USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003 [Hardcover] Roberto Bolaño (Author), Ignacio Echevarria (Editor), Natasha Wimmer (Translator)

Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003 [Hardcover]

Roberto Bolaño (Author), Ignacio Echevarria (Editor), Natasha Wimmer (Translator)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/06/into-the-wilds-of-roberto-bolao-1.html

June 15, 2011

INTO THE WILDS OF ROBERTO BOLAÑO

Posted by Sanders I. Bernstein

We've known for a while that Roberto Bolaño was a queer cat. He's certainly enjoyed multiple lives—four, by my count (so far: scholars will undoubtedly invent a few more in the future). There was his actual life; there was the one he made up (claiming, at one point, to have been in Chile when Pinochet came to power, a claim later refuted by those who knew him); the life he lived in his poetry and fiction; and his afterlife as a worldwide literary phenomenon, which he's been living since his death in 2003. That year also marked the translation of his work into English (beginning with New Directions' publication of the novel "By Night in Chile"), and the birth in the United States of a new critical darling: he became to us a Latin American Jack Kerouac, his "Savage Detectives" another "On the Road." We've wanted to know all we could about Bolaño, though separating fact from fiction has proved difficult.

The task got a little simpler (or maybe more complicated) with the publication this year of the English translation of "Between Parentheses," a collection of fragmentary essays, articles, and speeches, which a panel of five literary wise men and women gathered to discuss last Monday at the Galapagos Art Space, in Brooklyn. "Between Parentheses" has been the subject of some small notoriety. It contains the (perhaps fictional) essay "Beach," which has contributed to the Beat-ification of Bolaño by suggesting that he, like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs before him, had done his share of experimenting with mind-altering substances. (It begins, matter-of-factly, "I gave up heroin and went back to my town and started on the methadone treatment administered to me at the clinic.") But, by design or coincidence, not a word about that infamous article was mentioned. Our flock's leaders flew right over "Beach" and never looked down. (For more on "Beach," and the period of Bolaño's life it covers, see Daniel Zalewski's elegant 2007 piece in The New Yorker).

The panel did begin with a nod to "Parentheses"'s unique role as the lone collection of non-fiction (or near-non-fiction) that we have from the author. The moderator read from the beginning of the introduction to the book: "This volume collects most of the newspaper columns and articles that Roberto Bolaño published between 1998 and 2003. Also included are a few scattered prefaces, as well as the texts of some talks or speeches given by Bolaño during the same period. Taken together, they make up a surprisingly rounded whole, offering in their entirety a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented 'autobiography.'" Of course, as the moderator admitted, "the closest thing … to a kind of fragmented 'autobiography' " doesn't mean that much at all.

But the panelists certainly felt that the essays were entertaining, and that they showcased some of Bolaño's more feral elements. As Natasha Wimmer, Bolaño's translator, put it, "It's not that his non-fiction is that brilliant. He just goes for the jugular. It's shocking." The novelist Francisco Goldman agreed, and chided North American critics for playing down Bolaño's shock value: "It's as if they're trying to domesticate him, make him seem like he's aMcSweeney's writer."

This suggestion that McSweeney's writers are somehow constrained brought a swift retort from Heidi Julavits, one of the editors of a McSweeney's publication, The Believer. "Or a Paris Review writer," she said.

Goldman shot back, "No. They're different animals."

Julavits reminded him that he was in DUMBO, Brooklyn, a.k.a. prime Eggers territory. "This is a Lars Von Trier moment. Keep digging," she advised.

Lorin Stein, the editor of the Paris Review, and Wyatt Mason, a contributing editor at Harper's, wisely kept out of the fray.

Had we tamed the wilds of Bolaño by the end of the discussion? Not at all. We in the audience were lucky to make it out of our seats alive (or, rather, dry). All throughout the night-club-ish space, murky black ovals dotted the floor, surrounded by a subtle shimmer of metal railing, but otherwise invisible. It was only when someone's chance remark on the heat drew a "Well, there are pools all over here. Why don't you just take a dip?" that I realized that the dark spots were full of water. The name of this savage setting now made a whole lot more sense—and not merely because the night had been dedicated to Roberto Bolaño.

Amazon.com: 

http://www.amazon.com/Between-Parentheses-Articles-Speeches-1998-2003/dp/0811218147/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339723123&sr=1-1

Between Parentheses

Author~ Roberto Bolano

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2011

The essays of Roberto Bolaño in English at last.

Between Parentheses collects most of the newspaper columns and articles Bolaño wrote during the last five years of his life, as well as the texts of some of his speeches and talks and a few scattered prologues. "Taken together," as the editor Ignacio Echevarría remarks in his introduction, they provide "a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented 'autobiography.'" Bolaño's career as a nonfiction writer began in 1998, the year he became famous overnight for The Savage Detectives; he was suddenly in demand for articles and speeches, and he took to this new vocation like a duck to water. Cantankerous, irreverent, and insufferably opinionated, Bolaño also could be tender (about his family and favorite places) as well as a fierce advocate for his heroes (Borges, Cortázar, Parra) and his favorite contemporaries, whose books he read assiduously and promoted generously. A demanding critic, he declares that in his "ideal literary kitchen there lives a warrior": he argues for courage, and especially for bravery in the face of failure. Between Parentheses fully lives up to his own demands: "I ask for creativity from literary criticism, creativity at all levels."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One emerges from Between Parentheses with the desire to read more—to read more Bolaño, re-read Borges, to discover Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn and Carmen Boullosa." (Marianne Moore - Zyzzyva )

"Bolaño frolics in pithy essays on friendship, women, ancestors, and courage. He's irreverent and purposeful, cerebral and casual, insouciantly opinionated and ironic, and charming and funny." (Donna Seaman - Booklist )

The essays in Between Parentheses preserve for us the voice of the seasoned and accomplished Bolaño, the man who, as he was whipping up these various tapas, was also tending the large pot simmering with the eventual 2666, and was very likely aware that his days were numbered. I would like to have the culture, the knowledge, that would let me enjoy his responses to his fellow writers as they were meant to be enjoyed, but even without that—and it is a considerable deficit—the collection delights. How not? Spirit, where it exists, shines through. Roberto Bolaño was one of the ones for whom literature was everything.

" (Sven Birkets - Aysmptote )

"Bolaño's judgments are a joy to read. Between Parentheses is a treasure chest: filled with odd glittering jewels and fistfuls of gold. In these essays we hear Bolaño's real voice, the one he often disguised through the ventriloquism of his fiction." (Marcela Valdes - The Nation )

"'More, more, more' might be a simple way to summarize this book." (Biblioklept )

These pieces include sketches from a return visit to Bolaño's native Chile, short newspaper columns largely about books and authors, and glimpses of life with his family in Blanes, a Catalan seaside town. Tentatively compared to "a kind of fragmented autobiography" in Echevarría's introduction, the collection has obvious omissions as a memoir but does reflect Bolaño's multi-faceted, contradictory personality, by turns engaging and cantankerous, shy and outspoken and strangely obsessed with ranking fellow writers. " (The Guardian )

"What a refreshing surprise it is to hear Bolaño in his own words..." (J.C. Gabel - TimeOut Chicago )

"He's the most controversial and commanding figure to have emerged since Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa began issuing mature work in the early 1960's…The excellent thing about Between Parentheses is how thoroughly it dispels any incenses or stale reverence in the air. It's a loud, greasy, unkeppt thing. Reading it is not like sitting through an air-conditioned seminar with the distinguished Senor Bolano. It's like sitting on a barstool next to him, the jukebox playing dirty flamenco." (Dwight Garner - The New York Times )

"All the world is adrift in his universe, and the essays in Between Parentheses make it clear why departure was always Bolaño's real homecoming, and exile the only literary option. "A writer outside his native country seems to grow wings," he asserted. The brilliant flights of his novels lend credence to the theory." (The Los Angeles Review of Books )

About the Author

Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed "by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time" (Ilan Stavans,The Los Angeles Times)," and as "the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.

Natasha Wimmer's translation of Roberto Bolano's 2666 won the National Book Award's Best Novel of the Year as well as the PEN Prize.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/roberto_bolano/index.html