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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
dark
medium-paced
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
I would say stuff but it's nearly midnight so I will not. Love this though and I won't explain more.
dark
fast-paced
This was my introduction to Bolaño, and it’s accessible, vivid and dynamic; definitely pulling me into the rest of his works. There is a sense of simmering intertextuality below the surface of this novella, but on first read I fear many of these references were missed.
This is a story of leftist revolutionaries and right-wing counterrevolutionaries circulating across the globe and through an international literary underworld of amateur poetry workshops, avant-garde posturing, obscure 'zines, and self-published books that quickly vanish. Hiding in there somewhere, lurking behind various pseudonyms, is the menacing Carlos Wieder, a Chilean Air Force officer who had gained some recognition for his sky poetry, only to be banished from the public eye after a macabre exhibit links him to the atrocities of Pinochet's government. Unfortunately, from the enigmatic author no one can find to the Chilean diaspora, fascist literary weirdos, and the protagonist's vagabond life in Europe, there's really nothing here that wasn't better developed in [b:2666|63032|2666|Roberto Bolaño|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1412644327i/63032._SY75_.jpg|3294830], [b:The Savage Detectives|63033|The Savage Detectives|Roberto Bolaño|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1342651149i/63033._SX50_.jpg|2503920], and [b:Nazi Literature in the Americas|1178230|Nazi Literature in the Americas|Roberto Bolaño|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348627738i/1178230._SX50_.jpg|1166037].
"He didn't look like a poet. He didn't look as if he had been an officer in the Chilean Air Force. He didn't look like an infamous killer. He didn't look like a man who had flown to Antarctica to write a poem in the sky. Not at all."
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The narrator met fellow poet Alberto Ruiz-Tagle at University in Chile just before the military coup that topples the Allende government. Later, Alberto becomes Carlos Wieder, a lieutenant in the Chilean airforce whose extra-curricular career as a serial killer is facilitated by the murders and disappearances of political opponents to the new regime of General Pinochet. Later still, Wieder goes to ground and is hunted through his contributions to underground poetry magazines in Europe.
This novel is a curious mixture of politics and literary criticism; it seems to be predicated on the idea that poetry is important. It references inter alia Borges, Georges Perec, Vathek by William Beckford and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. There's an intense flavour of the typical cocktail of South America and students, of youth and disillusion. There are times when the story seems to wander down a sidetrack; there are echoes of the prose and narrative structure of Jorge Luis Borges (such as when the narrator considers the precise translation of the Bible that Wieder might have used for an early performance poem). But mostly, I suppose, it is about evil and our typically inadequate response to it.