(Roberto Bolaño web image)
Márquez once said that man is not about how many days he lives, but how many days he writes down. This is apt to roberto Pollanio. The image of Bolaño may be arbitrary, depending on which faces the friends and women have written down. His life has become as a mystery as his works. The search for Bolaño is like the novel 2666 in which a bunch of literary critics study the mysterious writer Archimpoldi—an enthusiast who explores the writings, lives, and deeds. The book Portrait of Bolaño: Oral Accounts and Interviews is very peculiar, like a "book of testimony" for visiting witnesses and collecting "confessions". The goal is to piece together the fragments of Bolaño and patch up the writer's legend.
Although this metaphor is not very appropriate, Bolaño is not a "suspect". But his literature is full of doubts. From the masterpiece "Wilderness Detective" to the peak work "2666", this is all the case. Add in exiles, rebels, addicts, and uncertainties, and these labels are enough to form metaphorical magic. Just like Sontag's "Metaphor for Disease", it is always possible to find the cultural symbols hidden in various diseases, and to find the categories and grade differences between them. Sontag's admiration for Bolaño may be related to the many metaphorical symbols on him.
We will discover the fictionality of oral art. Indirect interviews are originally paraphrasing and reminiscing. There is reason to suspect that there must be a kind of storyteller who will release more fog about Bolaño. Charm, always at the same time as the revival, this is where the charm lies. The author, Monica Maristan, shares the same fetish as Bolaño and is good at using literature as a method of detective. It may be the "sequelae" of a journalist-turned-writer - curious about the truth, with a pair of eyes to solve cases. This new possibility of narrative may be called a detective narrative.
One
Bolaño's story, derived from poetry, for him, the novel is a derivative of poetry. It's a conciliatory ability. Poetry and violence, documentary and fiction are bridged. It is undeniable that reading his works, there is always an urge to find clues and dig out prototypes. Specious, futile, and charming. What does "subrelimeism" have to do with realism? Maybe it's a circuit that opens the writer's head. Bolaño has always been dealing with this layer of "relationship" – it has created an endless game of stripping away fiction and misleading deception.
The autobiographical element of the novel is a signpost for the disguise of realism. It constitutes a representation: as if the writer stripped away the metaphorical and fictional qualities, bringing the novel infinitely closer to the narrative prose. "Below reality" is a trap of realism, and it is only after falling that there is no truth underneath. "What is 2666? If it's not a giant black hole for humanity, not a crime, not a terror, then what exactly is it? How can this evil be understood? Roberto takes the reader to a black hole, which is the concept of the following reality. "Using autobiographical elements to restore the image of the writer is doomed to only lead to arbitrariness." Maybe he's camping, maybe he's in a bar, maybe he's arriving in Barcelona before midnight...
The writer and poet's close friend, Mario Santiago, practiced the following doctrine of reality. Behind this eccentric name, there is neither a manifesto nor a formal group. It is a loose attitude that distances itself from the Mexican literary circle, even disdainful. It is neither left nor right, has nothing to do with the high school, nor is it accustomed to the avant-garde. "The Wilderness Detective" expresses this idea, "This book tells the story of a group of young poets who have formed a 'instinctive realist' group." In Ramon Mendes's view, Bolaño was a story seller. He was in Mexico to get the story of the local poet, "to write it into a novel, and then to become famous and make money." "Mendez is Pancho Rodriguez in The Wild Detective.
"Below reality" and "instinct" are corresponding references. Below reality is the cornerstone of instinct, suggesting that ethical forces prevail over aesthetic principles and signify a literary attitude determined by the position of existence. Medina said, "The key to these ethics is the poet's strategic and critical marginalized identity." "It constantly tries to get close to the abyss, to risk guerrilla warfare, and to provoke the people." The utopian defeat of our fantasies about under reality can also be found in Bolaño's work. "Because when this group appeared, it was a bit of a parody, and it was also a bit practical." He said to us, 'You are hippies, you (Mario Santiago) are Alan Ginsburg, and you (Mendes) are Gregory Corso.' ”
He found not only ways to make himself famous, but also like-minded poets who could inspire him. At the end of the day, he just likes to write poets into his novels, doesn't he? That's why he came to us to see if there was any material he was interested in. This group provides Bolaño with ready-made group portraits, perhaps this statement is one-sided, but it is also part of the truth. However, their resistance is very consistent, and their temperaments are naturally similar- "We are against the so-called literati, the so-called writers, a bunch of fools who don't study, don't work, don't progress, they only desecrate our language." ”
Mendes looked at Bolaño with no false beauty and a little sourness, like looking at an old guy. He doesn't deny that "Wilderness Detective" is a good work, but compared to Cervantes, it is undoubtedly a bit of an exaggeration. "He's still a wonderful storyteller anyway, but sometimes he's overrated." He even proposes an explanation: Bolaño's strategy for fame is closely aligned with reality, gaining attention, and independent of official culture, becoming a "reputation strategist." This description is interesting, fame is built up in peripheral dissent, and it is portrayed as the use of a strategy of resistance to succeed, which goes beyond the literary level.
Portrait of Bolaño
Author: [Argentina] Monica Maristan
Publisher: Nanjing University Publishing House
Translator: Lu Xiuchuan
2021-7
Two
"People who know Bolaño say he's attractive to women, even though he's not that handsome and has lost a lot of teeth when he's younger (like Martin Amis and Vladimir Nabokov)." This description made me curious to look at the writer's photograph, and Bolaño was not smiling with his teeth, perhaps he did not lose his front teeth. But this also implies premature physical aging, too many women, is the source is also consumed. Almost all women who intersect with writers do not deny the sensuality, flexibility and charm of writers. It's the ability to quickly pull friendships toward intimacy. It is the essential power of Bolaño - to interact with women with feminine feelings and female emotions, to reduce different objects. Moreover, this forms a universal emotion that can be transposed and projected onto any woman. If women are seen as "readers," then their evaluation of writers is like a reader reacting to criticism. "In remembering him, they all lamented the love they had lost, and they themselves were lost in some enduring atmosphere: what might have been between them, but not so developed."
"Our writer may make them feel like he's the most intimate person to get along with. Many women, even if they don't preach it everywhere, have felt like they are his 'woman in life', and only men who are deeply in love will give them this feeling. Bolaño's letter may illustrate the roots of the secret: consistency and no exceptions. Both the language and the story are highly repetitive and told to different recipients in the same way. He was not written to a specific person, but a collection of women. "So no love affair is an exception." Bolaño has the charm of a conqueror and also speaks stupid clichés. Somewhat reckless, mischievous (this comes from Father Leon's comments), like children who can't grow up. A prodigal son plays the role of a victim, a frustrated hero, enduring what seems to be his one-sided love desires. "He is the typical sensual man, and in the tradition of so-called elegant love, he loves love itself more than the woman he loves." "Love is not the literary essence of Bolaño, sex is." It refers to both sex and gender.
This type of emotion, the profound impact on writing, should not be overlooked. For writers, the best way to place women is to put them in the text and seal the emotions. This is perhaps the greatest comfort he gives to women. Identifying the game makes his story and life more confused: not only fictional stories, but also fictionalizing oneself. When women find themselves in Bolaño's work, it has become a prototype symbol, just an instantaneous marker of emotion.
Three
Bolaño's emotional value cannot be understood in isolation from fiction. Narrative is secondary, and informality is the prerogative of genius. He doesn't care if the story is repetitive or not, and he doesn't have careful control over the rhythm and structure. The climax suddenly came out, and it came with nature, and could only explain this "living literature" with the passion of life. Bolaño is not at the heart of the explosion of Latin American literature, he is the second wave after the shock wave. Coinciding with the death of the first generation of Latin American giants, Márquez, Fuentes, Llosa and others were uncertain and had not yet been canonized. In my opinion, perhaps Bolaño can be seen as a "rearview mirror" that illuminates the explosion of literature.
His "incompatibility" with his peers also shows that he is both closely related to Latin American literature and very estranged from the fracture. Bolaño had a proud sense of superiority, and more than one recalled his love of bragging and acknowledged that he was indeed erudite. However, he was very different from Borges's clean erudition, and he did not shy away from taboos. He emphasizes self-achievement without the need for seniors and mentors. "The one who didn't recognize Bolanio, the one who even wanted to 'behead' Octavio Paz, thought he was hindering his development." And his contempt for Allende was so thorough that "calling her a 'writer' is giving her face." I don't even think she's a 'writer,' but a writer at best." To this list of writers, he also added Skalmeda, Arturo Pérez-Revit.
This is not entirely objective, as these writers are best-selling and award-winning, and most have personal grudges with Bolaño. "The writers of literature after the explosion portrayed Bolaño as a 'provocateur' and sidelined his position in the literary world." Fuentes ignored him very coldly. As Llosa explains, "He wrote the commentary that he didn't recognize, and he harshly criticized many of his predecessors, which of course was a good thing." However, this also shows that Bolaño's taste and cleanliness are extremely high in moral and aesthetic expectations.
Ancillary, instrumental literature is immoral literature; literature that speaks only of readability and leisure is literature of non-aesthetics. In his view, the real writer is painful, and the writer sells lightness, popularity and routine. "A writer never takes an aesthetic risk ... They simply do not understand that literature, like any other art, requires different levels of aesthetic and philosophical depth. ”
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