“In many ways, this book of interviews, including the last one that ran in Playboy in 2003 before he died, at age 50, of liver failure, is more fun to read than his novels. . .” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times “Bolaño’s often withering assessments of other writers and of the literary establishment are well worth reading, and there’s an illuminating introduction by Marcela Valdes. . .” —The Guardian “If you, like me, have found yourself compelled to read everything by Bolaño that you could get your hands on in the past year or two, then you should buy and read The Last Interview. . . Highly recommended.” —Biblioklept “The Last Interview an indispensable acquisition for anyone with more than a passing interest in Bolaño. . . . Given how little biographical information about Bolaño is readily available—and given how the myth(s) around the man proliferate—Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview is a welcome and handy little volume that anyone interested in the author will likely enjoy.” —The Complete Review
“To a confirmed Bolaño-maniac, Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview feels both familiar and foreign, as it finds the author talking insightfully about the same subjects he relentlessly pursues in his novels, yet approaching them from different angles . . . an engrossing book full of these small, personal moments that cast new light on the author and his works.” —Scott Esposito, Barnes and Noble Review.com “Bolaño speaks frankly and candidly with his various interviewers, revealing his vastly erudite intelligence and knowledge as well as his skewed humor. . . . He also references a whole host of Spanish and Latin American writers and poets, most of whose names would remain obscure to the uninitiated reader if not for an excellent editorial feature of this collection of interviews. On each page where Bolaño or his interviewer mentions a writer or poet, their names are printed in bold type in the main text, and a brief biographical summary and list of published works, both in original and translation, appear in the extra-wide margins. This makes The Last Interview an incredibly valuable sourcebook for those interested in tracking down all the various influences that are such an important part of Bolaño’s oeuvre. . . . Robert Bolaño: The Last Interview provides many valuable insights into the mind of this truly revolutionary writer.” —Rain Taxi
ROBERTO BOLAﾃ前 THE LAST INTERVIEW and
OTHER CONVERSATIONS
with an introduction by M A R C E LA VALDES translated by SYBIL PEREZ
MELVILLE HOUSE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
“ L ITERATURE IS NOT MADE FROM WORDS ALONE” I N T E RV I E W BY H É C T O R S O T O A N D M AT Í A S B R AVO F I R S T P U B L I S H E D I N CA PI TA L , S A N T I AG O, D E C E M B E R 19 9 9
“Literature is Not Made From Words Alone”
43
HÉCTOR SOTO AND MATÍAS BR AVO: What is your relationship with writers from the Latin American Boom?
Good, very good—as a reader, of course. Anyway the Boom is an imprecise notion. It depends on what parameters everybody gives. Does Sábato come in or not? How about Onetti? Most people would say no. Rulfo, who for me is one of the cornerstones of the Boom, is also left out.
ROBERTO BOL AÑO:
Perhaps the emblematic figures of the movement were too adored, an injustice for quieter figures like Monterroso and Onetti, who are vindicated more and more. They’ve stayed relevant with the passage of time.
HS/MB:
RB: I don’t believe so. The literature of Vargas Llosa or García Márquez is gigantic. HS/MB:
A cathedral.
More than a cathedral. I do not think time will harm them. The work of Vargas Llosa, for example, is immense. It has thousands of entry points and thousands of exit points. So does the literature of García Márquez. They’re both public figures. They’re not just literary figures. Vargas Llosa was a candidate for president. García Márquez is a RB:
Argentine writer, Ernesto Sábato (b. 1911) was a driving force in the Argentine surrealist scene. Much of his work is available in English. Uraguayan novelist and short story writer Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–1994) sought to blend the real and the fantastic in his fiction. His novella The Pit (1939) is one of the first works of modern Spanish-language literature. After publishing the short story collection The Burning Plain (1953) and the novel Pedro Párama (1955), Mexican author Juan Rulfo (1917–1986) stopped publishing narrative fiction, despite the enormous critical success of his books. Both Faulkner and García Márquez were influenced by Rulfo’s prose. Born in Honduras, raised in Guatemala, and eventually exiled to Mexico, Augusto Monterroso (1921–2003) was a deeply respected short story writer. His story “The Dinosaur” is said to be literature’s shortest story. In full, it reads: “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.” His Complete Works and Other Stories (1995) is available in English.
4 4
No One Writes to the Colonel is a García Márquez novella.
Héctor Soto, Matías Bravo, and Rober to Bolaño
political heavyweight and very influential in Latin America. This distorts things a bit, but it shouldn’t make us lose sight of the position they have in the hierarchy. They are superiors, superior to the people who came after and, to be sure, to the writers of my generation. Books such as No One Writes to the Colonel are simply perfect. Since you read the Boom during its own time, your reading must have been from the perspective of a poet. During that period, you were only writing poetry.
HS/MB:
Yes, but I read plenty of narrative work, although it’s clear that my readings were from the perspective of a poet, which is a shame in a sense. If my reading had been from a narrator’s perspective, I would have probably learned more. Perhaps I have gaps in the way I look at the internal structures of a novel. I would have learned this sooner had I read with a different perspective. RB:
I have the impression that you compose small plots, which you then fit into the overall novel, although it isn’t so clear whether you do it with a preconceived idea of what the work will eventually be.
HS/MB:
I always have an idea. Each time I begin to write a novel, I have a very elaborate structure in mind. RB:
“Literature is Not Made From Words Alone”
45
Very elaborate, yes. But it does not prevent each of your phrases, given the rhythm and inflection you infuse them with, from being justified, though not always in the service of the novel’s unfolding plot.
HS/MB:
RB: Well, I think that’s something else. It relates to the elemental debt all prose writers have, which consists of cleaning a bit, trying to get close to language with open eyes and ears. I appreciate your words very much, but I don’t assign great relevance to hygienic definitions of my work. I’m very demanding in that sense. Without going any further than Savage Detectives, there are phrases and whole paragraphs in it that seem to me to be very bad. They seem terrible to me.
Your books are distinct approximations of a particular world, a world of writers and rather marginal people who are in between being obsessives and losers. Your stories and novels also center around the same situations or the same characters.
HS/MB:
RB:
Also around the same arguments.
Exactly. Your characters are crusaders for revolutionizing art and changing the world, which is the project of your generation.
HS/MB:
ROBERTO BOLAÑO Compilation and translation
© Melville House Publishing, 2009
First Melville House Printing: November 2009 Melville House Publishing 145 Plymouth Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.mhpbooks.com ISBN: 978-1-61219-095-2 “Alone Among the Ghosts” © Marcela Valdes. First published in The Nation , December 8, 2008. Research was supported by a grant from The Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. “Literature is Not Made From Words Alone,” by Héctor Soto and Matías Bravo, originally appeared in Capital , Santiago, December 1999, and is reprinted here by permission of Capital . “Reading is Always More Important Than Writing” © Bomb Magazine, New Art Publications, and its contributors. First appeared in Bomb Magazine , Issue #78, Winter 2002, pp. 49–53. All rights reserved. The Bomb Archive can be viewed at www.bombsite.com. “Positions are Positions and Sex is Sex” first appeared in Revista Cultural TURIA , no. 75 (ISSN: 0213-4373, 2005, pages 254–265) as “Roberto Bolaño: ‘Todo escritor que escribe en español debería tener influencia cervantina,’ ” by Eliseo Álvarez, reprinted here by permission of Revista Cultural TURIA, www.arce.es, ieturolenses@dpteruel.es “The Last Interview” © Mónica Maristain. First published by Playboy Mexico, July 2003, and first published in English by Stop Smiling , Issue 38, pp. 50–59. Reprinted here by permission of the interviewer. Printed in the United States of America 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009939057