Bolaño Ever Bigger

“2666″ is as consummate a performance as any 900-page novel dare hope to be: Bolaño won the race to the finish line in writing what he plainly intended, in his self-interrogating way, as a master statement. Indeed, he produced not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what’s possible for the novel as a form in our increasingly, and terrifyingly, post-national world. “The Savage Detectives” looks positively hermetic beside it.

From a rave review of 2666, here.  I wonder how an 1100 page novel in Spanish gets to have 900 pages when it’s translated into English. It seems like rather a lot to lose.

The Other September 11th

On a day when the internet is groaning with 9/11 commemorations, and quite right too, it’s important to recall that today also marks the anniversary of another terrorist attack. It occurred on the 11th of September, 1973 when the Chilean armed forces overthrew  their country’s government. Though relatively few people died that day, thousands were arrested, tortured and murdered by Pinochet’s usurping, tyrannical and thieving government over the following 17 years.

Salvador Allende, the lawful and democratically  president of Chile, took his own life in the blazing ruins  of the Moneda Palace rather than surrender to Pinochet. At a time when few in Latin America, on the right or on the left, took the norms of liberal democracy seriously, he remained loyal to the end to the constitution of his country.

Recommmended reading and viewing here here here and here

Clara

A translation by Chris Andrews of Roberto Bolaño’s short story “Clara” appears here. The original version is in Llamadas Telefónicas Tx. LVH

Translations

Here, you can find an extract from Chris Andrews’ translation of Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas. If you scroll down a bit to

The arc of Argentino Schiaffino’s life has prompted comparisons, over the years, with varied and often incompatible figures from the worlds of literature and sport.

you’ll find the start of the entry my translation of which is here.