This article is excerpted from: Portrait of Bolaño, by Monica Maristan (Argentina), Edition: Lu Xiuchuan| Nanjing University Press, July 2021
Mexican women writer Carmen Borosa met Roberto Bolaño in the 1970s, when everyone wanted to be poets. Young people carry out their literary lives in cafes and public reading sessions, listening to Octavio Paz tell juana Inés de la Cruz.
"We are all the same, with the same dress, we are post-hippie people, a group of poets, all of us are very similar, but we think we belong to two groups: our idol is Octavio Paz, and the faction we call different from us is the 'Stalinists', and their faction worships Evrain Huerta. I myself belong to the Octavio Paz faction, which considers ourselves to be elegant and sophisticated, but in reality, life is nothing more than young people wearing open-toed sandals and traditional Oaxaca T-shirts. The 'Stalinists' think that we are representatives of the bourgeoisie, because our eating and wearing are all in a uniform style. It was then that I met Bolaño at a party where I had read the first book of poetry that Juan Pasco had helped him publish, and Juan had helped me publish a long book of poems. The first time I saw him, he was in the middle of a group of people, and I was afraid of that group, because their behavior was really frightening: they interfered with other people's reading poetry, booing, booing, and even provoking scolding. When I saw Bolaño again 20 years later, in Vienna, we were invited to talk about exile, and I can't remember why I agreed to this event at the time, in fact, I didn't talk about exile, but about the feeling that everyone is a foreigner today. He didn't talk about exile either, but read a very mild passage about the novel. Since then, we've become friends, probably in 1998 or 1999. ”
Bolaño
Bolaño was his mentor
Q: If you were asked to close your eyes, what would be the first impression of Bolaño that flashed through your mind?
Carmen M. Borosa: It's too hard to answer, and the first impression should be the young Bolaño, the curious Bolaño, the Bolaño I knew at the gathering of realistic poets, the Bolaño who the six relatives did not recognize, the Polanio who even wanted to "behead" Octavio Paz, thinking that he was hindering his development. He didn't want a so-called mentor at all, he wanted to be his own mentor. He's not my friend, he should be my enemy. That's the first impression Bolaño gave me, those of us who were unkempt poets, rubber-drooping, like post-hippie people, disheveled. Only Bolaño wears an ironed shirt. Bolaño, who lived with his mother, wore an ironed flat shirt and long hair, and his rebellious core and student-like dress were all part of him. Of course, I also have Bolaño, who is very close to me, but that kind of him, not my first impression of him, this may only be blamed on himself, blame him for deifying his youth too much, of course, there are also my reasons, I remember the years of his youth that affected me too much, that was the critical period when I continued to build myself into a writer, immersed in the trembling, honest, determined literary world all day.
Q: So you didn't like him at the time?
Carmen M. Borosa: I'm afraid of him and his friends, not because I don't like it, but because I'm afraid. To be honest, it's not that I don't like their poetry. Instead, I appreciated Roberto Bolaño's long poems published by Juan Pasco's Kingfisher Press. Juan Pasco is like a bond between the following realists and those of us who follow Paz. The Parsians always welcomed women writers with open arms, while the Evrain Huerta faction did not tolerate women. I was comfortable on the side of the Pas, and the people on the other side were equally content to stay on their side. I used to fear them because I was young and vulnerable. The first time I read my poems was when I took the Salvador Novo Prize for The Arts, along with Dario Galicia and Veronica Volco, both close friends of Bolaño. I was very nervous because I knew that such occasions would often have realistic poets shouting to resist and interfere with them offstage. But the situation that day was that I spoke at the Gandhi Library, and they were also present, without booing or interrupting me.
Q: So when did he start to become the lovely Bolaño in your eyes?
Carmen M. Borosa: I met Roberto Polanio many years later, when he had already published The Wilderness Detective, and I had already read this book that reflected the face of my city and my generation. I met him in Vienna and quickly hit it off, after all, we were all writers at the time. We also talked all night long, and he talked to me about his kids, about his wife, about his lover, and so did I. We even shed tears together, it was an absolutely blazing night. The next day, we went out for a walk together and continued our chat. Then at another writers' party, I saw him again. We were messaging each other every day, writing long emails, and he always wrote longer than I did, and Roberto was undoubtedly a good communicator. Then I went to his house to see him and got to know Karolina. We've seen it in Madrid, we've seen it in Paris, we've seen it three days before he died, and we're very close friends. We know each other's secrets, and even if I cut off my tongue, I won't tell anyone.
In the back row, second from the left is Bolaño
Dissatisfaction with the "corpse eating" culture
Q: From a literary point of view, what do you think of the Roberto Bolaño phenomenon?
Carmen M. Borosa: Roberto Bolaño is unique, and the world he belongs to seems very organized to me. I think he should be able to compare with many people, such as Octavio Paz, such as José Agustín, who he himself began reading at a very young age, and many great masters of English literature. Roberto was a "greedy" reader. "2666" is definitely a masterpiece, because it, Roberto has gained fame, and there has also been the Bolaño phenomenon. And this phenomenon seems to me to have its painful side, in fact, this is also the cruelty of literature. If Bolaño hadn't gone, this phenomenon wouldn't have been so popular. Readers and critics are always obsessed with literati who died young, or they love this sacrifice, this romantic death, and I really resent it. I resented it because I had known Roberto for a long time, because he was a very close friend to me, because I couldn't accept the fact that he had left under any circumstances, so to be honest, I was unhappy with the current "corpse-eating" culture. Another thing that irritates me is that many people insist that Bolaño is not a Latin American writer, or that he is the only writer in Latin America. Bolaño was his own spiritual mentor, as is the case with all self-respecting writers, and it can only be said that Bolaño shines more literarily than his peers. So, I don't like this kind of prayer of death, nor do I like the "de-Chileanized" or "de-Mexicanized" Bolaño. If Bolaño's liver transplant had been successful, he might have continued to write great novels like we did. Maybe he won't get as much applause as he does now. I really don't like that. I also don't like all these things that happen to him today when he can't give a reply. Bolaño is a professional fighter, and if he is still there, he must have argued with an unknown number of people, even self-isolated, alienated others, and he will create the chaos he needs and create a dim space for himself to continue writing. It can only be said that people turned him into a sculpture too quickly.
Q: Who are you talking about Bolaño's Latin American counterparts?
Carmen M. Borosa: Bolaño is definitely a high-level writer, but he doesn't think like Borges, who doesn't deal with pornography at all, and Bolaño doesn't shy away from it. So, in my opinion, there is nothing in common between them. Some writers in the English-speaking world believe that Borges and Bolaño are very similar because they have not read any Latin American writers. I think Bolaño's work is great because he knows how to build bridges with humans or with other writers, not independently of the world. He spoke to César Vallejo and to the Salvadoran poet Rocchi Dalton: Bolaño's literary works buried in his tributes to other writers.
2666, by Roberto Polanio (Chile), translated by Zhao Deming, edition: Century Wenjing| Shanghai People's Publishing House, January 2012
Bolaño is not a "Beat Generation" writer
Q: Will his literary power affect only one generation, such as the younger generation today? Or is there bound to be a more far-reaching impact?
Carmen M. Borosa: I think everybody reads his work, no matter what era.
Q: Are there any influences from Bolaño in your work?
Carmen M. Borosa: I'm very different from Bolaño. I have a lot of respect for him, and he respects me, we're a generation, all growing up in Mexico City, but our literature is completely different.
Q: For example, some jokes and humor, some irony, of course not to the point of cynicism, there is always some relevance...
Carmen M. Bolossa: I don't know, I've had satire in my previous books. For me, I belong to the same era as Bolaño, which is obvious, and I am happy to read his works. When I watched "Wilderness Detective", I thought it was a novel that was very close to me, and it should be said that it belonged to the field I would cover, but I would never write a similar work. It turns out that Bolaño was influenced by the josé Agustin and Evraín Huerta school, you could say "go to literature", but "The Wild Detective" was a turning point for Bolaño, and his novels seem to have begun to change the genre ever since. It seems to me that he was a writer who began as a "Stalinist" and ended up completely indulging in the influence of Octavio Paz.
Q: How do Americans view Bolaño now?
Carmen M. Borosa: I don't know particularly well. I only know that the Bolaño phenomenon has swept the United States, and I have said that partly because he has left us, and the sacrifice of a writer who died young has brought about this situation. Many people in the United States worship him. Not long ago, I attended an event to pay tribute to Bolaño, and really a lot of people came. Jonathan Latham was also there, who was also an American icon, and he wrote a very important article about Bolaño. The truth is that Bolaño did bring something very different to the English-speaking world, after all he came from a culture they didn't understand, so people were used to comparing him to Borges.
Q: Maybe Red Dead Redemption changed the way Americans look at Latin America...
Carmen M. Bolosa: Probably, although I don't quite agree with that view. Writers like García Márquez, who have created complex worlds, are not showing the same Latin America. Nor do I think Americans have the impression that Latin America is the same. To be honest, I don't know what they imagine Latin America to be like, but I don't think it can all be the same picture. But I'm sure Americans really don't understand Latin America and have deep prejudices. We Latin Americans have a very low status in the hearts of Americans, we are just people from banana countries. Even in preaching love and admiration for Bolaño, I feel a little prejudice, because he has left, and he is too young to leave, so they accept him, love him, worship him. They even made up some rumors about him, such as Bolaño's drug use or something, which I was really angry about, please, how could it be...
Q: You just mentioned Jonathan Latham, the article he wrote about Bolaño, do you think there's anything wrong with that?
Carmen M. Bolossa: Well, actually, Jonathan Lesham has attributed Bolaño to the genre of English-language writers that they both love. However, Lesham and Bolaño are completely different writers, they have nothing in common, they have different blood, and they have different genes. Even if they had the slightest resemblance, it was exaggerated by Latham, because he had no knowledge of Bolaño's background, and classified him as a writer of the "Beat Generation", which he was not. What is Bolaño? He was really just an animal well versed in literature.
Q: Isn't Bolaño's presence annoying to already established Latin American writers like García Márquez or Carlos Fuentes?
Carmen M. Borosa: I think when Bolaño tried to create space for himself, he was very intent on driving these writers out of his map. I feel that these writers really don't like Bolaño because he didn't go along with them or sing their praises. But then again, if Bolaño didn't respect these predecessors, why did they respect him? Bolaño is like a puppy up and drawing its own circle. And between them, it's like puppies fighting for territory.
Q: Is Bolaño a perfect poet for you?
Carmen M. Bolossa: No. The poet I see As Bolaño is like a mason, transporting bricks and cement for the novelist Bolaño on the construction site. But I was interested in the poet Bolaño. I saved from the New York Library a book by Bolaño that I had never read before, a book that was very badly written, but I could already see the original structure of The Wild Detective. This is what Bolaño got in his poetry, for the novel, for the first draft of narrative literature, but he really can't be considered a standard poet. One day he gave me a copy of his poetry. I read it and told him, "This book is not bad." He interrupted me: "You know very well that it sucks, I am not a poet, I must be something else." ”
The author | Monica Maristan
Excerpt from | Zhang Jin
Editor | Zhang Jin
Introduction Proofreading | Wang Xin