Thoughts on Bolaño?

Anyone read Savage Detectives or 2666?

Thoughts?

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I don't "get" Bolano. I haven't read his books, but he is literally the only novelist I've ever heard of who lived apparently as an outcast nobody in some obscure Catalonian coastal town, working as a garbage collector and other shit jobs, yet suddenly became a world famous novelist. How does that happen? Something doesn't fit.

I've read The Savage Detectives, Amulet, Distant Star, A Little Lumpen Novel, and some of his short stories like The Return. I find his style addicting, and I'm looking forward to read 2666.

Read 2666, he tells you exactly what he did

Can you summarize please?

He won a few local prizes, then Savage Detectives manuscript was read by the head honcho in Anagrama, one of Spain's biggest publishers. He also had a nice crew to back him up and pump up his name. And with all the cool "writer's life" he built up (a lot of it is romanticized) it made him popular.

>Anyone read
no

In my experience menial shit jobs are the best jobs to get the creative juices flowing.

>He also had a nice crew to back him up and pump up his name

what do you mean a crew? weren't they just his friends?

Well yes, but they were mostly all writers, some of which he tagged with to create a short lived literary movement in Mexico, which gave him some cred.

This.

Doing something you hate can reveal what you love so much.

How about you at least bother to read his Wikipedia article, you lazy, ignorant piece of shit.

A fat executive in a board room probably felt he can use him to extract money from sheep and he did. This is literally the story of anyone who "made it" in arts or entertainment.

The Savage Detectives seemed very pointless. Was pretty entertaining the first few hundred pages but the style of those interviews started getting repetitive and I abandoned it after realizing it wasn't actually saying anything.

He writes good books, give them a try, cunt. Also he was well liked by his contemporaries, which helped popularize his works.
Also he sort of became a meme among young rebelish latin american edgy kids. And then edgy american hipster soyboys got in that wagon and many american publishers started printing his "big" works like los detectives salvages and 2666.
I've been reading his short stories and novellas and they're tight. "Amuleto" is such a beautiful book, and a master work of clockmaking-like writing: asphyxiating, claustrophobic, warm, colorful, outlandish, spine-chilling, beautiful fucking book

Don't cut yourself

Young poet Garcia Madero is a moron.

Bolaño's poem My Literary Career:

Rejections from Anagrama, Grijalbo, Planeta, certainly also from Alfaguara,
Mondadori. A no from Muchnik, Seix Barral, Destino... All the publishers... All the readers
All the sales managers...
Under the bridge, while it rains, a golden opportunity
to take a look at myself:
like a snake in the North Pole, but writing.
Writing poetry in the land of the idiots.
Writing with my son on my knee.
Writing until night falls
with the thunder of a thousand demons.
The demons who will carry me to hell,
but writing.

A key episode in Bolaño's life, mentioned in different forms in several of his works, occurred in 1973, when he left Mexico for Chile to "help build the revolution" by supporting the socialist democratic government of Salvador Allende. After Augusto Pinochet's right wing supported military coup against Allende, Bolaño was arrested on suspicion of being a "terrorist" and spent eight days in custody.[10] He was rescued by two former classmates who had become prison guards. Bolaño describes this experience in the story "Dance Card." According to the version of events he provides in this story, he was not tortured as he had expected, but "in the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas... I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me."[11] The episode is also recounted, from the point of view of Bolaño's former classmates, in the story "Detectives." Nevertheless, since 2009 Bolaño's Mexican friends from that era have cast doubts on whether he was even in Chile in 1973 at all.[12]

>On his overland return from Chile to Mexico in 1974, Bolaño allegedly passed an interlude in El Salvador, spent in the company of the poet Roque Dalton and the guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, though the veracity of this episode has been cast into doubt.[13]

>In the 1960s, Bolaño, an atheist since his youth,[14] became a Trotskyist[15] and in 1975 a founding member of Infrarrealismo (Infrarealism), a minor poetic movement. He affectionately parodied aspects of the movement in The Savage Detectives.

Ok, so did he lie?
And "Trotskyist" at 17 or younger? To paraphrase a line from Delillo's Libra, one shouldn't be able to call oneself an atheist until they're over 40.
I can see why he'd be shilled so heavily because everything is politicized and he pushes all of the right buttons, without saying anything that really challenges leftist hegemony.
Also, people can brag about their "favorite author" being some third worldist, to morally signal, when if you look at him he just looks like a white European who was born in Chile.
Oh yeah, and his work is ok. All of the other stuff above and his work not sucking super hard, provides a formula for instant notoriety. Plus he died so that pumped it up.
Savage Detectives is no Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest, no Brothers K or Dead Souls. It's bearable and spreads the right propaganda.

>romanticized

What do you mean?

The third part actually continues and ends the story from the first part. Yeah, second part was difficult.

Wow, that sucks

Umm sweetie I did.

>lived in Chile
>went to live in Mexico
>went to Spain because of Pinochet
>worked as a garbage collector, camp attendant etc for like 20 years
>suddenly become a world-famous novelist

>Also he sort of became a meme among young rebelish latin american edgy kids

I never sensed that, and I'm Latin American, Mexican speficically.

>to paraphrase a line from Delillo's Libra, one shouldn't be able to call oneself an atheist until they're over 40.

Why?

So he's basically a wetback Bukowski with latino magical realism thrown in to make it high-brow? Give me a break. This is why I just play video games.

Tremendously overrated here.

>Give me a break. This is why I just play video games.

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>Also, people can brag about their "favorite author" being some third worldist, to morally signal, when if you look at him he just looks like a white European who was born in Chile.

Fuck, that was ignorant. Are you even aware what Latin America even is? It's one of the biggest melting pots of cultures in history. Europeans and Native Americans, making unique cultures. Which aren't 100% European nor 100% Native American. The fact that his skin is pale does not make him European. He was Chilean. Period.

>I'm Latin American, Mexican speficically.
>Mexican
>speficically
Makes sense

Also, what a fag going up against Pinochet. Why are young 'artists' such pussies who immediately sheep along to whatever leftist carrot is held in front of them? So what would the American equivalent be? Some soyboy berniefag who writes scathing pieces about Bonald Drumpfz and joins antifa, who eventually decides to go quantity over quality with a bunch of sex scenes to cover up the fact that he's a third-rate wannabe avant-gardist

not same guy but maybe people under 40 are fucking stupid most of the time?

Because you don't know shit. A 15 year old Trotskyist? lmao
Maybe 40 is hyperbole, but point stands

Lol Chile and Argentina are whiter than any large western European country, faggot haha

Nice joke Pablo, back to mowing my lawn

He has no ties whatsoever to magical realism. Stick to vidyagaymes.

He is though. He's sort of romanticized the leftist young artist from his generations. It's a leitmotiv in his works

You don't say

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>So he's basically a wetback Bukowski with latino magical realism thrown in to make it high-brow?
Yes, except he's hardly even a wetback. Like Jorge Ramos and the others who gain popularity for ideas, creativity, or ability, they are probably only 0 to 10% Amerindian, compared to your average illegal who is probably 70% or above

You're a retard. If he took a DNA test he would be over 70% European in genetic ancestry. Probably 80 or 90%. Are you seriously debating this? Can you look at a picture of him and say that's not true? If so you're either dumb or arguing in bad faith.

Skin color is not culture, faggot. Culture isn't in your fucking blood. He was Chilean, and in fact viewed himself as "Latin American", having lived in both Chile and Mexico. He considered Mexico his "literary land by excellence" and Chile the land of his childhood. Also, he disliked white Chileans who boasted about belonging 100% to the white race, while being racist towards non-white writers like Ruben Darío. So, there you go.

He might have lied. But I still believe it because it does a lot for his fiction. It gives it more weight, and really it's a white lie. I mean fuck, if I'd have a chance to tell an outlandishly cinematic anecdote that harms no one in particular and promotes my art I'd fucking do it in a second.

>hey are probably only 0 to 10% Amerindian, compared to your average illegal who is probably 70% or above.

How's that relevant? He hated racists, too.

Today I will remind them.

>culture isnt in your blood
where does it come from then?

that's what being young and poor in latin america in the 70's was all about, though. The dude and his family had to flee chile and barely scrape by in mexico.
Also, way to miss the point edgelord, he's definitely not championing for the left or learning valuesin a strict sense, that was just the context in which he grew in. Read "Nazi Literature in the Americas", one of his earliest works

>skin color is not culture
That's true. But culture is made by people. Specific races have abilities other ones don't, and the two create wildly different cultures. Race is not only skin color, but also intelligence, creativity, and a plethora of other qualities. How brainlet are you?
>He hate racists, too
Of course he did. Another faux-edgy leftist mediocre "artist" who gets the thumbs up from all of the Approved Voices - why is that? What a true revolutionary, promoted by the L.A. Times, New Yorker, New York Times, etc.

fuck off back to /pol/, trash

Yeah, European genetic ancestry, like many Latin Americans, no questions about it, but no European culture, since he grew up in Chile and Mexico, and viewed himself as that. The world isn't black and white goddammit. You must be a Murifag and have all these fucked up racist views. He was a white Latin American. Period.

>let me tell you about your country...

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So, when push comes to shove, was he a 56% meme?

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>>Suddenly
What the fuck are you talking about?
I'm going to assume you are referring how he became a meme after he was first translated to English (because that's what Americans, being USA-centric, usually think like). His first translation came out after his death.
In Spanish, he failed as a poet. Won shitty awards. One good day he has a lucky break and he gets some recognition. He is published by one of the most important Hispanic publishers out there.
He has written and read for so long his interviews and critical opinions on literature are interesting and resound with young intellectuals.
>muh leftistm
Like pretty much every other Latin American writer who grew up during the 70s. You have to thank your own American Plan Condor for that.

This thread is cancerous bait.

What "shitty awards" did he win?

>That's true. But culture is made by people. Specific races have abilities other ones don't, and the two create wildly different cultures.

That's besides the point. The point is that he's a Latin American, culture-wise, not European.

>What a true revolutionary, promoted by the L.A. Times, New Yorker, New York Times, etc.

He said all those things before he was famous, before being translated to English. Are you really that mentally retarded? For fuck's sake. These /pol/ faggots kek

You Murifags will never understand Latin American, you think every country is as segregated as yours.

>Also, what a fag going up against Pinochet. Why are young 'artists' such pussies who immediately sheep along to whatever leftist carrot is held in front of them?

Anyone who defend a mass-murderer should not be taken seriously.

If you defend Stálin, you should not be taken seriously.

If you defend Mao, you should not be taken seriously.

If you defend Henry Kissinger maneuvers, you should not be taken seriously.

And if you defend Pinochet you are just a mamas-boy from a first world country of from a rich family in Latin America that doesn’t’ give a damn that thousands of people are being killed, since it’s “your team” that is winning. And more: a mamas-boy who is lazy and don’t study history with a neutral and attentive eye.

>“But hur, dur, he saved Chile from a bloody Communist coup.”

Oh yeah, so the fact that that asshole “saved” Chile from a hypothetical “bloody coup” by implementing a real bloody coup in the country is justifiable and admirable? Seriously, to let ideology and blind team-rooting take you to this level you need to be a reptile of a human, a spoiled brat who never grew up mentally.

Fucking retards. This man-children are so blind they don’t even see they are just following the new far-right fashion that has emerged in the last few years out of nothing but trendy-influence. Had they been born in the 60s the same lunatics that make this comments would all be hippies.

>it's another "thread gets derailed by /po/ and libtards" episode

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It is, it is. These faggots can't discuss an a foreign author without bringing their shit.

>And if you defend Pinochet you are just a mamas-boy from a first world country of from a rich family in Latin America that doesn’t’ give a damn that thousands of people are being killed, since it’s “your team” that is winning. And more: a mamas-boy who is lazy and don’t study history with a neutral and attentive eye.
nope; look up any mainstream coverage of pinochet and it is more laughably false and one-sided as the "Hitler has one nut, a-and injected bull testicles, a-and 6 million died even though this and this and this, a-and, the evil nazis"
You clearly are not unbiased, my dear sir

>Won shitty awards
He won the Rómulo Gallegos. Which is the best award in Spanish language after the Cervantes.

overhyped by Veeky Forums and other teenagers.

>That's besides the point. The point is that he's a Latin American, culture-wise, not European.
Ok thanks for the non-sequitur, no one was saying anything to the contrary.
lol who is on your tv shows, your films? who dominates your government, and all of the cognitively demanding professions? jeezuz

>Ok thanks for the non-sequitur, no one was saying anything to the contrary.

Then why even bring that racist shit? Arguing about race on a Bolaño thread... yeah.

That doesn't explain the why.

You brought it up

This faggot brought it up: >>Also, people can brag about their "favorite author" being some third worldist, to morally signal, when if you look at him he just looks like a white European who was born in Chile.

Yeah, so? Please learn how to read.
>In Spanish, he failed as a poet. Won shitty awards. One good day he has a lucky break and he gets some recognition. He is published by one of the most important Hispanic publishers out there.
He won the award you mentioned 5 years before his death, long after he was first published ('lucky break').

Not sure what you're getting at, but yeah, dying relatively young helped create his myth.