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A review by tankie_girl_boy
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
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.