A Bolaño reading list (and an unexpected bargain)

Over at Conversational Reading, Scott Esposito offers a Roberto Bolaño Reading List, based on the late author's book raves and reviews included in his most recently translated work, a collection of essays called Between Parentheses.



Although the list is compelling, it is sadly not exhaustive, and misses out on one of the books Bolaño most admired, J. Rodolfo Wilcock's The Temple of Iconoclasts. But "admired" doesn't sufficiently cover the adulation Bolaño heaped upon The Temple of Iconoclasts. In fact, he called it

without a doubt one of the funniest, most joyful, irreverent, and most corrosive books of the twentieth century.

This is conjecture, but the notable absence of this book from the reading list may be due to Conversational Reading's partnership with Amazon.com (follow the link), which lists the sole new copy of Wilcock's book at a whopping $173.68 and of the nine used copies available, the cheapest will cost you $42.90.



However, there's hope.



If Bolaño's praise of The Temple of Iconoclasts has piqued your interest, but not enough to lead you to dish out (at least) $40, I've got a not-so-secret: we've stocked the book for over a year and, unlike our online competitor, we're selling it at its list price of--wait for it--$14.95.

Best of 2010...

Here you go... The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell and Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño...npb

The Return...

Roberto Bolaño's The Return is a dark and twisted collection of stories. . .great, but definitely twisted.

Once again New Directions gives us a Chris Andrews' translation of the Chilean novelist.

These stories are some of the darkest I've read by Bolaño.  They include themes of murder, pornography, prison camps, prostitutes, politics, ghosts, soccer, necrophilia, and other haunting themes. They are Bolaño's short stories, so they're both easy to read and highly insightful as to his idea of "the secret story." Here is an excerpt of Stacy D'Erasmo's interview in The New York Times Book Review:

"That's what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It's the only thing that really is particular and personal. It's the expression and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular. And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home. But my friend said, "What I mean is the secret story.... The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every damn thing matters! It's just that we don't realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don't even realize that's a lie."

The Fist Roberto Bolaño...

I know, I know more Roberto Bolaño recommendations from Green Apple...

But this is his first book ever! The book he waited twenty years into his career to publish. The book Bolaño himself said, "the only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp."

Here is what I will say: Just today opened my locker to see a small, black, hardcover book with gold foil stamping on the front (the picture to the left does no justice). I turned the book to look at the spine to see in the same gold foil stamping ND.

So I spent my breaks reading the first 20 pages of this magical book and trying to figure out just what to make of it. . . .

Well, I'm loving it, though I can see what Bolaño means in his introduction when he says, "I never brought this novel to any publishing house, of course. They would've slammed the door in my face and I'd have lost the copy."

All that Bolaño will later write is in this small, concise, beautiful surrealist murder mystery that travels countries and continents and literary borders.

Book of the Month/Books in Translation

Even with the amount of press that Roberto Bolaño has had over the last couple years, even from us, and with Horacio Castellanos Moya's- an author who's books She-Devil in the Mirror and Senselessness I consider to be a couple of the best books I read last year- article Bolaño Inc. damning North American press as being "squeezed dry", I would like everyone to read Monsieur Pain, the latest of Bolaño's novels to be released from New Directions.

My reasoning is this: Bolaño has been over marketed in the United States, primarily for Savage Detectives and 2666, both of which I found to be unstructured and a little to rambling for my liking and both of which I felt seemed a little unfinished.

But Bolaño is a master. He knew that his short fiction, short stories or novels, had to be exact and precise. This is the Bolaño that New Directions has been putting out since his death in 2003. These are books where every word matters, every action, description, and character planned out. They are books that deal with love, death, paranoia, and corruption. Monsieur Pain is no different.

Monsieur Pain is trying to cure César Vallejo, the Peruvian poet, who is on the verge of hiccuping himself to death from an undiagnosed illness. Meanwhile Pain is wandering through Paris trying to tie up the mystery that surrounds him.

If you want to read the true Roberto Bolaño, read Chris Andrews' amazing translations from New Directions...and why not start with Monsieur Pain? I guarantee you'll like it.

Books In Translation...

To continue with my books in translation series I realized that I hadn't written about the last three books that I had finished, not to mention that they are all recent works in translation from New Directions...

The first was put out in the beginning of February- Bad Nature, or With Elvis In Mexico. It is part of their New Directions Pearls Series, containing short works in a small and sleek format for around ten bucks. Others in this series have been Federico García Lorca's In Search of Duende, Tennessee Williams' Tales of Desire, and the forthcoming Everything and Nothing by Borges...

Bad Nature is a short novel by the amazing Spanish novelist/journalist/translator of major English works into Spanish, Javier Marías. Marías is best known for his three volume trilogy Your Face Tomorrow (each word is a link to each volume) also published by New Directions...

Bad Nature is a quick read, and definitely larger than its 57 pages. It is narrated by a young Spanish kid working on Elvis' 13th film Fun In Acapulco. It is short so I don't want to give anything away but this is a great read (and inexpensive at that).

Stay tuned next Sunday when I will talk about either one or both of the latest Roberto Bolaño novels to be put out by New Directions; Monsieur Pain and The Skating Rink.

This blog post is brought to you by Snuggie

Having spent most of my life on the east coast, San Francisco's subtle seasons often left me disappointed. I thought I missed the bracing cold of a January morning or August's oppressive humidity. Now that I'm four months into a Midwest winter (I'm promised it'll last only two more months), I realize I was being sentimental. I'm prone to that sort of thing. However! rather than complaining too much (on a public forum), I'll do my best to remain positive. Yes, I will. I will, yes. I am trying. It's just the wind... and the snow... and the way you can feel your breath freezing in your nostrils and you know that you're bleeding from your nose but the blood freezes on your face and everyone's looking at you and wondering why the hell you aren't wearing a hat and...

[Deep breath.]

One of the (few) positive things about being unable to disrobe from my Snuggie - which, of course, is covered in cat hair and crumbs - is that I have little recourse but to spend a lot of time finding out just how much interesting stuff there is on the Internet. (Oh, sure, I read books too. Sort of.) Who knew? Maybe you didn't, so I'm going to share some wonderful things I've found, like the photograph above of Billy Faulkner. Or this, which must surely be the work of the Devil. Or God, it's hard to tell. Either way, it scares me.

Without any former ado, here are the links:

1. The photograph of Faulkner was pulled from this gallery at Life Magazine of famous literary drunks and addicts. Not included was Alfred Jarry, who, in typical Ubu-esque fashion, offered this quip in reply to concern over his drinking habits: "We thought we had done once and for all with this question of alcoholism, and that all sensible people understood that the use, and even more the abuse, of fermented beverages is what distinguishes man from beast."

2. A few links for Bolaño enthusiasts: First, his story William Burns is available (for free) at The New Yorker. And second, Bolaño's "Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories," originally published in World Literature Today, is available here.

3. Novelist and provocateur Tom McCarthy (Remainder, one of my favorites) has a long essay on Jean-Philippe Toussaint in the latest issue of the London Review of Books. (In case you forget how much we love Monsieur Toussaint, look here. He's good fer what ails ya.)

4. Coleridge or Wordsworth, eh? The former was an opium addict prone to wanderlust, the latter "the most sober of the great romantics, a water drinker, a walker of the hills, an exemplary family man." The choice is obvious.

5. Finally, Dolores Park will be closed for over a year starting sometime around September 2011. This is awful news, but take consolation in the Secret Spaces of San Francisco.

It's the...Book of the Month!

In his introduction to El Monstruo, John Ross starts small and immediate as he describes his room in the crumbling Hotel Isabel where he has lived since the disastrous earthquake in 1985 that left Mexico City leveled in the same way the 1906 left San Francisco.

Ross starts out small but there is nothing small in his history of Mexico City. In fact his tale of the down-and-outs, the prostitutes— those who make up his teeming city— is more of a love affair with a haggard and desolate lover; much like Bolaño’s Chile or Saramago’s Portugal.

This book consumed me. It made me yearn for and recoil from Mexico City all at once. It is the literary and historical heartbeat of a city that always seems on the brink of destruction but somehow lives on.

It is beautiful and heroic tribute to this incredible city.