Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003

by Roberto Bolaño

  The Transparent Mystery of José Donoso

  It’s hard for me to write about Donoso. We disagree about almost everything. I heard that when he was dying, he asked to have Huidobro’s Altazor read to him, and the image of Donoso on his deathbed listening to Altazor makes me sick. I don’t have anything against Huidobro, I like Huidobro, but how can a dying man ask to be read that poem? I don’t understand it. Or maybe I do, and then I understand it even less, as if Donoso were a mirror in which the essence of Chile and the essence of the writing life were reflected, and that double image, throbbing with sickness, superficiality, and indulgence, just makes me sad, because in it one can see, though only darkly, as Donoso would have liked, the ultimate poverty of the writing life and of national pride. The cup that he drank to the dregs.

  Donoso wrote three good books. One of them very good and the other two powerful enough to linger in readers’ memories. The first is Hell Has No Limits, a book about desperation and precision. The others: The Obscene Bird of the Night, an ambitious and uneven novel, and The Garden Next Door, which presents itself as game and testament, and which, in the end — and this is not the least of the paradoxes of Donoso’s work — really was his literary testament. Among other things, The Garden Next Door tells the story of a failed Chilean writer who lives in Catalonia and doesn’t want to return to Chile. To return is to fail. To return, to accept yourself as you are, to allow others like you to accept you, to acknowledge you, on the sole condition that you accept and acknowledge them, becomes as bitter as a Latin American soccer player’s discovery that he isn’t wanted or needed in the European leagues anymore and that he must return to his home team. I’ve forgotten what choice Donoso’s character makes, whether he goes back or stays in Europe. Maybe he stays. Donoso never lost his taste for losers, combined with a rare (and unblinking) acceptance of bad luck. In any case, the decision, whatever it was, is irrelevant, because the defeat — and the humor, because this may be Donoso’s funniest novel — awaits him either way. For the protagonist of The Garden Next Door there is no exit anymore. After this novel, there’s no exit for José Donoso, the writer, either.

  Donoso’s legacy is a dark room. In that dark room the beasts fight. To say that he’s the best Chilean novelist of the century is to insult him. I don’t think Donoso had such paltry aspirations. To say that he’s among the century’s best writers in Spanish is an exaggeration, no matter how you look at it. Chile isn’t a country of novelists. There are four, maybe five, great Chilean poets, and no novelist can stand the most superficial comparison to them. There are a few prose writers, not many, but no novelists. In a landscape dominated by Augusto D’Halmar and Manuel Rojas, José Donoso’s work clearly shines. In the grand theater of Lezama, Bioy, Rulfo, Cortázar, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Sábato, Benet, Puig, Arenas, Donoso’s work automatically pales and takes second place.

  His followers, those who today carry Donoso’s torch, the Donositos, try to write like Graham Greene, like Hemingway, like Conrad, like Vonnegut, like Douglas Coupland, with varying degrees of success, with varying degrees of abjection, and through the lens of these bad translations they undertake to read their master, to publicly interpret the great Chilean novelist. From the neo-Stalinists to the Opus Dei, from the thugs of the right to the thugs of the left, from the feminists to the sad little macho men of Santiago, everyone in Chile, secretly or not, claims to be his disciple. A serious mistake. It would be better if they read him. It would be better if they stopped writing and started reading instead. Much better to read.

  On Literature, the National Literature Prize, and the Rare Consolations of the Writing Life

  First of all, so there can be no mistake about it: Enrique Lihn and Jorge Teillier never received the National Literature Prize. Lihn and Teillier are dead now.

  To the matter at hand, then. Asked to choose between the frying pan and the fire, I choose Isabel Allende. The glamour of her life as a South American in California, her imitations of García Márquez, her unquestionable courage, the way her writing ranges from the kitsch to the pathetic and reveals her as a kind of Latin American and politically correct version of the author of The Valley of the Dolls: all of this, though it may seem hard to believe, makes her work highly superior to the work of born paper-pushers like Skármeta and Teitelboim.

  In other words: Allende’s work is bad, but it’s alive; it’s anemic, like a lot of Latin Americans, but it’s alive. It won’t live long, like many sick people, but for now it’s alive. And there’s always the possibility of a miracle. Who knows? The ghost of Juana Inés de la Cruz could appear to Allende one day and present her with a reading list. Or the ghost of Teresa of Avila. Or all else failing, the ghost of Emilia Pardo Bazán. There’s no such hope for the work of Skármeta and Teitelboim. Even God can’t save them. Still, to write — I swear I read it in a Chilean newspaper — that we need to hurry up and give Allende the National Prize before she wins the Nobel is no longer just a ridiculous farce, but proof that the author of such a claim is a world-class idiot.

  Are there really innocents who think like this? And are the people who think like this actually innocents or simply incarnations of a folly that has swept not just Chile but all of Latin America? Not long ago, Nélida Piñon — celebrated Brazilian novelist and serial killer of readers — said that Paulo Coelho, a kind of soap opera Rio witchdoctor version of Barbusse and Anatole France, should be admitted into the Brazilian Academy because he had made the Brazilian language known all over the globe. As if the “Brazilian language” were a sanctified essence, capable of withstanding any translation, or as if the long-suffering readers on the Tokyo metro spoke Portuguese. Anyway, what is this “Brazilian language”? You might as well talk about the Canadian language, or the Australian language, or the Bolivian language. True, there are Bolivian writers who seem to write in “American,” but that’s because they don’t know how to write very well in Spanish or Castilian, even though — for better or for worse — they ultimately do write in Spanish.

  Where were we? That’s right, Coelho and the Academy and the vacant seat that he was finally given, thanks among other things to his popularization of the “Brazilian language” around the world. Frankly, reading this one might get the idea that Coelho has a (Brazilian) vocabulary on a par with Joyce’s “Irish language.” Wrong. Coelho’s prose, in terms of lexical richness, in terms of richness of vocabulary, is poor. What are his merits? The same as Isabel Allende’s. He sells books. In other words: he’s a successful author. And here we come to the heart of the matter. Prizes, seats (in the Academy), tables, beds, even golden chamber pots belong, of course, to those who are successful or to those who play the part of loyal and obedient clerks.

  Let’s just say that power, any power, whether left-wing or right-wing, would, if left to its own devices, reward only the clerks. In this scenario, Skármeta is the favorite by far. If we were in neo-Stalinist Moscow, or Havana, the prize would go to Teitelboim. It frightens me (and makes me sick) just to imagine it. But success also has its champions: all those mental dwarfs in search of shelter, who are legion. Or all the writers who hope for a favor from Isabelita A. Anyway, forced to choose among these three, I’d take Allende too. But if it were up to me I’d give the prize to Armando Uribe, or Claudio Bertoni, or Diego Maquieira. As far as I’m concerned, any one of them has produced a body of work more than worthy of such an honor. I’ll be told that all three are poets and that this year it’s the novelists’ turn. Who ever heard of such a s
tupid rule, unwritten or otherwise? For a long time, Nicaragua turned out great poets, from old Salomón de la Selva to Beltrán Morales. Novelists and writers of prose, on the other hand, were in short supply, most of them also completely forgettable. According to this backward logic, a brilliant group of poets should have shared the prize with an inferior group of prose writers and novelists. This is the first thing about the National Literature Prize that should be changed. And it’ll probably be the only thing that changes. Young writers with no fortune and only their names to make are still left out in the cold and will continue to be left out in the cold, where the annointed and self-satisfied hunt them down. For the sake of these young writers, and for their sake alone, it may not be entirely pointless to say a bit more. The self-satisfied tend to be quick to anger, but they are also cowards. Their arguments are the arguments of mediocrity and fear and can be dismantled with laughter. Chilean literature, so prestigious in Chile, can boast of only five names worth citing: remember this as a critical and self-critical exercise. Remember, too, that in literature you always lose, but the difference, the enormous difference, lies in losing while standing tall, with eyes open, not kneeling in a corner praying to Jude the Apostle with chattering teeth.

  It’s probably clear by now that literature has nothing to do with national prizes and everything to do with a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears. Especially sweat and tears, although I’m sure Bertoni would add semen. I can’t say where Chilean literature fits in. Nor, frankly, do I care. That will have to be worked out by the poets, the novelists, the playwrights, the literary critics who labor in the cold, in the darkness; they — who amount to little or nothing just now alongside the strutting peacocks — will face the challenge of making Chilean literature into something more decent, more radical, more free of chicanery. Shoulder to shoulder or all alone, they are the ones called to shape Chilean literature into something reasonable and visionary, an exercise of intelligence, adventure, and tolerance. If literature isn’t all of that plus pleasure, what the hell is it?

  3.

  Between Parentheses

  I.

  (JANUARY 1999 – APRIL 2000)

  THE BEST GANG

  If I had to hold up the most heavily guarded bank in Europe and I could choose my partners in crime, I’d take a gang of five poets, no question about it. Five real poets, Apollonian or Dionysian, but always real, ready to live and die like poets. No one in the world is as brave as a poet. No one in the world faces disaster with more dignity and understanding. They may seem weak, these readers of Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel, these readers of the deserter Archilochus who picked his way across a field of bones. And they work in the void of the word, like astronauts marooned on dead-end planets, in deserts where there are no readers or publishers, just grammatical constructions or stupid songs sung not by men but by ghosts. In the guild of writers they’re the greatest and least sought-after jewel. When some deluded kid decides at sixteen or seventeen to be a poet, it’s a guaranteed family tragedy. Gay Jew, half black, half Bolshevik: the Siberia of the poet’s exile tends to bring shame on his family too. Readers of Baudelaire don’t have it easy in high school, or with their schoolmates, much less with their teachers. But their fragility is deceptive. So is their humor and the fickleness of their declarations of love. Behind these shadowy fronts are probably the toughest people in the world, and definitely the bravest. Not for nothing are they descended from Orpheus, who set the stroke for the Argonauts and who descended into hell and came up again, less alive than before his feat, but still alive. If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America, I’d take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful.

  THE WOMEN READERS OF WINTER

  During the winter they seem to be the only ones brave enough to venture out into the icy cold. I see them at the bars in Blanes or at the station or sitting along the Paseo Marítimo by the water, alone or with their children or a silent friend, and always carrying some book. What do these women read? wondered Enrique Vila-Matas a few years ago. Whatever they can. Not always great literature (though what is great literature?). Sometimes it’s magazines, sometimes the worst bestsellers. When I see them walking along, bundled up, buffeted by the wind, I think about the Russian women who fought the revolution and who endured Stalinism, which was worse than winter, and fascism, which was worse than hell, and they always had books with them, when suicide would have been the logical choice. In fact, many of those winter readers ended up killing themselves. But not all of them. A few days ago I read that Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina, exceptional reader, author of two memoirs, one of them called Hope Against Hope, and wife of the assassinated poet Osip Mandelstam, took part, according to a recent biography, in a threesome with her husband, news that inspired astonishment and disappointment in the ranks of her admirers, who took her for a saint. I, however, was happy to hear it. It told me that in the middle of winter Nadeshda and Osip didn’t freeze and it confirmed for me that at least they tried to read all the books. The saintly readers of winter are women of flesh and blood, and they couldn’t be braver. Some, it’s true, committed suicide. Others endured the horrors and returned to their books, the mysterious books that women read when it’s cold and it seems as if winter will never end.

  PASTRY COOKS

  My friend Joan Planells, pastry cook of Blanes, claims he never gets sick and is always in a good mood. He says this half in jest and half seriously, but in fact he’s the only person I know who’s made it through this terrible winter without catching the flu. It must have to do with my job, says Joan, suddenly a bit gloomy. Maybe. The pastry profession yields characters with iron constitutions. Take the generous and selfless Raguenau, humble patron of Cyrano de Bergerac, and J. V. Foix, poet and pastry cook of Sarrià, whose pastry shop I visit occasionally, when I go to see my editor. At Foix’s pastry shop in Sarrià, one can admire a bust of Cyrano, which is the kind of thing few pastry shops in the world give themselves the luxury of displaying. Most uncanny, though, is the behavior of the saleswomen. They all seem to have been reading (for years) the complete works of Foix. All of them, the girls as well as the older women, wait on the customers they don’t know — that is, the ones drawn to the pastry shop by the emanations of the poet who claimed to see everything more clearly in his sleep — like professors of Catalan literature or hosts at a strange conference. In fact, that may even be what they are. The point is that every time I go into Foix’s pastry shop, I get the sense that they’re sizing me up. The youngest salesgirls silently pity me and the less young say “you’ll never be a poet, because the secret of poetry is . . .” At this point our telepathic conversation breaks off and I walk out eating a sweet roll and thinking about the iron constitution of pastry cooks. My friend Joan Planells says that the secret is to stay relaxed and read a lot and work constantly. But don’t you ever get sad? I ask him. Sometimes I get sad, he says almost in a whisper, but I’m always happy.

  THE BOOKSELLER

  We all have the bookshops we deserve, except for those of us who have none. Mine is the Sant Jordi, in Blanes, the bookshop of Pilar Pagespetit i Martori, in the town’s old riverbed. Once every three days I go there to poke around and sometimes I exchange a few words with my bookseller. Pilar Pagespetit, who, as her name suggests, is a small woman, spends the mornings and some afternoons, too, when there aren’t many customers, sorting orders and delivery requests and reading her favorite books. At these times of day, Pilar Pagespetit is present and she isn’t present. In other words, she’s there, but it’s as if she’s not. At these times of day, the bookstore becomes an explorer’s outpost in who knows where. In a wild country, maybe, or barren lands. And everyone who comes in looks like a castaway, even the women who’re there to buy Pronto. At these times of day, there’s jazz playing at the Sant Jordi (which puts
me on edge and relaxes Pilar), although at other times there might be classical music, ethnic music, or Brazilian music, the sounds of which also serve to relax my bookseller. Certainly, any bookseller has more than enough reasons to be nervous, I say to myself when I hear the somber chords of John Coltrane, although my bookseller, surrounded by soothing music, doesn’t seem to take things too hard. When I ask her if this was the kind of work she always wanted to do, she says she doesn’t know. She began as a librarian in Tordera, and eighteen years ago, when she came to live in Blanes, she opened her bookstore and she seems happy. I’m reasonably happy with my bookseller, too. She gives me credit and she usually finds me the books I want. That’s all anyone can ask for.

  TOMEO

  There’s a new novel out by Javier Tomeo and his fans are rubbing their hands in glee. The novel is called Napoleon VII and inevitably, of course, it’s about a madman who thinks he’s Napoleon and who watches from a balcony as his soldiers gradually gather at the door to his house. (In a way, the character is reminiscent of the madman from El canto de las tortugas [The Song of the Turtles], who thought he could talk to animals.) Here the madman, Hilario, thinks he can talk to his left big toe, which is sometimes Murat, sometimes Soult, and sometimes Napoleon’s ill-starred secretary. Hilario, naturally, is the loneliest man in the world, a man who listens to the television so as not to feel alone, and who thinks when he watches it that he’s receiving signals beamed exclusively to him. The other character, the other voice lost in this Napoleonic dream, is Hilario’s cross-dressing neighbor, who, dressed as Josephine, is preparing for a date that night with Napoleon VII and who recklessly — that is, in a way that leaves room for hope — addresses himself directly to the abyss. Two typical Tomean characters, created by an author whose novels can in principle be divided into two categories: those featuring a dialogue between two dissimilar beings, linked only by loneliness (a dialogue that often ends up becoming an anguished monologue that leads, in the blink of an eye, to the edge of reason), and those in which there is only one character, someone who has generally lost his sanity or what the world deems sanity. Tomeo’s eye wanders, in a fashion perhaps uncommon in Spanish literature, through the hell of the everyday and also through its unexpected (because familiar) verbal paradises, offering us a starkly real picture of our capacity for endurance.