Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview & Other Conversations

by Roberto Bolaño

  One of the most prolific and outspoken writers in twentieth century Spanish language literature, Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928) was also one of the first modern Spanish language writers to garner real success in the United States. Born in Panama City, Panama, Fuentes was also steeped in the magical realism movement. His 1985 novel Gringo Viejo was adapted into a Hollywood film.

  RB: It’s because in literature, the only country where this doesn’t happen, at least from what I can tell, is Argentina. What happens in Mexico happens in all of the other countries in Latin America; in Chile a little bit less but it happens there as well. In Argentina, there is a level of professionalism expected of writers and that the state tries to ignore, but in other countries it is asked of writers that they be independent yet also that they charge the state, which reminds one of a phrase from Mexico’s President Echeverría, who said, “neither to the right, nor to the left, nor in a static center, but onward and upward.” If the writer can’t ask the state for money, he gets mad and will protest the lack of help using his platform like the profoundly independent writer that he is. Besides, that type of direct help translates into all kinds of cultural advances, including jobs.

  EA: Are you more on the side of the Mexicanness of Paz or the universalism of Fuentes?

  RB: I think Octavio Paz is more universal. The truth is, until the moment I lived in Mexico, Fuentes and Paz were, as one would say in Spain, “a partir un piñon,” intimate friends. One was the tsar and the other the tsarevitch; they were very fond of one another. I would guess that Fuentes even loved Paz, if it’s possible for Fuentes to love someone, which is another topic; and Paz probably loved Fuentes, if Paz has ever loved anyone, which is again another topic. Evidently, I don’t side with either of them.

  EA: This thing with intellectuals saying things to one another, it’s quite Mexican.

  RB: It depends on what’s being said. Yes, it’s not unusual in Mexico. Intellectual life—artistic life—in Mexico is very active, as are all aspects of life in Mexico. Mexico is a tremendously vital country, despite the fact that, paradoxically, it’s the country where death is the most present. Perhaps being that vital is what keeps death so close. I feel as distant from Fuentes as I do from Paz. I recognize the writer in Paz, above all, in his essays. He is more interesting as a prose writer than Fuentes is as a prose writer. As a poet, there are four poems by Paz that I could still reread without losing interest, there’s even one I still like a lot. The truth is, in general, Mexican poetry tends toward pride, toward starchiness, although there are notable exceptions evidently. There is Mexican poetry I like very much. I like López Velarde a lot, I like Tablada; among the modern writers I like Mario Santiago, who was my friend. But, look, back to your question, if I had to sit near one of them, I’d sit closer to Octavio Paz than to Fuentes.

  Considered one of the fathers of modern Mexican poetry, Ramón López-Velarde (1888–1921) was beloved in his country yet garnered little attention outside its borders. Writing during the Mexican Revolution and the turmoil of the years after, he had a profound effect on a generation of Mexican writers. A collection of his work, Song of the Heart: Selected Poems by Ramon López-Velarde, is available in English.

  Mexican poet, novelist, and playwright José Juan Tablada (1871–1945) left Mexico in 1914 for the United States. His polemical and satirical writings during the Mexican Revolution angered many important politicians and military officials. Choosing exile, he spent time in Texas, New York City, and Japan. He is credited with introducing the haiku to Spanish-language literature.

  EA: Must we speak of Macedonio in order to speak of Borges?

  RB: Piglia believes so; I don’t. Piglia believes that Macedonio is very important. Macedonio seems to me to be very important, but I think he is important only as measured by his proximity to Borges. In fact, Borges illuminates a ton of writers and painters. For example, Xul Solar, who, if it weren’t for Borges, would probably only be known in Argentina. Perhaps Solar’s paintings deserve only to be known in Argentina, but by being touched by Borges, through the Borgian experience, they become paintings that transcend the limits of Argentina. I think Xul was capable of seducing anyone; he was a very seductive type. And Macedonio seduces Borges perhaps by his courage. Borges is a man who loves courage, who looks for it in people and who knows how to appreciate it besides, and I believe Macedonio is one of those writers, one of the most courageous beings Borges knows. He is a man truly without duplicity. Borges knows he can always rely on Macedonio and if there were ever a moment when that wouldn’t be possible, he knows he would hear it directly from Macedonio himself. Macedonio, the Borgian Macedonio that comes to us through Borges’ prose at least, incarnates the ideal Argentine, he makes possible the impossible Argentine, the Argentine with a little Creole in him, who lives for many years in a little room, who is a Spartan in his habits, the man who is always mourning over a woman, which is something that seduces Borges, something that would seduce anyone of this era. Because it isn’t just Borges who is head over heals for Macedonio, there are a ton of writers of Borges’ generation who are awestruck by him. Borges was awestruck by those Creole things of his, because he was a Creole who left in order to speak of Schopenhauer, and speak well besides. He was of an exquisite logic. But, for me, what’s important is Borges.

  An icon in Argentine metaphysical literature, Macedonio Fernández (1874–1952), known to most as simply “Macedonio,” was a mentor to the young Jorge Luis Borges. An English translation of his novel The Museum of Eterna’s Novel will be available in 2010.

  An Argentine writer, professor, and literary critic, Ricardo Piglia (b. 1941) is one of the foremost authorities on Latin American literature. Author of several novels and short story collections, he has been a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, the University of California at Davis, and Princeton. His English works include Artificial Respiration (1980) and Money to Burn (1997)

  An Argentine painter of European descent, Xul Solar (1887–1963) was a key member of the avant-garde movement in Buenos Aires in the 1920’s. Spending the years 1912–1924 in Europe, Solar’s return to Argentina in 1924 found a burgeoning artistic movement eager to combine the Argentine avant-garde with that of Continental Europe. Solar had a deep affinity for language, which led him to create several of his own languages and work on the creation of an international language.

  EA: Soon Nazi Literature in Latin America comes out.

  RB: … in the Americas. It’s the whole continent. There are several North American authors, I assure you.

  EA: I’m convinced.

  RB: It’s just that I’ve seen it written as Nazi Literature in Latin America, not Nazi Literature in the Americas. The trouble is that there aren’t any Canadian authors. I had a Quebecker in mind but they were cut in the end for lack of merit.

  EA: Is there a Cervantean influence in this book?

  RB: I think all writers who write in Spanish have or should have a Cervantean influence. We are all indebted to Cervantes, in large or small part, but we are all indebted. The genealogy for Nazi Literature in the Americas does not come from there. This book, I’ll give it to you in descending order, owes a lot to The Temple of Iconoclasts by Rodolfo Wilcock, who is an Argentine writer but who wrote the book in Italian.

  Argentine author, critic, and translator Juan Rodolfo Wilcock (1919–1978) spent time working at nearly every major Latin American literary magazine. His work The Temple of the Iconoclasts, available in English, was a seminal text for Bolaño. He claims “buy it, steal it, borrow it, but read it.”

  EA: He’s almost a cult writer.

  RB: It’s just that he is an exceptional writer; he is a major writer. He is a writer who, I think, has done nothing but grow since death. Wilcock keeps growing. At the same time, his book The Temple of Iconoclasts itself owes a debt to A Universal History of Infamy by Borges, which is not surprising at all because Wilcock was a friend and admirer of Borges. Borges’ A Universal History of Infamy, too, owes a debt to one of h
is teachers, Alfonso Reyes, the Mexican writer who has a book I think called Real and Imagined Portraits—my memory is in torpor. It’s just a jewel. Alfonso Reyes’ book also owes a debt to Marcel Schwob’s Imaginary Lives, which is where this all comes from. But at the same time, Imaginary Lives owes a major debt to the methodology and form of certain biographies perused by encyclopedic types. Those are the uncles, parents and godparents of my book, I think, which is without a doubt the worst of the bunch, but there you have it anyway.

  The French author Marcel Schwob (1867–1905) was a precursor to the surrealists. His major work is Imaginary Lives (1896).

  EA: Following the enormous critical impact The Savage Detectives had, were you certain then you were going to dedicate yourself to this forever?

  RB: No, I had been certain before—certain in the economic sense—that I could live from literature, as a matter of fact I had been certain years before. I started to live from literature starting in 1992 and Savage Detectives was published in 1998. Starting in 1992, which coincides with a grave illness, my income has been exclusively gained from literature.

  EA: There is a general contempt that writers have toward critics, but you ask for improvement from criticism.

  RB: Literary criticism is a discipline that represents something more for me than literature. Literature is prose, novel and short story, dramaturgy, poetry, and literary essays and literary criticism. Above all, I think it is necessary that there be literary criticism—without accident—in our countries, not ten lines about an author the critic will probably never read again. That is to say, it’s necessary to have criticism that mends the literary landscape along the way.

  EA: I know many book jacket critics.

  RB: I’ve practiced literary criticism myself, and one could say a lot about that.

  EA: Within mass media, there is a tendency to limit the importance of genre.

  RB: Perhaps, but I think it is very important. I view criticism as a literary creation, not just as the bridge that unites the reader with the writer. Literary critics, if they do not assume themselves to be the reader, are also throwing everything overboard. The interesting thing about literary critics, and that is where I ask for creativity from literary criticism, creativity at all levels, is that he assumes himself to be the reader, an endemic reader capable of arguing a reading, of proposing diverse readings, like something completely different from what criticism tends to be, which is like an exegesis or a diatribe. For me, Harold Bloom is an example of a notable critic, although I am generally in disagreement with him and even enraged by him, but I like to read him. Or Steiner: The French have a very long tradition of very creative critics and essayists who are very good, who illuminate not just one work but a whole era of literature, sometimes committing grave mistakes, but us narrators and writers also commit errors.

  EA: One of your characters says, “One has the moral obligation to be responsible for one’s actions and for one’s words but also for one’s silence.”

  RB: One of my characters says that? It sounds so good it hardly seems written by me.

  EA: Is that also fair to say about writers?

  RB: No, for writers that isn’t fair, but without a doubt, in predetermined moments, yes. If I’m walking down the street and see a pedophile molesting a kid and I stop and silently stare, not only am I responsible for my silence but I am also a complete son of a bitch. However, there is a certain type of silence in which—

  EA: Are there literary silences?

  RB: Yes, there are literary silences. Kafka’s, for example, which is a silence that cannot be. When he asks that his papers be burned, Kafka is opting for silence, opting for a literary silence, all in a literary era. That is to say, he was completely moral. Kafka’s literature, aside from being the best work, the highest literary work of the twentieth century, is of an extreme morality and of an extreme gentility, things that usually do not go together either.

  EA: And what of Rulfo’s silence?

  For more on Juan Rulfo, see this page.

  RB: Rulfo’s silence, I think, is obedient to something so quotidian that explaining it is a waste of time. There are several versions: One told by Monterroso is that Rulfo had an uncle so-and-so who told him stories and when Rulfo was asked why he didn’t write anymore, his answer was that his uncle so-and-so had died. And I believe it too. Another explanation is simple and natural and it is that everything has an expiration date. For example I am much more worried about Rimbaudian silence than I am about Rulfian silence. Rulfo stopped writing because he had already written everything he wanted to write and because he sees himself incapable of writing anything better, he simply stops. Rimbaud would probably have been able to write something much better, which is to say bringing his words up even higher, but his is a silence that raises questions for Westerners. Rulfo’s silence doesn’t raise questions; it’s a close silence, quotidian. After desert, what the hell are you going to eat? There is a third literary silence—one doesn’t seek it—of the shade which one is sure was there under the threshold and which has never been made tangible. There stands the silence of Georg Büchner for example. He died at twenty-five or twenty-four years of age, he leaves behind three or four stage plays, masterworks. One of them is Woyzeck, an absolute masterwork. Another is about the death of Danton, which is an enormous masterwork, not absolute but quite notable. The other two—one is called Leonce y Lena, I can’t remember the other one—are fundamentally important. All before he turned twenty-five. What might have happened had Büchner not died; what kind of writer might he have been? The kind of silence that isn’t sought out is the silence of … I do not dare call it destiny … a manifestation of impotence. The silence of death is the worst kind of silence, because Rulfian silence is accepted and Rimbaudian silence is sought, but the silence of death is the one that cuts the edge off what could have been and never will be, that which we will never know. We’ll never know if Büchner would have been bigger than Goethe. I think so, but we’ll never know. We’ll never know what he might have written at age thirty. And that extends across the whole planet like a stain, an atrocious illness that in one way or another puts our habits in check, our most ingrained certainties.

  THE LAST INTERVIEW

  INTERVIEW BY MÓNICA MARISTAIN

  PLAYBOY, MEXICO EDITION, JULY 2003

  In the blurry panorama of Spanish-language literature, a place where young writers each day seem more preoccupied with obtaining scholarships and plum posts at various consulates than contributing to artistic expression, the figure of a lean man stands out, blue backpack at the ready, enormously framed eyeglasses, a never-ending cigarette between his fingers and, whenever there is a shortage, sharp, blunt wit.

  Roberto Bolaño, born in Chile in 1953, is the best thing to happen to the writing profession in a long time. Since becoming famous and pocketing the Herralde (1998) and Rómulo Gallegos (1999) prizes for his monumental The Savage Detectives, perhaps the great Mexican novel of our time, his influence and stature have grown steadily: Everything he says, with his pointed sense of humor, his exquisite intelligence, and everything he writes, with a sure pen, great poetic risk and profound creative commitment, is worthy of the attention of those who admire and, of course, those who detest him.

  The author, who turns up as a character in the novel Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas and is paid homage in Jorge Volpi’s last novel, An End to Madness, is a divider of opinions, like all brilliant men, and a generator of bitter antipathy, despite his tender good nature. His voice is somewhere between high-pitched and hoarse, and like any good Chilean, the one with which he responds is always courteous. He will not write one story more until finishing his next novel, which will be about the murder of countless women in Ciudad Juárez. He is already at 900 pages and not finished yet.

  Bolaño lives in Blanes, Spain, and he’s very sick. He hopes that a liver transplant will give him the strength to live with the same intensity worshipped by those fortunate enough to address him in private.
His friends say he sometimes forgets about his doctor’s visits because he’s writing.

  At fifty years old, Bolaño has crisscrossed Latin America as a backpacker, escaped the clutches of Pinochet because one of his jailers was a classmate in school, lived in Mexico (a section of Bucareli Street will someday bear his name), got to know Farabundo Martí’s militants before they assassinated the poet Roque Dalton in El Salvador, kept watch over a Catalonian campground and sold costume jewelry in Europe. Also, he always stole good books because reading is not just a matter of posturing. He has transformed the course of Latin American literature. And he has done it without warning and without asking permission, the way Juan García Madero, adolescent antihero of his glorious The Savage Detectives, would have done: “I’m in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my aunt insisted and in the end I gave in. I’m an orphan and someday I’ll be a lawyer. That’s what I told my aunt and uncle, then I shut myself in my room and cried all night.” The rest—the remaining pages of the novel—has been compared to Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch and even Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. In the face of such hyperbole, he might have said, “No way.” Thus, on this occasion, let’s get to what’s important: the interview.

  MÓNICA MARISTAIN: Were you blessed with a kind of courage in life by being born dyslexic?

  ROBERTO BOLAÑO: Not at all. There were problems when I played soccer, I’m left-handed; problems when I masturbated, I’m left-handed; problems when I wrote, I’m right-handed. So, as you can see, no significant problems.