Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses

As other reviews of Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses (Entre Paréntesis, Anagrama, 2012) note, the posthumously published collection of the writer’s articles, essays, speeches and other writings isn’t a pretty thing. And not that Bolaño was ever too concerned with form and beauty, but this amalgam of texts dating from 1998 to 2003 is particularly devoid of the kind of narrative coherence found in his novels. Which–don’t get me wrong–isn’t a bad thing. And not only not a bad thing, but, this being mostly a collection of journalistic writings, to be expected from a text of its kind. In this respect, Between Parentheses might unwittingly be Bolaño’s most postmodern, poststructuralist and/or schizophrenic text: for one (though only in the strictest sense of the term), its author isn’t really Bolaño–the texts are all the writer’s, but as a posthumous publication it was Ignacio Echeverría, Bolaño’s literary executor, who selected and organized them [1]; because of the diverse nature of the writings, the book lacks a cohesive narrative and can be best described as collage-like, a series of independent fragments that don’t quite cohere into a whole; and, lastly, Between Parentheses is also the closest thing we’ll get to a Bolaño autobiography, to an unfiltered view of the writer’s mind at work. But Bolaño wasn’t a postmodernist, and there is plenty of the author’s distinctive style to be found in the 350 or so pages of Between Parentheses–which I don’t think anyone would deny is largely the writer’s appeal.

Not that the content, the subject matter of the various writings in Between Parentheses doesn’t matter–I’ll get to that in a minute–but there is no question that much of Bolaño’s allure lies in his prose, as much in what he says as in how he writes. He did, after all, consider himself a poet first and foremost, and if there is one thing that Bolaño carried over from his poetry-writing days to the short stories and novels (and, as demonstrated by this collection, journalistic pieces) he wrote in his forties was a prose that remains as idiosyncratic and mysterious as impenetrable. In a New Yorker: Fiction podcast episode from 2011, Daniel Alarcón argues that for many young writers the appeal of Bolaño’s writing resides in its ability to describe a mood or atmosphere without really saying anything or without anything significant happening plotwise [2]. I would tend to agree with this assertion. So, despite the fact that a good chunk of Between Parentheses is about literature, poetry, writers and writing, much (though not all) of Bolaño’s prose here somehow manages to be as political, ethical and atmospheric as that of his more narrative undertakings. For fans of Bolaño, this should be reason enough to pick up this book.

As far as the contents of Between Parentheses, the bulk of the writings found here are journalistic pieces Bolaño published in Spanish and Chilean newspapers toward the end of his life (the book’s title is borrowed from that of the column he wrote for the Chilean newspaper Las Últimas Noticias), while the provenance of the rest of the texts is varied. Included are the author’s last known interview with the Mexican edition of Playboy, the speech he gave upon receiving the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for The Savage Detectives, and various prologues and prefaces he authored. These are all organized into six non-chronological sections, an organizing scheme that works as well as any other given the diverse nature of the texts. Also worth noting is that fact that it is not a coincidence that the writings in this volume only span half a decade, from 1998 until Bolaño’s death in 2003, as it was not until the publication of The Savage Detectives and subsequent critical acclaim the novel received that Bolaño’s fame began to grow, and with it, invitations to give talks and write columns.

From the book’s first section, “Three Insufferable Speeches,” the Caracas Address stands out for Bolaño’s candid comments on writing and literature. In response to an unidentified writer who claimed that “the homeland of a writer … is his language,” Bolaño retorts: “a writer’s homeland isn’t his language or isn’t only his language, but the people he loves. And sometimes a writer’s homeland isn’t the people he loves but his memory. And other times a writer’s only homeland is his steadfastness and his courage” [3]. And a bit later he describes great writing as the “ability to peer into the darkness, to leap into the void, to know that literature is basically a dangerous undertaking” [4]. Though upon first impression hyperbolic, for anyone familiar with Bolaño’s background and concerns these statements fit well within the writer’s ethos. In this regard, it isn’t surprising that Bolaño ends the speech by aligning specific political, ethical and philosophical positions with the (honorable) profession of the writer; in great poetic fashion he confesses that, “to a great extent everything that I’ve written is a love letter or a farewell letter to my own generation” [5].

The book’s second section, on the other hand, is comprised of a dozen or so columns Bolaño wrote on the occasion of returning to his native Chile in 1998. Though he states in the book’s preface that, “my only nationality is Chilean,” he had what can only be described as a conflicted relationship with his country of birth [6]. At fifteen Bolaño left Chile with his family for Mexico and came back for a brief period in 1973 to support Salvador Allende’s leftist government. In September of that year, however, Allende’s government was overthrown by the Chilean armed forces, which captured and kept Bolaño in custody for a week or so on charges of extremism. After being rescued by two former classmates (or so the story goes), he returned to Mexico, where he lived for a few years before moving to Spain in the late 1970s [7]. He did not return to Chile for two and a half decades, and it was upon setting foot again on Chilean soil that he wrote the various pieces include in this section of the book. Among these, “Fragments of Return to the Native Land,” “The Corridor With No Apparent Way Out,” and scattered passages describing his visit with Nicanor Parra are worthy of note. It is also in the last piece of this section, “On Literature, the National Literature Prize, and the Rare Consolations of the Writing Life,” that Bolaño famously disparages the work of Isabel Allende (Salvador Allende’s niece), one of Chile’s better known and popular living writers; he writes: “Allende’s work is bad, but it’s alive … It won’t live long, like many sick people, but for now it’s alive” [8].

The next section, “Between Parentheses,” comprises the bulk of the book and includes Bolaño’s published columns from 1999 through 2003. As newspaper pieces, these are mostly short and come across less as researched and prepared texts than as diary entries–their tone is candid and relaxed. Though the theme of literature and writing is predominant among them, as opinion columns the format’s freedom allowed Bolaño to speak his mind about anything and everything–he writes about a pastry cook friend from Blanes, his local bookshop, childhood memories of growing up in the south of Chile, his editor, Berlin, planes, movies. On the other hand, the columns on writers and writing are diverse within the constricted universe of literature; recurrent topics include Latin American and Chilean literature–the latter of which he describes as “an endless nightmare” [8]–the classics, surrealist, nihilistic or absurdist novels and poems, and too many writers, both dead and alive, to list here. If there is anything the reader learns from this section is that Bolaño considered himself a Latin American writer through and through; his opinions regarding Latin American literature’s past, present and future are some of the most fervent in the entire book–no doubt because for Bolaño literary and political choices and positions go hand in hand.

“Scenes,” the book’s following section, consists of a grouping of pieces Bolaño wrote about specific places. These pieces are part diaristic and autobiographical, and part fictional and narrative. In “Beach,” for instance, Bolaño writes about undergoing methadone treatment for heroin use and the surreal scenes he witnesses at a nearby beach–see footnote [7]. This short piece hinges on the use of a unique narrative strategy–one that Bolaño used to great effect in The Savage Detectives and 2666–in which the writer describes in an ominous and foreboding way the witnessing by a character (in this case Bolaño himself) of a seemingly banal event. Plagued by a sense of anxiety and impending doom, stories such as this one exemplify Bolaño’s aforementioned ability to evoke an ambience or mood around the most trite of events–I also just realized that the 5-page story consists of a single, unbroken sentence, which surely adds to the effect. This excerpt should exemplify what I’m talking about:

“… she was fat, or round, and must have been about seventy, and he was thin, or more than thin, a walking skeleton, I think that was why I noticed him, because usually I didn’t take much notice of the people on the beach, but I did notice them, and it was because the guy was so skinny, I saw him and got scared, fuck, it’s death coming for me, I thought, but nothing was coming for me, it was just two old people, the man maybe seventy-five and the woman about seventy, or the other way around, and she seemed to be in good health, but he looked as if he were going to breathe his last breath any time now or as if this were his last summer…” [9]

Also worth a mention from this section is “Fateful Characters”–an essay included in the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of the photographs of Chilean artist Sergio Larraín in Valencia, Spain–if only for the following line, which is worthy of its own Bolaño story: “The killer sleeps as the victim photographs him” [10].

The fifth section is comprised of pieces written on assignment, such as prefaces and reviews, all on literary topics. From this section I thoroughly enjoyed “The Brave Librarian,” a sort of homage to Borges in which the Argentine’s name isn’t mentioned once. (We learn in Between Parentheses that Bolaño’s writer is Borges and his poet/anti-poet is Parra.) Lastly, the sixth section is largely autobiographical and includes four pieces in which Bolaño discusses his young and adult life in the context of his literary influences. He talks about stealing books, tells how Camus’s The Fall “saved me from hell and plummeted me straight back down again” [11], gives advice on writing short stories–“It’s best to write stories three at a time, or five at a time. If you’ve got the energy, write them nine at a time, or fifteen at a time” [12]–and confirms what the reader of The Savage Detectives already knows: “[The Savage Detectives] tries to reflect a kind of generational defeat and also the happiness of a generation, a happiness that at times delineated courage and the limits of courage. … I believe there are as many ways to read my novel as there are voices in it. It can be read as a deathbed lament. It can also be read as a game” [13]. The interview with the Mexican edition of Playboy, possibly the last one he gave, is an essential read, too.

Sure, not all of Between Parentheses is as consistently gripping as some of Bolaño’s best novels–for instance, the pieces where the writer discusses lesser-known Latin American literature; much of which, I have to admit, I have not read–but as demonstrated by the various writings I’ve discussed, there’s enough substance and meat and enough of Bolaño’s prose here to make this worth a read–and in the case of some of the pieces, a re-read. Having said as much I have to say about the book, I’ll end with its beginning, the epigraph chosen by Echeverría which serves as a homage to Bolaño, but which also, in my opinion, expresses with great accuracy the power of Bolaño’s words: “Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I’m at the end of my strength” [14].

Notes

[1] For the purists, Echeverría notes in the introduction that before his untimely death, Bolaño hinted a number of times at the idea of publishing his journalistic writings–though surely Bolaño’s version of this collection would have been different from Echeverría’s; [2] http://www.newyorker.com/ online/2011/03/28/110328on_audio_alarcon; [3] Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses, New Directions, 2011, p. 34; [4] Ibid; [5] Ibid, p. 35; [6] Ibid, p. 16; [7] as this New York Times article suggests, Bolaño’s past might not be as tumultuous as the writer would like us to believe; [8] Between Parentheses, p. 110; [8] Ibid, p. 124; [9] Ibid, p. 261; [10] Ibid, p. 280; [11] Ibid, p. 344; [12] Ibid, p. 350; [13] Ibid, p. 352; [14] Ibid, p. 13.

Bolaño’s La Pista de Hielo (The Skating Rink)

A few days ago I finished reading one of Roberto Bolaño early novels, La Pista de Hielo (Anagrama, 2012) (The Skating Rink) from 1993, a somewhat appropriate read given that the Winter Olympics are currently underway. Although I should say that there are few parallels between the novel and the Olympics. (As far as Bolaño’s novels go, 2666 would probably the closest literary equivalent to the sporting event… But then again, what is 2666 not about? But I digress.) In fact, the only significant parallel or connection between the two would have to be the sport of figure skating, which one of the novel’s main characters practices. Although, on second thought, one could argue that there is another–if much more speculative and loose–thread that connects the novel and the Sochi games: like the Olympics and like much of Bolaño’s writing, La Pista de Hielo is not just read but also… viewed, witnessed, in a way not unlike spectators to this Winter Olympics might sit and watch the figure skating event.

And there is much in the structure of La Pista de Hielo that helps support the proposition that we, as readers, are placed in the position of being onlookers, of witnessing the novel’s action from the sidelines. The story of a murder and the events leading up to it, La Pista de Hielo is delivered to us through the voices of three characters, all central to its action: Remo Morán, a recently divorced poet turned novelist who owns and runs a campground for tourists in the coastal city of Z in Spain, far away from his native Chile; Gaspar Heredia, a bohemian Mexican poet and old friend of Morán who moved to Z to work at Morán’s campground during the tourist season (unlike Los Detectives Salvajes‘s Alberto Belano, no single character here takes on the identity and biography of Bolaño, though the case could be made that there is some of the writer in both Morán and Heredia); and, lastly, Enric Rosquelles, a corrupt bureaucrat who runs Z’s social services department, and who funnels city funds to build a skating rink in the abandoned Benvingut Palace. 

In Bolaño’s typical polyvocal fashion, Morán, Heredia and Rosquelles take turns recounting the series of events that led up to the murder of Carmen, a vagabond singer who had recently moved to Z. And while all this should make for a detective novel of the rather generic kind–there are suspects, a murder, a crime scene–that, it does not. Frustrating the genre’s expectations, La Pista de Hielo does not take the reader through a series of mysteries and puzzles that ultimately reveal in climactic fashion the murderer’s identity and intentions. If anything, Carmen’s slaying and the eventual disclosure of who committed the murder turn out to be some of the most anticlimactic parts of the novel. And that is saying something, as Bolaño’s writing is characterized by, it hinges on a lack of climax. In Discurso de Caracas (The Caracas Speech) the writer described great writing as, “To run along the edge of the precipice: on one side the bottomless abyss and on the other the faces one loves, the smiling faces one loves, and books, and friends, and food”/“Correr por el borde del precipicio: a un lado el abismo sin fondo y al otro lado las caras que uno quiere, las sonrientes caras que uno quiere, y los libros, y los amigos, y la comida” (pp. 36-37, Entre Paréntesis, Anagrama, 2012). In Bolaño’s universe, his characters never fall into the bottomless abyss, but they walk, as close as they can, along the edge of its precipice. And La Pista de Hielo isn’t the exception.

For the novel’s lack of climax and its unusual structure for a detective novel make room here for Bolaño’s writing, which, as usual, manages at once to be both descriptive and ridden with mystery, and for a polyvocality, multiple vantages and subjective delivery that make fixed, stable meanings impossible. Regarding this last point I would argue that, in the end, the form La Pista de Hielo takes is less that of (as Morán describes the skating rink upon finding Carmen’s dead body) “a labyrinth with a frozen center”/”un laberinto… con un centro de cristal” (p. 147), than that of a dynamic planetary system in which the novel’s celestials bodies, its characters, orbit around a frozen sun. On his way to find the woman’s slain body, Morán notes that the Palace’s passages, “formed concentric circles around the skating rink”/”corrían formando círculos. En el centro estaba la pista de hielo” (p. 146). In other words, relativism is central to La Pista de Hielo. Other planets and moons: we, who, as readers, take in and reconstruct the action from the outside through the (male) gazes of the three men; Rosquelles, who, also from an outside–the physical outer edge of the rink–acts as both audience and coach to Nadia, the figure skater for whom he built the rink; Nadia, who glides in circles around an ever-shifting center; Heredia, whose storyline and concerns revolve not around the murder, but around Caridad, Carmen’s mysterious protégé; the rink and its concentric passages; and, of course, Carmen and the city of Z that fateful summer.

And, while it should be said that La Pista de Hielo is not always as successful at maintaining that uncanny balance between sublimity and banality that would come to characterize Bolaño’s later writing, structurally, this early effort contains all the elements later found in, say, Los Detectives Salvajes. To borrow Bolaño’s own words, La Pista de Hielo doesn’t get quite close enough to the edge of the precipice, but, at the same time, this not-quite-close-enough vantage is still close enough for us readers to peek into the abyss.