Roberto
Bolaño is a novelist whose work I return to frequently. He has progenitors in Borges, Kafka etc, but
feels distinctly separate from them as to become something unique. Since his untimely death in 2003, Picador in
the UK has slowly been releasing everything Bolaño wrote, it seems. These releases have not come chronologically
in Bolaño’s career, but from scattered times in his life, and there does seem
to be something apt about that. Their
latest release is actually the last Bolaño worked on in his life – he was prepping
it for publication when he died. Called
The Insufferable Gaucho, it is again translated by Chris Andrews into English
(he has done sterling work on Bolaño in the past, and does so again here), and
is five short stories and two essays.
The
stories, for the most part, offer something of worth.
Jim,
the opening piece, is brief. Jim is a
Vietnam vet now living a poet’s life in Mexico.
The little Bolaño tells us actually speaks volumes about the psychology
of Jim, but ultimately the piece feels under-developed, almost like an offcut
from The Savage Detectives. I suppose
this criticism is my way of saying, I liked Jim but wanted to know more about
him, and that is a testament to Bolaño’s skill as a writer.
The
title piece is much longer. The Insufferable
Gaucho is a retired judge, Manuel Pereda, who leaves the financial ruin of
Buenos Aires and attempts to reconnect with the land at his ranch in the rural
pampas. Pereda is an interesting
character too, another cool portrait drawn by Bolaño. He is a man attempting to understand a world
that changed inexplicably and suddenly around him. Bolaño’s prose is taut here, and there are
some wonderful lines. “Police work’s about
order, he said, while judges defend justice.”
These ideas of order and justice echo throughout The Insufferable Gaucho
and the other stories.
Police
Rat was the piece I cared least for. It
tells of a rat, Pepe, who is a police officer in the tunnels – man made and rat
made – investigating a series of murders of other rats. Its conceit – the anthropomorphisation of
rats – allowed me no point of entry in which to care for Pepe or the problems
of the rat world. Consequently, Police
Rat felt quite disposable. However,
something chimes in this story with something Bolaño was doing in his masterwork,
2666. Police Rat shows a loner
attempting to solve a series of murders – and a series of murders haunt the
central section of 2666 in ‘The Part About the Crimes’. I wondered later if Police Rat had been a way
for Bolaño to discuss the Ciudad Juárez murders indirectly, metaphorically, or
at least with a little distance, for they were clearly something that troubled
his subconscious.
Alvaro
Rousselot’s Journey, the third story, tells of an Argentinian writer who
travels to France to locate a filmmaker who has turned his novels into films
without credit. His journey – as all
literary journeys tend to – reveal to Alvaro more about himself than he
expected and alter his perspective on the world. This is a somewhat tired formula, but Bolaño
at least finds an interesting avenue into it, and has fun along the way.
Two
Catholic Tales, the final story here is, as its title suggests, two stories:
The Vocation and Chance. The
presentation of these stories is the most unconventional. They seem to be one long paragraph, but are separated
by numbers. The contents 1. The Vocation
and a young man is considering the priesthood, and as he waits for his calling,
discusses films and muses on the martyrdom of St. Vincent and 2. Chance, in
which an inmate in a mental hospital remembers his youth and makes an escape
into a madder city. This literary
diptych contains more than it initially seems too, and I feel requires a second
reading to be properly considered.
Finally,
the two essays. The first, Literature +
Illness = Illness, seems to offer its conclusion in its title, and Bolaño goes
out his way to prove it, discussing his own illness (he of course knew he was
dying), French poetry (particularly Mallarmé’s "Brise Marine" and
Baudelaire’s “The Voyage,”), and the responsibility of art. Its tone is peripatetic, and perhaps not
always clear, but there are nuggets of gold here. If you have read any of Between Parentheses,
a previous collection of essays from Bolaño, you know what to expect.
The
same is true of the final essay, The Myths of Cthulhu. This time Bolaño discusses Latin American
fiction – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa amongst
them – and though this essay feels underdeveloped beside Literature + Illness =
Illness, it is not wholly without merit, and when Bolaño is firing on all
cylinders, and he does a few times here, he is exceptional.
The
Insufferable Gaucho is, then, an interesting addition to Bolaño’s collection of
works in English. It is not a starting
point for the new reader, but to those already familiar with his body of
work. They are written with his
distinctive voice, with his passion and humour.
They are, as all his works are, full of heart, and written in the face
of tragedy. Always worthwhile.
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