NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS - ROBERTO BOLAÑO

This one’s a reread. I think I’ve read just about all the Bolano available in English, every now and again they release a collection of interviews or partial finished short stories and perhaps I haven’t made it through all of them, but I am a huge fan and I do think he wrote the best novel published in my lifetime, 2666, so I figured I’d work my way back through is work. Especially the stuff I read early in my Bolano obsession. This is perhaps the silliest and most gimmick-y of his works the premise itself, a short survey/bibliography of fictional writers who are all somewhat connected to the fascist right. The writers, as promised, range from USAmerikans to Chileans and run the gambit from actually-fought-with-the-third-Reich style Nazis to racists who hold right-wing views. There are upper-class Nazis and Aryan Brotherhood prison Nazis. Some of the entries are short, only a few paragraphs long, others are a few pages, with the last and longest featuring a vignette where Bolano-as-a-character attempts to find a Chilean writer famous for “publishing” his poetry with his sky plane. I remember this book being funny, it’s a very silly concept that he treats seriously and ends before it gets overdone, but I didn’t register the first time how many of his obsessions are present in the book. Bolano, despite being a famous Troskyite (the only good Troksyite, as folks have called him) has an obsession with Nazis. Partially for their relations, via the rat-lines and Paperclip, to South American History. There is even a section that very much seems to indicate he knew about the history and uses of Colonia Dignidad (look it up if you’re not familiar, basically it’s a colony of former Nazis, run by a child abuser, that had links to Operation Condor, America’s pan-South American death-squad program) and numerous references to literal Nazis being resettled in the South America. But Nazis come up in his other books, most prominently in 2666, partially as a symbol of a doomed campaign, something that a South American Leftist like Bolano would be quite familiar with. No one is better than Bolano at making the life of an artist, particularly a poet, seem exciting and interesting. Savage Detectives does this best but even this book, which is about pretty reprehensible figures, makes the idea of writing poetry and living your life in such a way to prioritize poetry seem noble and exciting. Bolano himself seems to have lived much of his own life this way and he has an amazing gift for getting you to understand why he’d choose to do so. Funny, bizarre short and pithy, it’s as good as I remember, better now in the context of his work as a whole, and somewhere I’d recommend folks start with Bolano. 1945 poets.