a aparecer en escena yo. Chile
también nos había olvidado. (120/121)
23. [Rise of novela negra in L.America during 1970s/1980s] seemed [...] to offer the formula for a critical
literary response to a [...] crisis in public life and security in Mexico, Argentina and elsewhere. The
Latin American novela negra denounced and imaginarily combated the criminal contamination of
economic and political institutions, foremost amongst them, the authoritarian state. (Close: 144-5)
24. En [países] con el 97% de impunidad, una novela policíaca con final feliz es pura literatura fantástica.
Aquí en América Latina, el descenso al Hades no tiene retorno. (Mendoza Z, 1998: 169)
25. Literary narratives [...] that describe murder in a manner that evokes an aesthetic response in the reader
[...] are actually metafictions – works of art about art. (Black 1991: 40)
Secondary bibliography:
Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: 1963)
Avelar, Idelber, The Untimely Present: Post-dictatorial Latin American Fiction and the Task of Mourning
(Duke: 1999)
Benjamin, Watler, Illuminations, with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt (London: 1999)
Black, Joel, The Aesthetics of Murder: Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (London: 1991)
Borges, Jorge Luis, Historia universal de la infamia
Close, Glen S., “The Detective is Dead. Long Live the Novela Negra!” in Craig-Odders, Collins and Close
Eds, Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Detective Fiction (London: 2006)
Fuentes, Carlos, La nueva novela latinoamericana (J. Ortiz: 1969).
Herralde, Jorge, Para Roberto Bolaño (Villegas: 2005) – includes interviews and a “Diccionario Bolaño”.
Manzoni, Celina, Roberto Bolaño: La escritura como tauromaquia (Buenos Aires: 2006).
Marx, Karl, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852).
Mendoza Z., Mario, Scorpio City (Bogotá: 1998).
Monsiváis, Carlos, Aires de familia (Barcelona: 2000).
Rama, Ángel, La ciudad letrada (Hanover N.H.: Ediciones del Norte, 1984).
___________, The Lettered City. Trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham N.C.: Duke, 1996).
Rodríguez Monegal, Emir, El boom de la novela latinoamericana (Tiempo nuevo: 1972).
Shaw, Donald, The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction (1998)
Simpson, Amelia S., Detective Fiction From Latin America (London: 1990)
Soberón, Fabián, “Pierre Menard, autor de Bolaño”,
http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero33/pmbolano.html
Zizek, Slavoj, Did Someone Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions into the (Mis)use of a Notion (London:
2002)