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jdscott50 's review for:
Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003
by Roberto Bolaño
I originally came across this book from an article in The New York Review of Books. It provided one of his essays about exile. It starts off with:
“To be exiled is not to disappear but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and smaller until we reach our real height, the true height of the self. Swift, master of exile, knew this. For him exile was the secret word for journey. Many of the exiled, freighted with more suffering than reasons to leave, would reject this statement.
All literature carries exile within it, whether the writer has had to pick up and go at the age of twenty or has never left home.”
I have been pining for this book ever since.
One of the many things I love about reading Bolano is where he takes a story. If he is given enough time with a vague topic, he can reveal a part of his soul. There is something in this collected non-fiction that comes forward more than his collection of short stories. Here he reveals many of his secrets, the rich stories of his own life, and the works that inspired him that were weaved in to the fictions of By Night in Chile, The Savage Detectives, 2666 and others. The pieces are taken from book prefaces, speeches, and mostly from his column Between Parentheses that ran after his success with The Savage Detectives.
I loved his perspective on literature, writers, and readers. When you read his fiction, especially 2666, it’s a swirl of ideas. That’s part of the fun of reading his fiction, this swirl of a million ideas passing through with no time to catch or contemplate unless you read slowly and carefully, but not too slow as to miss the rhythm. It’s much easier to find the source of many of these ideas in his non-fiction works. I think my favorite section was his column Between Parentheses. There are so many short punches and insights that you have to stop after each one and re-read it. There is also a long list of authors to find in which he recommends which can keep one busy for quite some time (many of which are translated, but some are not). It was fantastic and my best Christmas gift from my wife!
“To be exiled is not to disappear but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and smaller until we reach our real height, the true height of the self. Swift, master of exile, knew this. For him exile was the secret word for journey. Many of the exiled, freighted with more suffering than reasons to leave, would reject this statement.
All literature carries exile within it, whether the writer has had to pick up and go at the age of twenty or has never left home.”
I have been pining for this book ever since.
One of the many things I love about reading Bolano is where he takes a story. If he is given enough time with a vague topic, he can reveal a part of his soul. There is something in this collected non-fiction that comes forward more than his collection of short stories. Here he reveals many of his secrets, the rich stories of his own life, and the works that inspired him that were weaved in to the fictions of By Night in Chile, The Savage Detectives, 2666 and others. The pieces are taken from book prefaces, speeches, and mostly from his column Between Parentheses that ran after his success with The Savage Detectives.
I loved his perspective on literature, writers, and readers. When you read his fiction, especially 2666, it’s a swirl of ideas. That’s part of the fun of reading his fiction, this swirl of a million ideas passing through with no time to catch or contemplate unless you read slowly and carefully, but not too slow as to miss the rhythm. It’s much easier to find the source of many of these ideas in his non-fiction works. I think my favorite section was his column Between Parentheses. There are so many short punches and insights that you have to stop after each one and re-read it. There is also a long list of authors to find in which he recommends which can keep one busy for quite some time (many of which are translated, but some are not). It was fantastic and my best Christmas gift from my wife!