Roberto Bolaño: Author, Poet, and... Misogynist?
In search of an author's brilliance, and knowing when to give up
Last week on the podcast, we discussed The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. It was challenging, to say the least.
Neha and I had been wanting to read this book for a while, and felt even better about selecting it for the podcast when it was listed in the NYT’s 100 best books of the 21st century. If you’re curious, I highly recommend listening to the full episode, and, if you’re feeling brave, try the novel yourself.
We have struggled with finishing books before, certainly, but reading this book was a new kind of challenge; it required us to inhabit a world that was utterly unfamiliar to us, and one that directly affronted our values and our dignity as women.
But differentiating the narrator’s perspective from the author’s perspective can be tricky — is it the writer who is biased? Or is it the book?
We decided to read some of Bolaño’s other works in order to give it a fair chance.
Roberto Bolaño’s Short Stories
Roberto Bolaño was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist whose works were relatively unknown in the English-speaking world until after his death, when The Savage Detectives was translated into English, 2666 was published posthumously, and a number of unpublished novels were discovered.
Though he is known mainly for his short stories and novels, he considered himself to be primarily a poet. Since I don’t often read poems, I decided to read one of his short stories.
‘Last Evenings on Earth’ is a short story in a collection of the same name that follows B, the protagonist, as he takes a trip to Acapulco with his father. Not much happens — they first go to a hotel, the father plays cards with some people they meet, they go on a boat, his father wants to take him to a brothel, etc etc. The story is written rather like a dull, matter-of-fact travelogue; except that B is preoccupied by the death of a surrealist poet, Gui Rosey, who was killed by Nazis in World War II.
The story meanders in a way that reminded me of the Beat writers — a movement known for its emphasis on masculinity, and the marginalization of women.
Having now read more than one work by Bolaño, I feel fairly comfortable with my assessment that women exist in Bolaño’s worlds to provide free sexual favors, without being asked, with no expectations, cost to themselves, or consequences, and apparently stemming entirely from their own limitless libido. This makes for a tough and mostly unpleasant reading experience.
On a positive note, I wasn’t completely repulsed by this story the way I was with The Savage Detectives — but at the same time, I am not sure that I understood any of it. This article did a good job explaining the merits of these short stories, for those who, like me, are trying to understand.
Approaching Roberto Bolaño’s Oeuvre
In the Labyrinth: A User’s Guide to Bolaño from The New Yorker provides a helpful map for where to start with the author, cautioning against starting with 2666 — the writer of this article also calls the protagonist of the story ‘By Night in Chile’ “one of the most morally execrable characters in the Bolaño oeuvre” and so I’m glad I didn’t spend my time trying to read this one.
A lot of the mythos that surrounds Bolaño has to do with his own biography; he had an interesting life, traveling from Chile to Mexico City and back, getting imprisoned, then later traveling to Paris and Barcelona. These articles paint an interesting picture of Bolaño the writer:
Vagabonds [The New Yorker]
— Shruti
Have you read any of Bolaño’s works? Did you love or hate them? Let us know in the comments or by replying directly to this email!