Bolaño ain’t what he’s all cracked up to be

2 comments on “Bolaño ain’t what he’s all cracked up to be”

1. Mark Pritchard says:
   November 6th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

   “A false impression of Latin America,” horrors! Because that has never happened before.

   Seriously, Moya is right that it’s silly to build up a myth around Bolaño, but he’s not right for the reasons he cites. He seems to feel that attention by the masses somehow pollutes the object of the attention, and since it’s the North American masses, so much the worse. But the real reason why it’s silly to build up a myth is that Bolaño doesn’t need one. His work alone justifies the attention, the acclamation, and the book sales. It may be that people buy his books for the wrong reason, to follow a trend or whatever, but so what? Who is harmed? Those books which go unread will get donated to thrift stores, where they will eventually be read by someone who appreciates them.

2. Chris Schmidgall says:
   November 8th, 2009 at 11:40 pm

   Believer Magazine had a good article in their March, 2007 issue. I’ll confess it was the first time I read anything about Bolano, let alone by him. It did inspire me to read some of his work and even though the cover calls Savage Detectives, “a kind of epiphanically catastrophic beatnik-South American Lord of the Rings” I wouldn’t say I got the impression that Bolano was a James Dean or Kurt Cobain of expat South American literature.
   Here’s a link to a brief excerpt. Back issues are on sale for $4.00 from the McSweeney’s store. [link above]

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