cancer at fifty

"The clapping sound is the new crew boss / keeping time. Jane Kenyon, cancer at forty-seven. / Larry Levis, heart at forty-nine. Ray Carver / who had met Tess and beat alcohol which / was going to kill him, cancer at fifty."

~~ from "Harvest: Those Who Die Early in the Middle Years" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass

the smallest gewgaw

"Because it isn't enough just to show off one's goods!

"A mercurial subtlety is required to sell. One must choose one's words and ideas carefully, flatter adroitly, chatter about things one neither thinks nor believes in, wax enthusiastic over trifles, score a point with a deprecatory gesture, be acutely interested in things one doesn't give a damn about, be many sided, flexible, and amusing, accept the smallest gewgaw with grace, not lift and eyebrow or take it personally if some gross remark is made, and suffer, suffer patiently—the waste of time, the sour, ill-tempered faces, the rude, annoying, rebuffs—suffer in order to earn a few centavos, because 'that's life.'"

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

the highest form of wealth

"The bills, with their colored pictures, seemed more significant, the nickel-based coins jingled merrily as we juggled them in our hands. It's a fact, the money we acquired through trickery seemed more subtle and rare, the highest form of wealth. It seemed to whisper in our ears words of smiling praise and mischievous provocation. It was not the vile, hateful money that must be earned by hard work, but rather easy money, a silver disc with two gnomes' legs and a dwarf's beard, a clowning, dancing money whose smell carried us, like a good wine, to orgiastic thoughts."

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

Self Portrait at Twenty Years by Roberto Bolano

I set off, I took up the march and never knew
where it might take me. I went full of fear,
my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:
I think it was the icy wind of the dead.
I don’t know. I set off, I thought it was a shame
to leave so soon, but at the same time
I heard that mysterious and convincing call.
You either listen or you don’t, and I listened
and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,
born on the air and in the sea.
A sword and shield. And then,
despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek
against death’s cheek.
And it was impossible to close my eyes and miss seeing
that strange spectacle, slow and strange,
though fixed in such a swift reality:
thousands of guys like me, baby-faced
or bearded, but Latin American, all of us,
brushing cheeks with death.

—Roberto Bolaño
(translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy)

a correct sum

"This time the advance he sent Archimboldi was bigger than any previous advance, in fact so large that Martha, the secretary, before mailing the check to Cologne, brought it into Mr. Bubis's office and asked (not once but twice) whether the sum was correct, to which Mr. Bubis answered yes, it was, or it wasn't, what did it matter, a sum, he thought when he was alone again, is always approximate, there is no such thing as a correct sum, only the Nazis and teachers of elementary mathematics believed in correct sums, only sectarians, madmen, tax collectors (God rot them), numerologists who read one's fortune for next to nothing believed in correct sums. Scientists, meanwhile, knew that all numbers were only approximate. Great physicists, great mathematicians, great chemists, and publishers knew that one was always feeling one's way in the dark."

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

Fear of being no good.

"Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear the afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of being no good. Also fear of being overlooked. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing. Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces and chance of nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers."

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

his books

"Why won't you believe it? she asked. Because I've been to his house, said the boy. So have I, and I didn't see anything to make me think he'd been taken by force. He left because he wanted to. No, she heard the boy say. If he'd left of his own accord, he would have brought his books. Books are heavy, said Mary-Sue, and besides you can always buy new ones. . . . No, I'm not talking about those books, I'm talking about his books, said the boy. What do you mean his books? said Mary-Sue. The ones he wrote and published. He wouldn't have left those behind even if the world was coming to an end."

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

Goldman on Bolano

Francisco Goldman on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

customs

"Rosa was seventeen and she was Spanish. Amalfitano was fifty and Chilean. Rosa had had a passport since she was ten. On some of their trips. . . they had found themselves in strange situations, because Rosa went through customs by the gate for EU citizens and Amalfitano went by the gate for non-EU citizens. The first time, Rosa threw a tantrum and started to cry and refused to be separated from her father. Another time, since the lines were moving at different speeds, the EU citizens' line quickly and the noncitizens' line more slowly and laboriously, Rosa got lost and it took Amalfitano half an hour to find her. Sometimes the customs officers would see Rosa, so little, and ask whether she was traveling alone or whether someone was waiting for her outside. Rosa would answer that she was traveling with her father, who was South American, and she was supposed to wait for him right there. Once Rosa's suitcase was searched because they suspected her father of smuggling drugs or arms under cover of his daughter's innocence and nationality. But Amalfitano never trafficked in drugs, or for that matter arms."

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

a place where they would be fed

". . . in other words near the settlement of El Obelisco, which was neither a village nor exactly a suburb of Santa Teresa, but a way station for the poorest of the poor who came each day from the south, people who slept there at night and even died in hovels that they didn't think of as homes but as one more stop along the road to something different or at least a place where they would be fed."

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

Reading

"I was doing something useful. Something useful no matter how you look at it. Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music (oh yes), like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach. And you, who are so kind, now you must be asking: What did you read, Barry? I read everything."

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

Bolano's Geometry

"Espinoza went out into the backyard and saw a book hanging from a clothesline. He didn't want to go over and see what book it was, but when he went back into the house he asked Amalfitano about it.

"'It's Rafael Dieste's Testamento geometrico,' said Amalfitano.

"'Rafeael Dieste, the Galician poet,' said Espinoza.

"'That's right,' said Amalfitano, 'but this is a book of geometry, not poetry, ideas that came to Dieste while he was a high school teacher.'

"Espinoza translated what Amalfitano had said for Pelletier.

"'And it's hanging outside?' said Pelletier with a smile.

"'Yes,' said Espinoza as Amalfitano looked in the refrigerator for something to eat, 'like a shirt out to dry.'"

~~ from 2666 by Roberto Bolano

full of potholes. . .

"In any case, on the wall of Juan Stein's house, there hung a rather ornately framed portrait of Chernyakhovsky, and that, I dare say, incommensurably more important than the busts and the cities named after him and the countless Chernyakhovsky Streets, full of potholes, scattered through the Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania and Russia. I don't know why I've kept the photo, Stein said to us."

~~ from Distant Star by Roberto Bolano

his work lived on. . .

"Nevertheless his work lived on, precariously, desperately (as he would have wished, perhaps), yet it lived on. A handful of young men read it, reinvented him, tried to become his followers, but how can you follow someone who is not moving, someone who is trying, with every appearance of success, to become invisible?"

~~ from Distant Star by Roberto Bolano

At Full Stop, Chris Andrews on Roberto Bolano and Australian Universities

Aside from being a translator you teach at the University of Western Sydney. I don’t want you to get into any trouble with your colleagues, but Australian universities have been aggressive in adopting governance models from the private sector, ironically called “New Public Management.” Has the study and teaching of literature been affected by this change? Is the university a good place to develop a new generation of translators or readers of literature in other languages?

Things are not looking good here, to be honest. The whole idea of the public university is under threat. The humanities in general are finding it hard to defend themselves, and one of the reasons is paradoxical: they’re not expensive. Research success is measured more and more by the size of the grants secured. Language offerings at Australian universities continue to shrink. Where I work, the Spanish and Italian programs were eliminated in 2012. Literary translation does not count as research, so from an institutional point of view, it’s a waste of time. Well, you asked!

On the other hand, when I remember the good students I’ve had at the University of Western Sydney and at the University of Melbourne before that, I’m not pessimistic at all. The passion for reading in other languages and the desire to translate may not be very widespread, but they’re not about to disappear.

Anne Moore's Life

"He remembered Anne Moore. In fact, he remembered almost all of the twentieth century, but that he admitted, was beside the point."

~~ from "Anne Moore's Life" by Roberto Bolano

more from Bolano's Last Evenings On Earth. . .

"This is where the story should end, but life is not as kind as literature."

~~ from "Days of 1978"


"Meanwhile I chain smoked Bali cigarettes, looking at the window at the highway and thinking about the disaster that was my life."

~~ from "Gómez Palacio" in Last Evenings On Earth

Bolano and the Beats

"Roberto Bolano and the Beat Connection" appeared in The New Yorker earlier this month.

Last Evenings On Earth

I've been enjoying a reread of Roberto Bolano's collection Last Evenings On Earth, including the title story which I've only read once before.

Antwerp

"Tell that stupid Arnold Bennet[t] that all his rules about plot only apply to novels that are copies of other novels."

~~ from Antwerp by Roberto Bolano