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A review by fxdpts
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
Soccer hooligan nazis, spanish nationalist volunteer nazis, nazis for race, nazis for country, driven to nazism from hating philosophers, haitian nazis, feminist nazis; every time I read a new Bolaño book, I always ask myself “What more could I possibly want that my dear author hasn’t already given?”
Nazi Literature in the Americas stands apart from much of Bolaño’s writing. It’s violent, but the violence is much more subdued than usual. It’s about poets, but fewer of them are failures/dirtbags than the poets he usually writes about, who are written after his friends and acquaintances from his own poetry circles. I certainly don’t think he’s glorifying fascist poets (obvious from his background, but also from much of the tone). Rather, he’s trying not to take the easy way out and humiliate fascism by making them all cuckolds and failures (not that there aren’t a share of those). Good writing isn’t going to initiate the Fourth Reich, but unwarranted attacks on verse isn’t going to stop it either.
I’d like to share some of my favorite passages:
Max Mirebalais - “He soon realized that there were only two ways to achieve his aim: through violence, which was out of the question, since he was peaceable and timorous by nature, appalled by the mere sight of blood; or through literature, which is a surreptitious form of violence, a passport to respectability, and can, in certain young and sensitive nations, disguise the social climber’s origins.”
Rory Long - “And he befriended radio hosts, to see if he could learn something from them, like how to recognize the impersonal voice roaming America’s radio waves. A tone at once colloquial and dramatic. The voice of the man-who-is-all-eyes wandering around until it finds the consciousness of the man-who-is-all-ears.”
Zach Sodenstern - “Checking the Maps opens the Fourth Reich saga. It is full of appendices, maps, incomprehensible indices of proper names, and solicits an interaction in which no sensible reader would persist. The events take places mainly in Denver and Midwestern cities. There is no main character. The less chaotic stretches read like collections of stories haphazardly tacked together.”
Nazi Literature in the Americas stands apart from much of Bolaño’s writing. It’s violent, but the violence is much more subdued than usual. It’s about poets, but fewer of them are failures/dirtbags than the poets he usually writes about, who are written after his friends and acquaintances from his own poetry circles. I certainly don’t think he’s glorifying fascist poets (obvious from his background, but also from much of the tone). Rather, he’s trying not to take the easy way out and humiliate fascism by making them all cuckolds and failures (not that there aren’t a share of those). Good writing isn’t going to initiate the Fourth Reich, but unwarranted attacks on verse isn’t going to stop it either.
I’d like to share some of my favorite passages:
Max Mirebalais - “He soon realized that there were only two ways to achieve his aim: through violence, which was out of the question, since he was peaceable and timorous by nature, appalled by the mere sight of blood; or through literature, which is a surreptitious form of violence, a passport to respectability, and can, in certain young and sensitive nations, disguise the social climber’s origins.”
Rory Long - “And he befriended radio hosts, to see if he could learn something from them, like how to recognize the impersonal voice roaming America’s radio waves. A tone at once colloquial and dramatic. The voice of the man-who-is-all-eyes wandering around until it finds the consciousness of the man-who-is-all-ears.”
Zach Sodenstern - “Checking the Maps opens the Fourth Reich saga. It is full of appendices, maps, incomprehensible indices of proper names, and solicits an interaction in which no sensible reader would persist. The events take places mainly in Denver and Midwestern cities. There is no main character. The less chaotic stretches read like collections of stories haphazardly tacked together.”