FOUND IN BOOKFORUM: “THE FABULOUS SCHIAFFINO BOYS,” AN EXCERPT FROM ROBERT BOLAÑO’S NOVEL NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS

FOUND IN VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW: AN EXCERPT FROM ROBERTO BOLAÑO’S NOVEL NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS

Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolaño is one of the most critically acclaimed writers in America today. Literary critics in nearly all (if not all) of the nation’s biggest literary papers have written long and laudatory articles regarding Bolaño’s life and literary talents: The New York Times Book Review (written by James Wood), The New Yorker (written by Daniel Zalewski), Bookforum (written by Alex Abramovich), and The New York Review of Books (where Francisco Goldman titles his essay simply, “The Great Bolaño”). In their most recent assessment of the “Intellectual Situation,” n+1 editors lnked such overwhelming praise for Bolaño’s work to “a thirst for the minor and literarily self-aware.” Sadly, nearly all American praise of Bolaño’s work came after his untimely death in 2003.

Either way, enthusiam for Bolaño’s writing is more than well-deserved. His novels and short stories to date that have been translated into English are enthralling displays of plot and character pyrotechnics; they are an attractive combination of both the familiar and the foreign. (Even some of his poetry is finally receiving the attention of American publishers.) The beginning to his novel The Savage Detectives is now famous for its humor, simplicity, and compelling mystery. “I’ve been cordially invited to join the visceral realists,” the book begins. “I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.”

Bolaño’s most recent novel to be translated into English, Nazi Literature in the Americas, is also receiving significant critical applause, and is largely regarded as the book which sealed Bolaño’s literary fame. For Bolaño fans or those unfamiliar with his writing, both Bookforum and the Virginia Quarterly Review recently excerpted sections of the novel–and, as Nazi Literature was composed as segments of a fictional Latin American literary history, these excerpts read not as previews, but stand alone as autonomous literary works.

[Full disclosure: this site stole its name--Luna Park--from a Belgium literary magazine referenced in Bolaño's story "Vagabond in France and Belgium," from his book Last Evenings on Earth.]