Scan barcode
jadejesus18's review against another edition
4.0
The most original and downright bizarre and surprising book I have ever read. I’m completely baffled by it.
heyhawk's review against another edition
4.0
Bolano was one of the greats. This is a biographical dictionary of fictional writers who were to one degree or another extreme right wingers. Since Bolano was a leftist one night expect then to be straw men and women but Bolano was too good a writer for that. They seem like real people, refreshing to read in this day of dehumanizing the enemy. Bad ideas occur to real people, a fact worth remembering. It's a little like how Humbert Humbert (the narrator of Lolita) can occasionally lure you in until you pull back and look at what he's doing.
As with all South American literature I've read I feel ill equipped to catch a lot of the cultural references which I'm sure would enhance the enjoyment of the book. Several of the fake authors here feuded with authors who actually existed, but I only know that from online research.
This reminded me of Borges and Gene Wolfe both of whom did similar things if not on this scale. While I didn't like this as well as 2666 (an all time favorite), or if memory serves, The Savage Detectives, it is an incredible work of the imagination and I do recommend it.
As with all South American literature I've read I feel ill equipped to catch a lot of the cultural references which I'm sure would enhance the enjoyment of the book. Several of the fake authors here feuded with authors who actually existed, but I only know that from online research.
This reminded me of Borges and Gene Wolfe both of whom did similar things if not on this scale. While I didn't like this as well as 2666 (an all time favorite), or if memory serves, The Savage Detectives, it is an incredible work of the imagination and I do recommend it.
premxs's review against another edition
4.0
a few biographies into this book, I thought maybe I'd end up feeling dissatisfied with the incompleteness of the lives created for the sake of this tableau, that the curiosity about its movements and moments would get the better of me - but somehow (and herein lies Bolano's genius), I didn't. The pathos of these fictional authors and their terrifyingly real belief systems weave and clash and simmer and submerge with sweeps of passion, dull thuds of pain, and lashes of horrific self-assurance. It is the act of literary creation that is at the heart of this book, with all of its arrogance and excess and self-importance and tragedy. Ultimately, it is surprisingly profound, and as memorable for what it doesn't say as what it does.
barrypierce's review against another edition
3.0
This is an encyclopedia of writers associated with the Nazi Literature movement of the 20th century, focusing mainly on those living in the Americas. It gives each writer a couple of pages of biography and discusses most of their major works. All of it is backed up by an extensive index and a vast bibliography. So far so simple yeah? Oh hell no. This is fucking Bolaño.
Y'see, there is no such thing as Nazi Literature. It's all made up. And all of the people discussed in this book? All made up as well. This is a fictional encyclopedia. None of it is real.
I will admit, if you haven't read any Bolaño before then this work will be completely wasted on you. This is Bolaño at his most Bolaño. It is just so weird and fun and strangely tragic. You honestly treat these fictional people as real, living writers. You become intrigued by their oeuvres only to remember it's all made up. It's utterly original and a fine antinovel. It only further elevates Bolaño to the level of a genius.
Y'see, there is no such thing as Nazi Literature. It's all made up. And all of the people discussed in this book? All made up as well. This is a fictional encyclopedia. None of it is real.
I will admit, if you haven't read any Bolaño before then this work will be completely wasted on you. This is Bolaño at his most Bolaño. It is just so weird and fun and strangely tragic. You honestly treat these fictional people as real, living writers. You become intrigued by their oeuvres only to remember it's all made up. It's utterly original and a fine antinovel. It only further elevates Bolaño to the level of a genius.
tankie_girl_boy's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
Bolano produces with this work something jagged and interesting. Written as a pardody of a literary journal, his main satirical target appears to be complacency of the literary and artisitic intelligentsia toward fascist ideas and concepts, provided those ideas and concepts give them formal innovation and edgelord novelty. The prose style stays formal in a parody of the literary compilation, until the last chapter, Carlos Rameriaz Hoffman which either lapses into or elevates to well written prose, depending on your perspective. This is also the chapter where Bolano himself appears and the post modern device leaves interesting questions as to whether he is inditing himself in this literary complacency or genuinely believes in the transendence of poetry over ones complicity in fascism.
I tend to believe that the the most effective of gennocidal reigimes don't have their writers and artists express in public their ethnic hatreds and gennocidal ideas but instead win over the intelligentsia and commit them to a conspiracy of silence while publicly writing about virtue and I thought Bolano was disagreeing with this viewpoint, but having finished the text, I'm not sure that's true.
Reading the book you do feel yourself challenged by your own love of fascist or reactionary writers, be it Lovecraft, Ceiline or if you never developed your taste beyond childhood, Rowling.
The book is very funny and sharp and manages to deliver some incredible jokes and cutting lines. This is especially impressive reading it in translation; comedy is hard to translate across languages.
I really enjoyed this book and I reccomend it to all that like dark comedy and thinking about modern fascism and the like.
I tend to believe that the the most effective of gennocidal reigimes don't have their writers and artists express in public their ethnic hatreds and gennocidal ideas but instead win over the intelligentsia and commit them to a conspiracy of silence while publicly writing about virtue and I thought Bolano was disagreeing with this viewpoint, but having finished the text, I'm not sure that's true.
Reading the book you do feel yourself challenged by your own love of fascist or reactionary writers, be it Lovecraft, Ceiline or if you never developed your taste beyond childhood, Rowling.
The book is very funny and sharp and manages to deliver some incredible jokes and cutting lines. This is especially impressive reading it in translation; comedy is hard to translate across languages.
I really enjoyed this book and I reccomend it to all that like dark comedy and thinking about modern fascism and the like.
zach_brumaire's review against another edition
4.0
the creative dexterity and raw scope of Bolaño's creation is of course immense, so much so that, at be the risk of over-exactitude i would have preferred the inclusion of a substantive forward or introduction (the 30th of the 33 sections already operates as a conclusion, thematically at least) so as to better attain a sense of capacity to navigate the total world he elaborates with such a fecund yet (paradoxically?) restrained pen. Such works as Borges' Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain and The Approach of Al-Mu'tasim come to mind, their fingerprints (which is not *necessarily* to say the lineage, though in this case we can probably safely assume) already being clear enough on the present text. Still, it profits one little to critique an author for not writing the book one would have preferred (or expected) to read. Or perhaps we should congratulate Bolaño for writing *precisely* that book, and all the more so for executing it by means of that most asture of all literary tequniques.
nearit's review against another edition
4.0
"He was a soccer player and a Futurist" - this scouring of the claims of literature might be easier to walk away from than Bolaño's 2666, but it's also funnier.
ghosthatter's review against another edition
5.0
有《地球上最后的夜晚》的影子，故事纷纷扰扰，影影绰绰，似乎杂乱无章，失去秩序。读他的文字像是坐着铁皮火车驶过无人的荒野，寂静的夜晚，长长的马路和昏暗的灯光。平静冷漠疲惫的声音在不停地讲述，意象错综复杂，回忆迷乱，“外表不是悲哀的样子，而这恰恰是一种无尽的悲哀。”出席自己的葬礼，并唱一曲挽歌。
harrisonsutton's review against another edition
4.0
This is one of the books that makes me think about what literature is meant to be. Most of this books really does read like a textbook which is what it is supposed to do and it does it well. Did I find myself constantly entertained? No probably not. But is that the point? I don’t know. Star system seems odd for art and especially for art like this book. It’s something that is important to the whole of literature but probably does not need to be read by everyone.