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

by Roberto Bolaño

  PLAYBOY: Was it hard being born dyslexic?

  BOLAÑO: No. Playing soccer was hard; I’m left-footed. Masturbating was hard; I’m left-handed. Writing was hard; I’m right-handed. But as you can see, no serious difficulties.

  PLAYBOY: Is Enrique Vila-Matas still your friend after your fight with the organizers of the Rómulo Gallegos Prize?

  BOLAÑO: My fight with the jury and the organizers of the prize was basically due to the fact that they wanted me, from Blanes and sight unseen, to endorse a selection that I’d had nothing to do with. Their methods, which a Chavista pseudo-poet communicated to me by phone, reeked of the persuasive techniques of the Casa de las Américas in Cuba. I thought it was a huge mistake that Daniel Sada and Jorge Volpi were eliminated early on, for example. They said that what I wanted was a free trip with my wife and children, which was completely untrue. Out of my indignation about that lie came the letter in which I called them neo-Stalinists and worse, I guess. Actually, I was informed that from the very start they intended to give the prize to a different author, not Vila-Matas, as it happens, whose novel I thought was good, and who was definitely one of my candidates.

  PLAYBOY: Why doesn’t your office have air conditioning?

  BOLAÑO: My motto isn’t Et in Arcadia ego but Et in Esparta ego.

  PLAYBOY: Don’t you think that if you’d gotten drunk with Isabel Allende and Ángeles Mastretta you’d feel differently about their books?

  BOLAÑO: I doubt it. First, because there’s no way those two ladies would go out drinking with me. Second, because I don’t drink anymore. Third, because even at my drunkest moments I never lost a certain basic clarity, a sense of style and rhythm, a horror of plagiarism, mediocrity, and silence.

  PLAYBOY: What’s the difference between an authoress and a writer?

  BOLAÑO: Silvina Ocampo is a writer. Marcela Serrano is an authoress. A distance of light years separates them.

  PLAYBOY: What makes you think that you’re a better poet than novelist?

  BOLAÑO: I judge by how much I blush when I open a book of my poetry or my prose. The poetry makes me blush less.

  PLAYBOY: Are you Chilean, Spanish, or Mexican?

  BOLAÑO: I’m Latin American.

  PLAYBOY: What does homeland mean to you?

  BOLAÑO: I’m afraid I have to give you a sappy answer. My two children, Lautaro and Alexandra, are my only homeland. And in second place, maybe a few instants, a few streets, a few faces or scenes or books that live inside me. Things I’ll forget someday, which is the best remedy for homelands.

  PLAYBOY: What is Chilean literature?

  BOLAÑO: Probably the nightmares of Carlos Pezoa Véliz, who was the bitterest and grayest and perhaps most cowardly of Chilean poets. He died at the beginning of the twentieth century and wrote just two memorable poems, though they were truly memorable, and he still sees us in his dreams and is tormented. Maybe he hasn’t actually died yet, and we’re all a part of his long death throes. Or at least we Chileans are a part of them.

  PLAYBOY: Why do you like to be so contrary?

  BOLAÑO: I’m never contrary.

  PLAYBOY: Do you have more friends than enemies?

  BOLAÑO: My best friend was the poet Mario Santiago, who died in 1998. Right now three of my best friends are Ignacio Echevarría, Rodrigo Fresán, and A.G. Porta.

  PLAYBOY: Did Antonio Skármeta ask you to be on his show?

  BOLAÑO: One of his secretaries called me, or maybe it was the cleaning lady. I told her I was too busy.

  PLAYBOY: Did Javier Cercas share the royalties for Soldiers of Salamis with you?

  BOLAÑO: No, of course not.

  PLAYBOY: Enrique Lihn, Jorge Teillier, or Nicanor Parra?

  BOLAÑO: Nicanor Parra over everyone else, including Pablo Neruda and Vicente Huidobro and Gabriela Mistral.

  PLAYBOY: Eugenio Montale, T. S. Eliot, or Xavier Villaurrutia?

  BOLAÑO: Montale. If it were James Joyce instead of Eliot, then Joyce. If it were Ezra Pound instead of Eliot, then definitely Pound.

  PLAYBOY: John Lennon, Lady Di, or Elvis Presley?

  BOLAÑO: The Pogues. Or Suicide. Or Bob Dylan. But let’s not split hairs: Elvis forever. Elvis wearing a sheriff’s badge and driving a Mustang, popping pills. Elvis and his golden voice.

  PLAYBOY: Who reads more, you or Rodrigo Fresán?

  BOLAÑO: It depends. Rodrigo takes the West. I take the East. Then we tell each other about the books from our respective domains and it’s as if we’d read them all.

  PLAYBOY: What is Pablo Neruda’s best poem?

  BOLAÑO: Almost anything from Residence on Earth.

  PLAYBOY: If you’d met her, what would you have said to Gabriela Mistral?

  BOLAÑO: Mother, forgive me, I’ve sinned, but I was saved by the love of a woman.

  PLAYBOY: And Salvador Allende?

  BOLAÑO: Not much, if anything. Those in power (even if it’s only for a little while) know nothing about literature, all they care about is power. And I’ll play the fool for my readers, if I feel like it, but never for the powerful. That may sound melodramatic. It may sound like the declaration of an honest hooker. But it’s the truth, in the end.

  PLAYBOY: And Vicente Huidobro?

  BOLAÑO: Huidobro bores me a little. Too much trilling and tra-la-la-ing, too much of the parachutist who sings Tyrolean songs as he falls. Better the parachutist who plummets in flames, or the parachutist whose parachute simply never opens.

  PLAYBOY: Is Octavio Paz still the enemy?

  BOLAÑO: Definitely not for me. I don’t know about the poets who wrote like his clones when I lived in Mexico, what they think. It’s been a long time since I knew anything about Mexican poetry. I do reread José Juan Tablada and Ramón López Velarde, I can even recite Sor Juana, if it comes to that, but I don’t know anything about what’s being written by the poets who are nearing fifty, like me.

  PLAYBOY: Wouldn’t Carlos Fuentes play that role now?

  BOLAÑO: It’s been a long time since I read anything by Carlos Fuentes.

  PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the fact that Arturo Pérez-Reverte is currently the the most widely read writer in Spanish?

  BOLAÑO: Pérez-Reverte or Isabel Allende, it makes no difference. Feuillet was the most widely read French writer of his time.

  PLAYBOY: And the fact that Arturo Pérez-Reverte has been inducted into the Royal Academy?

  BOLAÑO: The Royal Academy is a hotbed of genius. Juan Marsé isn’t a member, Juan Goytisolo isn’t a member, Mendoza and Javier Marías aren’t members, Olvido García Valdés isn’t a member, I can’t remember whether Álvaro Pombo is a member (if he is it’s probably a mistake), but there’s Pérez-Reverte. Well, Paulo Coelho is a member of the Brazilian Academy.

  PLAYBOY: Do you regret criticizing the dinner you were served by the writer Diamela Eltit?

  BOLAÑO: I never criticized her dinner. If anything, I should have criticized her sense of humor, her vegetarian sense of humor, or better yet, her diet-starved sense of humor.

  PLAYBOY: Does it trouble you that she considers you a bad person after your account of that ill-fated meal?

  BOLAÑO: No, poor Diamela, that doesn’t trouble me. Other things trouble me.

  PLAYBOY: Have you shed any tears over all the times you’ve been criticized by your enemies?

  BOLAÑO: Many tears. Every time I read that someone’s said something bad about me I sob, I throw myself on the floor, I claw at myself, I stop writing for an unspecified length of time, I lose my appetite,
I smoke less, I exercise, I go for walks along the shore, which as it happens is less than thirty yards from where I live, and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish that ate Ulysses, why me, when I’ve never done them any wrong.

  PLAYBOY: Whose opinion of your work do you value most?

  BOLAÑO: Carolina reads my books first, and then Herralde, and then I try to forget them forever.

  PLAYBOY: What did you buy with the money from the Rómulo Gallegos Prize?

  BOLAÑO: Not much. A suitcase, I seem to remember.

  PLAYBOY: During the time when you made a living from story competitions, were there ever any that didn’t pay up?

  BOLAÑO: Never. In that regard, Spanish municipalities are above reproach.

  PLAYBOY: Were you a good waiter, or were you better at selling cheap jewelry?

  BOLAÑO: The job I was best at was being a night watchman at a campground near Barcelona. No one stole anything while I was there. I broke up some fights that could have turned ugly. I prevented a lynching (though afterwards I would happily have lynched or strangled the guy myself).

  PLAYBOY: Have you experienced terrible hunger, bone-chilling cold, choking heat?

  BOLAÑO: I quote Vittorio Gassman from a movie: In all modesty, yes.

  PLAYBOY: Have you ever stolen any book and later discovered you didn’t like it?

  BOLAÑO: Never. The good thing about stealing books (as opposed to safes) is that one can carefully examine their contents before perpetrating the crime.

  PLAYBOY: Have you ever walked in the desert?

  BOLAÑO: Yes, and once even arm in arm with my grandmother. The old lady just kept going and I was afraid we wouldn’t make it out alive.

  PLAYBOY: Have you seen colored fish underwater?

  BOLAÑO: Of course. In Acapulco, to begin with, in 1974 or 1975.

  PLAYBOY: Have you ever burned yourself with a cigarette?

  BOLAÑO: Never on purpose.

  PLAYBOY: Have you ever carved the name of your beloved into a tree trunk?

  BOLAÑO: I’ve done more outrageous things, but let’s let them languish in oblivion.

  PLAYBOY: Have you ever seen the most beautiful woman in the world?

  BOLAÑO: Yes, when I was working at a store, sometime around 1984. The store was empty and a Hindu woman came in. She looked like a princess and maybe she was. She bought some earrings from me. I almost swooned, of course. She had copper-colored skin, long red hair, and everything else about her was perfect. A timeless beauty. When I had to ring her up I was incredibly embarrassed. She smiled as if to say that she understood and I shouldn’t worry. Then she disappeared and I’ve never seen anyone like that again. Sometimes I think she was the goddess Kali, patron saint of thieves and goldsmiths, except that Kali is also the goddess of assassins, and not only was this Hindu woman the most beautiful creature on Earth, she also seemed to be a good person, very sweet and considerate.

  PLAYBOY: Do you like dogs or cats?

  BOLAÑO: Dogs, but I don’t have pets anymore.

  PLAYBOY: What do you remember about your childhood?

  BOLAÑO: Everything. I have a good memory.

  PLAYBOY: Did you collect trading cards?

  BOLAÑO: Yes. Of soccer players and Hollywood actors and actresses.

  PLAYBOY: Did you have a skateboard?

  BOLAÑO: My parents made the mistake of giving me a pair of skates when we lived in Valparaíso, which is a city of hills. The results were disastrous. Every time I put on the skates it was as if I had a death wish.

  PLAYBOY: What’s your favorite soccer team?

  BOLAÑO: I don’t have one anymore. The teams that drop quickly through the divisions down to the regionals, and then are gone. The ghost teams.

  PLAYBOY: What historical characters would you have liked to model yourself after?

  BOLAÑO: Sherlock Holmes. Captain Nemo. Julien Sorel, our father; Prince Mishkin, our uncle; Alice, our teacher; Houdini, who is a mix of Alice, Sorel, and Mishkin.

  PLAYBOY: Did you fall in love with older neighborhood girls?

  BOLAÑO: Of course.

  PLAYBOY: Did the girls at school pay attention to you?

  BOLAÑO: I don’t think so. At least I was convinced they didn’t.

  PLAYBOY: What do you owe the women in your life?

  BOLAÑO: A lot. A sense of challenge and the ambition to aim high. And other things that I won’t mention for the sake of decorum.

  PLAYBOY: Do they owe you anything?

  BOLAÑO: Nothing.

  PLAYBOY: Have you suffered for love?

  BOLAÑO: The first time I suffered terribly, then I learned to take things with more of a sense of humor.

  PLAYBOY: What about hatred?

  BOLAÑO: It may sound a little pretentious, but I’ve never hated anyone. At least, I know I’m not capable of sustained hatred. And if hatred isn’t sustained, it isn’t hatred, is it?

  PLAYBOY: How did you woo your wife?

  BOLAÑO: By cooking rice for her. In those days I was very poor and all I ate was rice, so I learned how to cook it lots of ways.

  PLAYBOY: What kind of day was it when you became a father for the first time?

  BOLAÑO: It was nighttime, a little before midnight, I was alone, and since you couldn’t smoke in the hospital I smoked a cigarette practically perched on a ledge four floors up. It was a good thing no one saw me from the street. No one but the moon, as Amado Nervo would say. When I came back in a nurse told me that my son had just been born. He was very big, almost completely bald, and his eyes were open as if to ask who the hell this guy holding him was.

  PLAYBOY: Will Lautaro be a writer?

  BOLAÑO: I just hope he’ll be happy. Which means it would be better if he were something else. A pilot, for example, or a plastic surgeon, or an editor.

  PLAYBOY: In what ways do you see yourself in him?

  BOLAÑO: Luckily he’s much more like his mother than like me.

  PLAYBOY: Do you care about the sales rankings of your books?

  BOLAÑO: Not in the slightest.

  PLAYBOY: Do you ever think about your readers?

  BOLAÑO: Almost never.

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

  BOLAÑO: I’m moved by readers in general, by those who still dare to read Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, which is one of the most entertaining and modern books I know. I’m moved by the fortitude of young people who read Cortázar and Parra, just as I once read them and as I try to read them still. I’m moved by young people who sleep with books under their heads. A book is the best pillow there is.

  PLAYBOY: What things have made you angry?

  BOLAÑO: At this point getting angry is a waste of time. And sadly, at my age time matters.

  PLAYBOY: Have you ever been afraid of your fans?

  BOLAÑO: I’ve been afraid of the fans of Leopoldo María Panero, who in my opinion, by the way, is one of the three best living poets in Spain. In Pamplona, during a series of readings organized by José Ferrero, Panero was the last on the program, and as the day of his reading approached, the city (or the neighborhood where our hotel was) filled up with freaks who seemed to have just escaped from a mental asylum, which incidentally is the best audience any poet can hope for. The problem is that some of them didn’t look only like madmen. They looked like killers, and Ferrero and I were afraid that at some point someone would get up and say: I shot Leopoldo María Panero, and then plug fou
r bullets into Panero’s head — and then with one each for Ferrero and me for good measure.

  PLAYBOY: Are you curious about the critical anthology your fellow Chilean Patricia Espinoza is putting together?

  BOLAÑO: Not at all. I think Espinoza is an excellent critic, regardless of how I’ll come off in her book, which I imagine won’t be very well, but Espinoza’s work is essential in Chile. In fact, the need for a new criticism — for lack of a better term — is something that’s become urgent everywhere in Latin America.

  PLAYBOY: And what about the Argentine Celina Manzoni’s book?

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

  PLAYBOY: What things bore you?

  BOLAÑO: The empty discourse of the Left. I take for granted the empty discourse of the Right.

  PLAYBOY: What things do you enjoy?

  BOLAÑO: Watching my daughter Alexandra play. Having breakfast at a bar on the beach and eating a croissant as I read the paper. The works of Borges. The works of Bioy. The works of Bustos Domecq. Making love.

  PLAYBOY: Do you write by hand?

  BOLAÑO: Poetry, yes. Everything else on an old computer from 1993.

  PLAYBOY: Close your eyes: Of all the landscapes of Latin America you’ve seen, which comes to mind first?

  BOLAÑO: Lisa’s lips in 1974. My father’s truck broken down on a desert highway. The tuberculosis ward of a hospital in Cauquenes and my mother telling my sister and me to hold our breath. A trip to Popocatépetl with Lisa, Mara, and Vera and someone else I can’t remember, though I do remember Lisa’s lips, her incredible smile.

  PLAYBOY: What’s paradise like?

  BOLAÑO: Like Venice, I hope, somewhere full of Italians. Somewhere that’s used well and used up and that knows that nothing lasts, not even paradise, and in the end it doesn’t matter.

  PLAYBOY: And hell?

  BOLAÑO: Like Ciudad Juárez, which is our curse and our mirror, the unquiet mirror of our frustrations and of our vile interpretation of freedom and of our desires.