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

Page 33

by Roberto Bolaño


  The first column in Las Últimas Noticias appeared on July 30, 2000 (“An Afternoon with Huidobro and Parra”). Bolaño began by recycling many of the columns already published in the Diari de Girona, sometimes lightly revised. The columns in Las Últimas Noticias were published once a week, with very few exceptions, until July 4, 2001 (“An Attempt at an Exhaustive Catalogue of Patrons”). Around this time, Bolaño informed Andrés Braithwaite that he wouldn’t be able to send him new articles because he was so absorbed by the writing of 2666. But behind this explanation lay a growing fatigue, due to health problems. In fact, beginning especially in January 2001, Bolaño’s correspondence with Andrés Braithwaite begins to contain frequent references to the deterioration of his health. “My health is bad,” writes Bolaño on January 16. “The long-awaited moment seems to have come or is imminent . . . Of course, now I don’t feel like writing. In fact, I don’t even answer letters anymore. But maybe all of this will pass, and it’s caused by the fear or exhaustion that flare up in situations like this. Really, the situation has its humorous side.” On January 24 he returns again to the same subject: “I don’t feel much like working, it’s true. In my current state, what the body craves is the reading aloud of the Tibetan book of the dead or the praying of the rosary, but I won’t let you down.” And on February 7, never losing his sense of humor, he writes: “Today I sent you a piece [“The Ancestor”] that I think is good. A year from now you might even have enough material to put together a posthumous book. I suggest the following title: Thus Spake Bolaño. I don’t know, it seems tasteful and suggestive, as our friend Carlos Argentino Daneri from El Aleph would say.”

  A little more than a year later, Bolaño decided to start up his column in Las Últimas Noticias again. “Get ready, girls, because Bolaño’s back. I’ll be writing . . . weekly,” he tells Braithwaite on August 28, 2002. And on September 9, 2002, “Jim” is published, which marks the beginning of the third and final stage of Bolaño as columnist. This new round would end on January 20, 2003 (“Humor in the Wings”), once again for health reasons. Around this time Bolaño writes to Braithwaite, apologizing for the delay in sending the final column: “I’ve had it up to here with all the tests. And now I’m on the transplant list. In other words, they could call me at any minute, since my blood group — B+ — is rare, and according to the doctors, I’m not in a position to chivalrously give up my place in line. You know what this means. More Bolaño or finis terrae or c’est tout. I’m sorry to make things difficult for you, but ultimately that’s what editors are there for.” After he had stopped contributing to Las Últimas Noticias, as late as March 4, 2002, Bolaño promises Braithwaite that he’ll keep writing for the newspaper “as soon as I recover.” But as we know, that was not to be.

  Like the columns for the Diari de Girona, the columns written for Las Últimas Noticias were eventually recycled by Bolaño for other publications, sometimes slightly recast, revised, or with new titles. On September 9, 2000, in sábado, the cultural supplement of the Mexican newspaper unomásuno, Bolaño published eight columns, under the title “Alfabeto de lecturas” [Alphabet of Readings] that had previously appeared in the Diari de Girona and were later reclaimed for Las Últimas Noticias. During the fall-winter of 2001–2002, in the same cultural supplement, Bolaño had a section titled “Carta de Blanes” [Letter from Blanes] that featured pieces that had generally been published before in one of the two newspapers. Later, in the summer of 2001, Roberto kicked off a short-lived new section titled “Ventana” [Window] in the Mexican weekly Cambio, for which he again used columns that he’d already written. And one can imagine the same thing happening here and there with whichever of the many publications, based in Spain or Chile, Mexico, Argentina, or any other Latin American country, that solicited contributions from Roberto.

  At the same time, Roberto would occasionally appropriate pieces originally intended for other purposes for his columns. This was the case, for example, of the column titled “A Few Words for Enrique Lihn,” published September 30, 2002 and originally written as the prologue to Tigre de Pascua [Easter Tiger], by Enrique Lihn, published by Calembé in Santiago de Chile in the fall of 2002.

  SCENES

  Town Crier of Blanes. Read at the opening ceremony of the holiday celebrations in Blanes, July 1999.

  The Maritime Jungle. El Viajero (travel supplement of the newspaper El País, January 9, 2000.

  Beach. El Mundo (Madrid), August 17, 2000. The piece was part of a section titled “The Worst Summer of My Life.”

  In Search of the Little Bull of Teruel [ch]. El Viajero (travel supplement of the newspaper El País, Madrid), March 25, 2001.

  Vienna and the Shadow of a Woman. El País (Madrid), “Summer Magazine,” August 25, 2000.

  The Last Place on the Map. El Mundo (Madrid), November 2, 2001.

  Fateful Characters. Remarks commemorating the publication of the catalogue of an exhibition of photographs by Sergio Larraín held at the IVAM [Valencia Institute of Modern Art] from July 1 to September 26, 1999.

  THE BRAVE LIBRARIAN

  Our Guide to the Abyss. Prologue to the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, published by the Biblioteca Universal del Círculo de Lectores, Barcelona, 1999, pp. 11-21. Bolaño felt a great and enduring admiration for this novel. Later, in the text “About The Savage Detectives,” he would write that his novel was “a response, one of many, to Huckleberry Finn.”

  The Mad Inventors. El Periódico (Barcelona), February 29, 1999.

  Words and Deeds. El País (Madrid), January 19, 2002. This article was written two days after the death of Camilo José Cela, and it is a response to the countless obituaries that portrayed him in a very admiring light.

  Vila-Matas’s Latest Book. Published as a review in the cultural supplement of the Diari de Girona, March 17, 2000. Also published in sábado (cultural supplement of the newspaper unomásuno, Mexico) on November 11, 2000.

  The Brave Librarian. Diagonal (cultural supplement of the newspaper El Metropolitano, Santiago de Chile), August 22, 1999. Also published in the Diari de Girona, May 23, 1999.

  Bomarzo. Prologue to Bomarzo, by Manuel Mujica Láinez, published by Biblioteca El Mundo (sold with the newspaper El Mundo), 2001.

  The Cubs, Again. El Mundo (Madrid), August 11, 1999. Article published on the occasion of the publication of The Cubs in the collection “Las 100 Joyas del Milenio” [The 100 Gems of the Millennium], sold with the newspaper.

  The Prince of the Apocalypse. Prologue to The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, by Mario Vargas Llosa, published by the Biblioteca El Mundo in 2001.

  Notes on Jaime Bayly. Lateral (Barcelona), Number 53, May 1999, pp. 37–38. Also in Diagonal (cultural supplement of the newspaper El Metropolitano, Santiago, Chile), May 23, 1999. Text of remarks commemorating the publication of the book Yo amo a mi mami (Barcelona, Anagrama, 1999), at an event at the Barcelona bookstore La Central on Thursday, March 25, 1999. In the magazine, the piece appears under the title “Disforzados Characters, Patas . . .”; here it’s given Bolaño’s original title.

  A Stroll Through the Abyss. Published as a stand-alone story in Las Últimas Noticias, May 22, 2002. Later it was also published in the newspapers Página 12 of Buenos Aires and Reforma of Mexico.

  Sevilla Kills Me. Unfinished speech that Roberto Bolaño planned to read at the I Encuentro de Escritores Latinoamericanos [First Conference of Latin American Writers], organized by the publishing house Se
ix Barral and held in Sevilla during the month of June, 2003. In the end, Bolaño read the text “Los Mitos de Cthulhu” [“The Myths of Cthulhu”], previously presented in a course on his work offered by Cátedra de las Américas (Institut Català de Cooperació Iberoamericana de Barcelona) in November 2002. The text is collected in the volume Palabra de América [Word of America] (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2003, pp. 17–21, which is a collection of the papers presented by the twelve participants in the conference.

  THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A NOVELIST

  Who Would Dare? Babelia (book supplement of El País, Madrid), January 31, 1998. The piece was part of a section titled “Mis lecturas” [Books I’ve Read].

  The Private Life of a Novelist. Clarín (Buenos Aires), March 25, 2001. Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories. Quimera (Barcelona), number 166, February 1998, p. 66. In the magazine, it was published under the title “Numbers.”

  About “The Savage Detectives.” Text published as part of the program for the ceremony in which Roberto Bolaño received the 1999 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, held in Caracas, April 1999.

  THE END

  Roberto Bolaño. Interview with Mónica Maristain published in the Mexican edition of Playboy, Number 9, July 2003, pp. 22–30. Also published in the Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12, July 23, 2003, under the title “Distant Star,” retained here.

  Index

  Adán, Martín, 92

  Adrover, Emma, 206

  Aira, César, 25, 26, 146–47, 153, 223, 331, 338

  Alderete, Jerónimo de, 44, 50

  Allen, Woody, 251

  Allende, Isabel, 110-12, 356, 358-59

  Allende, Salvador, 80, 358

  Alvar, Carlos, 202

  Amis, Kingsley, 197

  Amis, Martin, 197, 221-22

  Andrzejewski, Jerzy, 146

  Ansieta, Malala, 66

  Arenas, Reinaldo, 109, 217, 242

  Ariño, Teresa, 206

  Aristophanes, 250

  Arlt, Roberto, 20, 22-5, 242, 312, 316

  Arnaut, Daniel, 117, 202

  Archilochus, 57-58, 60, 117, 161

  Arrabal, Fernando, 306

  Arrate, Jorge, 4, 76-77, 79-80, 82

  Arreola, Juan José, 178, 345

  Arretxe, Izaskun, 206

  Artaud, Antonin, 195-96

  Aspúrua, Javier, 225–27

  Asturias, Miguel Ángel, 152

  Austen, Jane, 149

  Aylwin, Patricio, 77

  Azócar, Pablo, 73, 76, 80

  Balzac, Honoré de, 324, 329

  Barbusse, Henri, 111

  Barceló, Miquel, 66, 154

  Barnatán, Marcos Ricardo, 317

  Barral, Carlos, 205, 214

  Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 65, 219

  Baudelaire, Charles, 31, 118, 154, 177, 238

  Bayly, Jaime, 8, 325–31, 380

  Bazzi, Giovanni Antonio, see Il Sodoma

  Beardsley, Aubrey, 176

  Beauvoir, Simone de, 348

  Beerbohm, Max, 175–77, 343

  Bell, Vanessa, 138

  Bellatin, Mario, 339

  Bello, Antoine, 174–75

  Benavente, Jacinto, 306

  Benedetti, Mario, 55

  Benet, Juan, 109, 306

  Benjamin, Walter, 213

  Berceo, Gonzalo de, 73, 100

  Berenberg, Heinrich von, 127

  Bernhard, Thomas, 185, 272

  Bertoni, Claudio, 97, 113, 218

  Bianchi, Soledad, 68

  Bianciotti, Héctor, 54, 304

  Bianco, José, 20, 315-16

  Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 20-2, 109, 176, 219, 242, 278, 303, 315-16, 350, 365

  Bizet, Georges, 178

  Bloom, Harold, 199–200, 202

  Bolaño, Alexandra, 16n, 357, 365

  Bolaño, Lautaro, 16, 62, 76, 130, 357, 363

  Bolívar, Simón, 31, 33

  Bombal, María Luisa, 70

  Borel, Petrus, 238, 351

  Borges, Jorge Luis, 10, 19-22, 25-27, 87, 99, 147, 156, 177, 187–88, 199, 200, 219, 224, 239-40, 242, 294, 303-4, 315-16, 337, 350-1, 353, 365, 369

  Born, Bertrán de, 202

  Bornelh, Giraut de, 202, 221, 234

  Boullosa, Carmen, 270-74, 339, 368

  Braithwaite, Andrés, 5-6, 226-27, 377-78

  Braque, Georges, 191–92, 235

  Breton, André, 101, 206–208

  Brod, Max, 271-73, 352

  Brodsky, Pascual, 133

  Brodsky, Roberto, 132–33, 376

  Brooke, Lord, 351

  Brontë Sisters, 149

  Brown, Norman O., 150

  Brueghel, Pieter, 323

  Bryce Echenique, Alfredo, 327

  Bukowski, Charles, 204, 229-30

  Buñuel, Alfonso, 268

  Buñuel, Luis, 268

  Burgess, Anthony, 251

  Burroughs, William, 51, 159–60, 334

  Byron, Lord, 127, 243

  Cabot, Bartomeu, 154

  Cabrera, Grau de, 258

  Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 156

  Calvin, John, 156

  Camus, Albert, 344–45

  Canetti, Elias, 300

  Cansinos-Assens, Rafael, 311

  Cantatore, Vicente, 54

  Cárcamo, 62

  Cardenal, Ernesto, 73, 181–82

  Cárdenas, 62

  Cargol, Salvador, 4

  Carpentier, Alejo, 182

  Carriego, Evaristo, 20

  Carrington, Dora, 138

  Carroll, Lewis, 221

  Carver, Raymond, 351

  Casado, Miguel, 130–31, 150–52

  Castaño, Marina, 307

  Castellanos Moya, Horacio, 184–86

  Castro, Fidel, 171, 323, 338

  Castro, Raúl, 172

  Cataño, José Carlos, 54–55

  Caupolicán, 50

  Cavalcanti, Guido, 117, 194

  Cela, Camilo José, 8, 306-7, 350, 380

  Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 304

  Cercas, Javier, 164–65, 189-91, 355, 357

  Cercas, Raulito, 165

  Cernuda, Luis, 99, 313

  Ceronetti, Guido, 235

  Cervantes, Miguel de, 35-36, 239-40 242, 331, 338

  Cézanne, Paul, 65

  Chabon, Michael, 219

  Chagall, Marc, 254, 257

  Champfleury, 343

  Chandler, Raymond, 155

  Chatwin, Bruce, 275

  Chekhov, Anton, 351

  Chesterton, G. K., 22

  Chomsky, Noam, 214

  Churchill, Winston, 284

  Cid, Teófilo, 71

  Clausewitz, Carl von, 141

  Clemens, Orion, 294

  Coelho, Paulo, 111, 359

  Collyer, Jaime, 218, 339

  Colonna, Francesco, 235

  Coltrane, John, 121

  Conrad, Joseph, 109, 322

  Contreras, Gonzalo, 218, 339

  Corominas, Joan, 87

  Coromines, Xavi, 164

  Cortázar, Julio, 20, 22, 108, 241–42, 315–317, 320, 350, 353, 364, 367

  Cortés, María, 206

  Cortés-Monroy, Marcial, 72, 74, 143-44

  Costamagna, Alejandra, 68, 70-71

  Coupland, Douglas, 109

  Cuesta, Jorge, 105

  Dalí, Salvador, 140, 307

  Dalton, Roque, 355

  Dante Alighieri, 96

  Darío,
Rubén, 43-45, 52, 101, 171, 241, 243

  Daudet, Alphonse, 177–79, 343

  Daudet, León, 178, 238

  Day Lewis, Daniel, 276

  de Kooning, Willem, 169

  de la Guardia, Patricio and Antonio, 171

  de la Selva, Salomón, 112

  de Rokha, Carlos (Carlos Díaz Anabalón), 71

  de Rokha, Pablo (Pablo Díaz Loyola), 42, 73, 95

  Debord, Guy, 30, 40, 125–26

  DeLillo, Don, 197

  D’Halmar, Augusto, 108

  Di Stéfano, Alfredo, 54

  Diamant, Dora, 352

  Diana, Princess of Wales, 358

  Dick, Philip K., 51, 196–97, 219

  Dickens, Charles, 149, 233, 240, 296

  Diderot, Denis, 242

  Diogenes, 144

  Disney, Walt, 294

  Domínguez, Oscar, 140

  Donoso, Armando, 167

  Donoso, José, 107–109, 217, 320

  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 22, 238

  Duchamp, Marcel, 96, 135, 192

  Duras, Marguerite, 71

  Duvall, Robert, 129

  Dylan, Bob, 358

  Echevarría, Ignacio, 184, 219, 357, 375

  Edwards, Alexandra, 66

  Edwards, Jorge, 217

  Eliade, Mircea, 198, 200

  Eliot, T. S., 358

  Elizondo, Salvador, 146

  Ellroy, James, 221-22

  Eltit, Diamela, 4, 70, 75-76, 79-80, 359

  Emar, Juan, 23, 70

  Enrigue, Álvaro, 368

  Ercilla, Alonso de, 43-45, 50, 101, 162

  Espinoza, Patricia, 364

  Euripides, 250

  Faulkner, William, 297

  Faust, Karl, 258

 

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