A Literary Life

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 Bolañ...

Donna Tartt announced herself brightly in the literary firmament with her debut novel, The Secret History, in 1992.   That novel bought oodles of critical acclaim and enormous pressure for her to produce a follow-up.   What followed seemed a Salinger-like silence, until, finally, a decade later, she produced The Little Friend.   That novel again bought much critical acclaim to her door, and unfortunately for her fans, another decade plus silence, eleven years this time.   The Goldfinch, the novel born from that silence, was published in 2013, and rather unsurprisingly now, to more rapturous critical acclaim.   When the critics of the future come back to look at late 20 th century, early 21 st century fiction, it is certain Tartt’s name will figure highly in their estimation. Tartt’s fiction has always been concerned with young people coming of age, of their exploration of sexuality and identity, from the six students in The Secret History, to Ha...