Holy Crap, John is Reading a Book!

Exile, Fate, and the Blogger as a Young Man.

2010-02-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, good Ol’ James Joyce spends quite a bit of time writing about how he wants to flee Ireland for good. Towards the end of the book, through his proxy Stephen Dedalus, he says, “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets” (171). In other words, if you want to be a great writer/artist, you need to shake off the constraints placed upon you by your birthplace. Joyce’s character believes that one can only understand and write about Ireland by leaving it. He writes that he wants to “forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” (213), and this can only be achieve through self-imposed exile.

As I was working through the last of the Part about the Critics, I found myself vigorously underlining and starring the exchange between Amalfitano and the critics about exile and fate, and thinking about the above Joyce passages. On page 117, Bolano writes:

“Amalfitano looked at them and then at his margarita and said, as if he had repeated it many times, that in 1974 he was in Argentina because of the coup in Chile, which had obliged him to choose the path of exile. And then he apologized for expressing himself so grandiloquently. Everything becomes a habit, he said, but none of the critics paid much attention to this last remark.

‘Exile must be a terrible thing,’ said Norton sympathetically.

‘Actually,’ said Amalfitano, ‘now I see it as a natural movement, something that, in its way, helps to abolish fate, or what is generally thought as fate.’

‘But exile,’ said Pelletier, ‘is full of inconveniences, of skips and breaks that essentially keep recurring and interfere with anything you try to do that’s important.’

‘That’s just what I mean by abolishing fate,’ said Amalfitano, ‘But again, I beg your pardon.’”

This exchange, like much of 2666, it much more complicated than it initially appears. What complicates this bit is that mention of habit. What becomes a habit? Life after exile? Telling the story about leaving Argentina over and over? Expressing himself grandiloquently? Or does Amalfitano simply mean that everything that once seems new becomes common with familiarity? I feel like you could make an argument for any of these ideas, but once the rest of the discussion is taken into consideration, it seems that this idea of habit and fate are intertwined.

Amalfitano explains that exile breaks up your life, changes your plans, and forces you to look at things from different perspectives. Pelletier sees this as a terrible thing. It shakes things up, takes you out of the comfort zone, and from doing “important things” (note that at the end of their trip, as Espinoza is trying to sleep with Rebecca [and civilize her {Seriously, what a pig}], Pelletier spends all his time reading books he has already read, over and over, steadfastly refusing to deviate from his plan, though he is shaken by Norton’s choice of Moroni). Amalfitano doesn’t seem to think so. This difference of opinion is important to the book. Archimboldi has, it appears, exiled himself. But it is unclear whether he is like Joyce, trying to gain a new perspective on his work or whether he simply wants to travel (if he left Europe at all). Amalfitano could see this leaving as a natural choice. The critics seek to restore him to Europe. The critics’ views are, in this way, provincial (which is a fantastic irony, because they hold themselves as better, more cultured, than anyone they meet in Mexico).

Still, the book promises a later “Part about Fate.” I’m sure some of these ideas, especially about fate being seemingly synonymous with routine, will be revisited. At this point, I’m glad to see the critics go. They seemed like small, petty people. I’m ready for some folks who are more in touch with reality.

Next week: A post about Thomas Pynchon. Then: THE PART ABOUT AMALFITANO!

“…until he confessed that London was such a labyrinth…”

2010-02-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

And then 2666 really took off. Up until this point, I was a bit unsure how I felt about the book. I liked the tone of the narrator, he or she seemed friendly enough, but the first fifty pages seemed mostly setup. Introductions to characters, their relationships, and this Archimboldi character overtook the first section and I didn’t have much to say. Then the Pakistani cabbie accidently quoted Borges and shit went bananas.

Academia starts bumping up against real life and we begin to see how disconnected from reality these characters may be. After the cabbie let’s the line slip from his lips, Bolano writes that this utterance: “led Espinoza to remark that he’d be damned if the cabbie hadn’t just quoted Borges, who once said London was like a labyrinth—unintentionally of course. To which Norton replied that Dickens and Stevenson had used the same trope long before Borges in their descriptions of London” (73). This, one suspects, sets the cabbie off. He assumes that the academics are making fun of him and proceeds to call Norton a slut. Obviously, there is some miscommunication (I sense this as a growing theme) here, but it leads to a physical encounter.

Really, there are a couple things going on here (we’ll get to the violence and its implications in a second), first of which being the idea of the palimpsest. A palimpsest is, according to dictionary.com, a “typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.” As it was explained to me, a palimpsest was unique in that one would be writing literally on top of what had already written. This is, of course, a fine metaphor for the idea of intertextuality as frequently practiced by postmodern writers. The bit of Bolano I quoted above is one of the best example’s I’ve ever seen, where you have that dizzying moment where the reader thinks of Bolano writing about Borges writing about Dickens and Stevenson. This is a direction I’m certain that 2666 is headed, towards Bolano writing about writing and the artifice of the novel. It’s one of the most consistent postmodern tropes from Borges to Auster. It is also worth examining whether Dickens and Stevenson did this sort of thing as well (All I can remember of Treasure Island is maybe). Of course, writing about writing is what the academics do for a living. Bolano is highlighting the value and the downfalls of this sort of treatment of literature.

Keep in mind, this first part of the book is the part about the “critics,” not about the scholars. Bolano is already proving to be choosing his words carefully and it’s obvious that he isn’t portraying these folks in a glowing light.

This didn’t become apparent until the academics beat up the cabbie. Up to this point, we are presented with highly “civilized” characters who spend a lot time reading (though it often seems that they can’t do it for long), looking out windows, and going to conferences. But when their academic world bumps up against the real world, weird shit happens. Obviously, Bolano wants to show the disconnect between the enlightened critics and actual working folks. This disconnect is put into high relief when the critics begin kicking the cabbie, yelling “shove Islam up your ass…this one is for Salman Rushdie (an author neither of them happened to think was much good but whose mention seemed pertinent), this one is for the feminists of New York…and on and on” (74). Bolano is presenting the critics, the most highly trained minds of the Western world, slipping immediately into essentially gang violence because a cabbie was audacious enough to insult the woman they are both sleeping with.

It seems precisely the point of Bolano to show these people, for all their pretense, as uncivilized. Hypocritical as well, it’s mentioned that Espinoza and Pelletier both vote socialist and are screaming about women’s rights, as it would be assumed that they are individuals who would espouse tolerance. So what is Bolano saying? Other than being an academic doesn’t necessarily make you smart, well, I think it’s too early to tell. There’s a long way to go.

Throw in the painter who cuts off his own hand (which I’m not even going to start unpacking), and we have quite a read on our hands. See you next week, nerds.

LONG LIVE HITLER, or KISS MY CUBAN ASS.

2010-01-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

This blog is, ostensibly, working in conjunction with the group over at www.bolanobolano.com , trudging our way through Roberto Bolano’s massive 2666. I decided, rather foolishly in retrospect, to read one of Bolano’s shorter works before I jumped headlong into an epic novel with no context and little understanding of his style. I found that reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men prepared me for my sojourn through Infinite Jest; I hope that Nazi Lit. will prepare me for 2666. Of course, I’m already late with my first blog post—though some of that has to do with law school applications and the various things that come up. However, enough dilly-dallying! What about the book!?

Well, if Nazi Lit. is any indication, 2666 (especially from what I’ve read so far) is going to be hyper-literate. The book, which in the Borges fashion of writing reviews of books that don’t exist, serves as a brief encyclopedia of ultra-right-leaning or fascist-sympathizing writers that don’t exist. It’s a funny, at times upsetting little book which, as is wont to happen with postmodern writers, is more about writing and reading itself than about, well, anything else. It shares all of the hallmarks of this school of postmodern writing, alternating between harrowing and humorous. There is an even a Auster-esque turn at the end where Bolano becomes a character in his own story.

But the book’s real purpose takes awhile to tease out. As one reads the book, the characters sketched are rarely shown to be the monsters expected from the title. More than anything, they are sort of pathetic. Some, the less successful ones, are striving to be men and women of letters, their political opinions are really an afterthought and the writer’s who do show actual talent are rarely punished for their right-wing beliefs. The, one would assume, liberal critics and intelligentsia generally praise the stronger works of the Nazi writers. Either Bolano is attempting to implicate the liberal community allow with the fascists, or he is trying to legitimize good art, no matter its source.

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Because of its splintered structure, it is easy to forget that Nazi Lit. should be read as a cohesive whole. The last story, “The Infamous Ramirez Hoffman,” is the one that ties the book together. Hoffman is a serial killer, pilot, and poet whose favorite medium is skywriting. At an exhibition put on by the Chilean government, Hoffman flies (while writing, of course) through increasingly turbulent weather as a handful of bystanders look on. Bolano writes that “[t]hey understood the pilot’s will and knew that although they couldn’t make head or tail of it, they were witnessing an event of great significance for the art of the future” (189). First of all, the quote begins with a contradiction. Two journalists watching understand the writer’s will but at the same time cannot make “heads or tails of it.” They simply have a gut feeling that they are witnessing the art of the future. It turns out it is the art of the very near future. After the performance, there is an exhibition at Hoffman’s apartment which, presumably, display’s grisly photos of his many victims. The future bit makes more sense when Hoffman’s skywritten poems are taken into context. Many of them deal with death explicitly stating that death is ‘friendship…Chile…responsibility…love…growth…communion…cleansing…my heart…resurrection” (188-9). In other words, Hoffman has made death his art. While the journalists can’t understand it, they still get it on a gut level. Bolano may be implicating everyone with that statement.

This is a bit of an oversimplification (as will be a theme in this blog), but Hoffman serves to put into stark contrast the other writers in this book. Here we have a look at pretty pure evil, which is generally how people view Nazis and their ilk. Perhaps Bolano is saying more about literature than he is about his reader[s conceptions, but through humanizing the lesser fascists, he is attempting to make us understand what drives someone to such extreme and unconscionable beliefs. It is important that Hoffman is the only true monster, because that means the rest are just human and, well, humanity is easier to deal with.

But, what does this have to do with 2666? If this book is any indication we will be in store for a funny, literate (and full of references to authors I’ve never heard of), frightening, and sad book. But a lot longer. With fewer Nazis.

Updates Coming, Forthwith!

2010-01-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. I'm sorry that until this moment my blog has been an empty storefront, desolate, but filled with potential. Exciting, literary potential.

Anyway, I'm planning on two posts in the very near future (Sunday or Monday) both about Roberto Bolano. The first will discuss his short book Nazi Literature in the Americas (short version: It's pretty good!) and the second will, hopefully, discuss the first 51 pages of 2666, as according to the schedule set out by www.bolanobolano.com.