Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview & Other Conversations

by Roberto Bolaño

  RB: It was night, a little before midnight. I was alone, and because you couldn’t smoke in the hospital, I smoked a cigarette virtually perched on the cornice of the fourth floor. No one saw me from the street, only the moon, as Amado Nervo would have said. When I came back in, a nurse told me my son had just been born. He was very big, almost all bald, with open eyes as if asking himself who the devil had him in his arms.

  A Mexican poet, Amado Nervo (1870–1919) was among the vanguard of nineteenth century Mexican poetry.

  MM: Will Lautaro be a writer?

  RB: I hope only that he’s happy. Thus, it would be better if he were something else. Airplane pilot, for example, plastic surgeon or editor.

  MM: What do you recognize in him as your own?

  RB: Luckily he resembles his mother much more than me.

  MM: Do you worry about the position of your books on bestseller lists?

  RB: Minimally.

  MM: Do you think about your readers?

  RB: Almost never.

  MM: Of all the things your readers have said about your books, what has moved you the most?

  RB: Quite simply, the readers themselves move me—the ones who dare to read Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, which is one of the most pleasant and modern works I know. I’m moved by the steely youth who read Cortázar and Parra, just as I read them and intend to continue reading them. I’m moved by those youths who sleep with a book under their head. A book is the best pillow that exists.

  MM: What things have made you angry?

  RB: At this age, getting angry is a waste of time. And, regrettably, time matters at my age.

  MM: Have you ever feared your fans?

  RB: I’ve feared Leopoldo María Panero’s fans. On the one hand, he seems to me one of the three best living poets in Spain. During a cycle of readings organized by Jesús Ferrero in Pamplona, Panero closed the cycle and as the day of his reading neared, the neighborhood where our hotel was began to fill with freaks who looked like they had recently escaped an insane asylum. But on the other hand, they were the best readership any poet can aspire to reach. The problem was that some didn’t just look crazy but like murderers too. Ferrero and I were afraid that at any moment someone might get up and say they had killed Leopoldo María Panero, then fired four shots at the head of the poet; and while they were at it, one at Ferrero and the last one at me.

  MM: How does it feel to be regarded as the Latin American writer with the most promising future by critics like Darío Osses?

  RB: It must be a joke. I am the Latin American writer with the least promising future. But on that point, I am the type with the most past, which is what matters anyway.

  A Spanish poet, Leopoldo María Panero (b. 1948) was infamous for his wild lifestyle. Five of his poems were published in English translation in the Spring 2009 issue of eXchanges.

  Jesús Ferrero (b. 1952) is a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His major works include Bélver Yin (1981) and Las noches rojas (2003).

  Darío Oses (b. 1949) is an important Chilean literary critic, specializing in the literature of the 1990s.

  MM: Does the critical book being prepared by your compatriot Patricia Espinosa arouse your curiosity?

  RB: Not at all. Apart from how I’ll end up in her book, which I don’t suppose will be very good, Espinosa seems to be a very good critic. But her work is necessary in Chile. In fact, the need for new critics—let’s call her that—is urgent all over Latin America.

  MM: And what about the Argentine Celina Mazoni’s book?

  RB: I know Celina personally and I’m very fond of her. I dedicated one of the stories from Putas Asesinas to her.

  MM: What bores you?

  RB: Empty discourse from the left. I take for granted the empty discourse from the right.

  MM: What entertains you?

  RB: To see my daughter Alexandra play. To eat breakfast at a bar by the sea and to eat a croissant while reading the paper. Borges’ literature. Bioy’s literature. Bustos Domecq’s literature. Making love.

  A professor of literary criticism at the University of Chile, Patricia Espinosa wrote a critical essay on Bolaño in 2003 entitled “Bolaño, un poeta junto al acantilado” (Bolaño, A Poet Close to the Cliff).

  An Argentine writer, Celina Manzoni is a co-author of Roberto Bolaño: La escritura como tauromaquia (Roberto Bolaño: Writing as Bullfighting).

  H. Bustos Domecq was a pseudonym used by Borges and Bioy Casares for collaborations.

  MM: Do you write by hand?

  RB: Poetry, yes. For the rest, I use an old computer from 1993.

  MM: Close your eyes. Out of all the landscapes you’ve come across in Latin America, what comes to mind first?

  RB: Lisa’s lips in 1974. My father’s broken-down bus on a desert road. The tuberculosis wing of a hospital in Cauquenes and my mother telling my sister and I to hold our breath. An excursion to Popocatépetl with Lisa, Mara, Vera and someone else I don’t remember. But I do remember Lisa’s lips, her extraordinary smile.

  MM: What is heaven like?

  RB: Like Venice, I’d hope, a place full of Italian men and women. A place you can use and wear down, a place that knows nothing will endure, including paradise, and knows that in the end at last it doesn’t matter.

  MM: And hell?

  RB: It’s like Ciudad Juárez, our curse and mirror, a disturbing reflection of our frustrations, and our infamous interpretation of liberty and of our desires.

  MM: When did you know you were gravely ill?

  RB: In 1992.

  MM: What change did your illness have on your character?

  RB: None. I knew I wasn’t immortal, which at thirty-eight it was high time I learn.

  MM: What do you wish to do before dying?

  RB: Nothing special. Well, clearly I’d prefer not to die. But sooner or later the distinguished lady arrives. The problem is that sometimes she’s neither a lady nor very distinguished, but, as Nicanor Parra says in a poem, she’s a hot wench who will make your teeth chatter no matter how fancy you think you are.

  MM: Whom would you like to encounter in the hereafter?

  RB: I don’t believe in the hereafter. Were it to exist, I’d be surprised. I’d enroll immediately in some course Pascal would be teaching.

  MM: Have you ever thought about committing suicide?

  RB: Of course. On one occasion I survived precisely because I knew how to kill myself if things got any worse.

  MM: Have you ever believed you were going crazy?

  RB: Of course, but I was always saved by my sense of humor. I’d tell myself stories that made me crazy with laughter. Or I’d remember situations that made me roll on the ground laughing.

  MM: Madness, death and love. Which of these three things have you had more of in your life?

  RB: I hope with all of my heart that it was love.

  MM: What makes your jaw hurt laughing?

  RB: The misfortunes of myself and others.

  MM: What things make you cry?

  RB: The same: the misfortunes of myself and others.

  MM: Do you like music?

  RB: Very much.

  MM: Do you see your work the way your critics and readers see it: The Savage Detectives above all, then all the rest?

  RB: The only novel that doesn’t embarrass me is Amberes, maybe because it continues to be unintelligible. The bad reviews it has received are badges of honor from actual combat, not skirmishes with simulated fire. The rest of my “work” is not bad. They’re entertaining novels. Time will tell if they’re anything more. For now, they earn money, get translated and help me make very generous and kind friends. I can live, and live well, off literature, so complaining would be gratuitous and unfounded. The truth is I concede very little importance to my books. I am much more interested in the books of others.

  MM: Would you not cut a few pages out of The Savage Detectives?

  RB: No. In order to cut pages, I would have to reread it and my religion prohibits me that.<
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  MM: Does it scare you that someone might want to make a film version of the novel?

  RB: Oh, Mónica, I fear other things—much more terrifying things, infinitely more terrifying.

  MM: Is “Silva the Eye” a tribute to Julio Cortázar?

  RB: In no way.

  MM: When you finished writing “Silva the Eye,” didn’t you feel you had probably written a story on the level of, say, “A House Taken Over”?

  RB: When I finished writing “Silva the Eye” I stopped crying or something like it. What more could I want than for it to resemble a Cortázar story? Although “A House Taken Over” is not one of my favorites.

  MM: Which five books have marked your life?

  RB: In reality the five books are more like 5,000. I’ll mention these only as the tip of the spear: Don Quixote by Cervantes, Moby-Dick by Melville. The complete works of Borges, Hopscotch by Cortázar, A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole. I should also cite Nadja by Breton, the letters of Jacques Vaché. Anything Ubu by Jarry, Life: A User’s Manual by Perec. The Castle and The Trial by Kafka. Aphorisms by Lichtenberg. The Tractatus by Wittgenstein. The Invention of Morel by Bioy Casares. The Satyricon by Petronius. The History of Rome by Tito Livio. Pensées by Pascal.

  A French surrealist writer, Jacques Vaché (1895–1919) worked closely with André Breton in the foundation of surrealism. A collection of his works, Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism, is available in English.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) was a German scientist and satirist. A collection of his aphorisms is available in English as The Waste Books, 2000.

  MM: Do you get on well with your editor?

  RB: Very well. Herralde is a very intelligent person and very often quite charming. Perhaps for me it would be more convenient if he weren’t so charming. The truth is I’ve known him for eight years now and, at least for my part, the affection does nothing if not grow, as one bolero puts it. Even though it might perhaps be better for me if I didn’t care for him so.

  MM: What do you say to those who believe The Savage Detectives is the great contemporary Mexican novel?

  RB: That they say it out of pity. They see that I’m down or fainting in public plazas and they can think of nothing better to say than a merciful lie, which, by the way, is the most appropriate thing in these cases, and it’s not even a venial sin.

  MM: Is it true that it was Juan Villoro who convinced you not to name your novel By Night In Chile “Shit Storms”?

  RB: It was between Villoro and Herralde.

  MM: From whom else do you take advice about your work?

  RB: I don’t listen to advice from anybody, not even my doctor. I wildly dole out advice, but I don’t heed any.

  MM: How is Blanes?

  RB: It’s a nice little town. Or a very small city of 30,000 inhabitants. Quite nice. It was founded 2,000 years ago by the Romans, then people from all over started passing through. It’s not a rich person’s resort but a proletariat’s. Workers from the north and the east. Some stay to live forever. The bay is most beautiful.

  MM: Do you miss anything about your life in Mexico?

  RB: My youth, and endless walks with Mario Santiago.

  MM: Which Mexican writer do you admire profoundly?

  RB: Many. From my generation I admire Sada, whose writing project I find the most bold, Villoro and Carmen Boullosa. Among the young writers, I am very interested in what Álvaro Enrique and Mauricio Montiel are doing, as well as Volpi and Ignacio Padilla. I continue to read Sergio Pitol, who writes better every day. And Carlos Monsiváis, who, according to Villoro, gave Taibo II or III (or IV) the nickname Pol Pit, which seems to me a real poetic find. Pol Pit. It’s perfect, isn’t it? Monsiváis keeps his nails sharp. I also like what Sergio González Rodríguez is doing.

  Mexican poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist Carmen Boullosa (b. 1954) was highly regarded by Bolaño. An essay he wrote about her, entitled “Biena y la sombra de una mujer,” appears in Entre parentesis, forthcoming in English from New Directions. She is also the co-host of a respected Spanish language television program, Nueva York.

  Writer and editor Álvaro Enrigue (b. 1969) is a postmodernist Mexican writer. None of his major works have been translated into English, but a short story, “On the Author’s Death” is collected in the Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction.

  Mexican fiction writer, editor, and essayist Mauricio Montiel Figueroa (b. 1968) is one of the most lauded Mexican writers under forty. He has written several collections of short stories and a number of critical essays for various periodicals. See Points of Departure: New Stories from Mexico, 2001.

  Along with Jorge Volpi and others, Mexican novelist and short story writer Ignacio Padilla (b. 1968) was a member of the “Crack Generation” that attempted to break the production of magical realism. Shadow Without a Name (2003), Antipodes (2004).

  Mexican novelist and short story writer Sergio Pitol (b. 1933) was awarded the Cervantes Prize in 2005 for his work El mago de Viena (2005).

  MM: Is the world without remedy?

  RB: The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy. That’s our fortune.

  MM: Do you have hope? For what and for whom?

  RB: My dear Maristain, again you push me toward the land of bad taste, which is not my native land. I have hope for children. For children and warriors. For children who fuck like children and warriors who fight like brave men. Why? I defer to the headstone of Borges, as the illustrious Gervasio Montenegro of the Academy (like Pérez-Reverte, do take notice) would say, and let us not speak of this matter further.

  MM: What kinds of feelings do posthumous works awaken in you?

  RB: Posthumous: It sounds like the name of a Roman gladiator, an unconquered gladiator. At least that’s what poor Posthumous would like to believe. It gives him courage.

  Mexican historian and cultural critic Carlos Monsiváis (b. 1938) is considered one of the foremost authorities on Mexican history and politics. See Mexican Postcards, 1997.

  Mexican novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II (b. 1949) is a best-selling author. His major works include the “Hector Balascoran Shayne” detective series, available in English, along with other works.

  Mexican journalist Sergio Gonzáles Rodríguez (b. 1950) wrote Huesos en el desierto (2002), a penetrating look at the femicides plaguing Cuidad Juarez.

  Gervasio Montenegro was a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters. It is also the name of a fictitious character created by Borges and Bioy Casares.

  MM: What is your opinion about those who opine that you will win the Nobel Prize?

  RB: I am sure, dear Maristain, that I will not win it, as I am sure that some lazy person from my generation will win it and not even in passing mention me during his or her Stockholm speech.

  MM: When were you the happiest?

  RB: I have been happy almost every day of my life, except for short periods, including during the most adverse circumstances.

  MM: If you hadn’t been a writer, what would you have been?

  RB: I should like to have been a homicide detective much better than being a writer. I am absolutely sure of that. A string of homicides. I’d have been someone who could come back to the scene of the crime alone, by night, and not be afraid of ghosts. Perhaps then I might really have become crazy. But being a detective, that could easily be resolved with a bullet to the mouth.

  MM: Do you confess to having lived?

  RB: Well, I continue to live, to read, to write and to watch films, and as Arturo Prat said to the suicides of Esmeralda, “While I am still alive, this flag will not come down.”

  A Chilean naval officer, Arturo Prat (1848-1879) is a national hero in Chile.

  ROBERTO BOLAÑO (1950–2003) was a Chilean poet, novelist, and essayist. His translated work includes Amulet, By Night in Chile, Distant Star, Nazi Literature in the Americas, The Savage Detectives, 2666, Last Evenings on Earth, The Romantic Dogs, and The Skating Rink. His last years were spent in Blanes, on Spain’s
Mediterranean coast.

  Interviewers HÉCTOR SOTO and MATÍAS BRAVO interviewed Bolaño for the Chilean magazine Capital. Both were writers for the magazine; Soto was also a co-owner.

  Interviewer CARMEN BOULLOSA’s 2002 interview with Bolaño appeared in Bomb, a Brooklyn-based arts and culture magazine. Boullosa is a highly regarded Mexican novelist, poet, essayist, and television personality. She is the co-host of the respected Spanish-language television program Nueva York. An essay Bolaño wrote about Boullosa, entitled “Biena y la sombra de una mujer,” appears in Entre parentesis, forthcoming in English from New Directions.

  ELISEO ÁLVAREZ interviewed Bolaño shortly before his death. The interview was published posthumously in 2005 by the Barcelona literary journal Turia.

  The final interview given by Bolaño appeared in the Mexican edition of Playboy magazine in July 2003. It was conducted via e-mail by MÓNICA MARISTAIN who, at the time, was the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Maristain is an Argentine editor, journalist, and writer. In 1992 she was named journalist of the year in Argentina for her coverage of the Barcelona Olympics. She has written for various national and international media outlets and published two books of poetry, Transfusiones al óleo and Drinking Thelonious. She lives in Mexico.

  MARCELA VALDES is a contributing editor at Publishers Weekly and the books editor for The Washington Examiner. In 2000, she co-founded Críticas, a U.S. magazine devoted to the coverage of Spanish-language books, and in 2009 she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship in Arts & Culture Journalism at Harvard University. Her writing appears regularly in The Washington Post and The Nation, among other publications.