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A review by dngoldman
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
4.0
At a minimum, this is a brilliant display of imagination, creativity, and pure writing brio. As the Complete Review says, Bolano is"conceiving a whole small literary universe. He invents the lives and work of more than two dozen writers (and dozens more who are mentioned as secondary figures), presenting them in an encyclopaedic collection, complete with a bibliography….. There is almost no indication that this is all fabrication; readers might well think they are merely unfamiliar with these authors and their works -- hardly surprising, given that many of them were abject (and worse) failures. For all intents and purposes -- in this capricious world of literature and literary reputation -- this book could very well be true: there are, in fact, thousands of writers who had careers and produced works like these, and of whom nearly all traces are lost and forgotten (and can, at best be found, in dusty libraries and used-book stores). "Indeed, I kept searching on wikipedia for the authors.
It would be easy to see this work as “simply” a writer's exercise. A highly entertaining, wickedly imagined, and fully realized one, but in the end just an exercise. At times it does feel that way, and you could take out any dozen of the short vignettes, save the first and last, and not really change the work.
Yet, Bolano is executing something astonishing and subversive. Despite the objective nature of the language, there is something strange in his portrayal of his oddball, rogues gallery of writers. The attracoties of the Nazis and other facicists are only hinted at. If one knew no more about WWII than most of do about most wars of the past (e.g. the 30-year war), you’d simply have no opinion about the character’s participation in facists circles. Rather Bolano focuses almost exclusively the characters literary achievements (or more often lack thereof). Thus, Bolano creates empathy with characters the reader really doesn’t want to epmathize with. He also is forcing to ask questions about how much we judge art divorced from the people. Even more disturbing is the the question of how much to forgive the admirable striving, often kooky, artist - the character we’re so use to having sympathy with - for their facist associations. Through his use of neutral language and standard literary criticism Bolano is picking up a theme that used to divesting effect in 2666 - the intelligesia’s ability to use intellectual analysis or love of the arts to evade moral judgement. With Bolano himself appearing at the novel’s end, we feel somehow complicit with the characters - that somehow our enjoyment of the work is letting fascism to continue.
It would be easy to see this work as “simply” a writer's exercise. A highly entertaining, wickedly imagined, and fully realized one, but in the end just an exercise. At times it does feel that way, and you could take out any dozen of the short vignettes, save the first and last, and not really change the work.
Yet, Bolano is executing something astonishing and subversive. Despite the objective nature of the language, there is something strange in his portrayal of his oddball, rogues gallery of writers. The attracoties of the Nazis and other facicists are only hinted at. If one knew no more about WWII than most of do about most wars of the past (e.g. the 30-year war), you’d simply have no opinion about the character’s participation in facists circles. Rather Bolano focuses almost exclusively the characters literary achievements (or more often lack thereof). Thus, Bolano creates empathy with characters the reader really doesn’t want to epmathize with. He also is forcing to ask questions about how much we judge art divorced from the people. Even more disturbing is the the question of how much to forgive the admirable striving, often kooky, artist - the character we’re so use to having sympathy with - for their facist associations. Through his use of neutral language and standard literary criticism Bolano is picking up a theme that used to divesting effect in 2666 - the intelligesia’s ability to use intellectual analysis or love of the arts to evade moral judgement. With Bolano himself appearing at the novel’s end, we feel somehow complicit with the characters - that somehow our enjoyment of the work is letting fascism to continue.