ly we pay attention.}
mt. baldy
yth of poetry", the "interrelationship of poetry and crime", the inescapable violence of modern lif
ssential human business of youth, love and death.[18]
In one of his stories, "Dent
"That's what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It's the only thing that really is particular and personal. It's the expression and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular. And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home. But my friend said: What I mean is the secret story.... The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every damn thing matters! It's just that we don't realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don't even realize that's a lie."
003, is his idea that culture, in particular literary culture, is a whore. In the face of political repression, upheaval and danger, writers continue to swoon over the written word, and this, for Bolaño, is the source both of nobility and of pitch-black humor. In his no
ile," that the intellectual elite can write poetry, paint and discuss the finer points of avant-garde theater as the junta tortures people in basements? The word has no national loyalty, no fundamental political bent; it's a genie that can be summoned by any would-be master. Par
al human beings. Is it courageous to read Plato during a military coup or is it something else?
ur lives and our circumstances. However, let’s not lose sight of freedom: in reality I was thinking rather more about the good fortune of liberation. To write badly, to talk badly, to go on at length about tectonic phenomena in the middle of a reptilian dinner. How liberating it is and how well-deserving do I feel when, having hurled insults left, right and center, spitting as I talk, I take up compassion and undiscriminatingly, I lose myself in the nightmares of my random companions: sorting out a cow and milking her by the
The time has come to get back to the enormous elevator, the biggest I’ve seen in my whole life, an elevator that can accommodate a shepherd with a small flock of sheep or a rancher with two mad cows and a nurse with two empty gurneys, an elevator in which I was literally debating between trying to get that short little doctor, a tiny Japanese doll, to make love to me, or at least try to, and the dead certain likelihood that I would burst into tears, right there and then, like Alice in Wonderland, and flood the elevator not with blood, as in Kubrick’s The Shining, but tears. But good manners, which are never to be neglected and seldom get in the way, in moments like this are definitely a hindrance, so that in no time at all the little Japanese doctor and I were locked away in a tiny cubicle with a window from which one could see the back part of the hospital. There we underwent a few odd tests which to me seemed just exactly the same sort one takes in any Sunday paper. Of course, I geared myself up to do them well, as if to demonstrate to her that my doctor was wrong, a vain effort, for though she ran her tests impeccably, the little Japanese doctor remained utterly impassive, without even a hint of an encouraging smile. Once in a while, while she prepared a fresh test, we talked. I asked her about the chances of a successful liver transplant. Good chances, she said. What percentage? I asked. Sixty percent, she replied. Shit! I said, that’s not much. In politics it’s an absolute majority, she said. One of the tests, maybe the simplest, really impressed me. It consisted of keeping my hands extended vertically for a few seconds, fingers on top, their palms facing her while I contemplated their backs. I asked her what the hell this test was all about. She said that, given the advanced stage of my disease, I wouldn’t be able to keep my fingers up straight. Sure enough, inevitably they bent toward her. I think I said, Vaya por Dios! Maybe I laughed. The fact is that ever since then, I repeat that test wherever I am. I raise my fingers before my eyes, backs facing me, and spend a few seconds studying my knuckles, my nails, the calluses that form on each phalanx. I don’t know what I’ll do the day they don’t stay steady; I only know what I won’t do. Mallarmé wrote that the roll of the dice will never abolish chance. Nonetheless, one has to go on rolling the dice every day, just as I check my upright fingers every day.
"
roing in on the first line: "La chair est triste, hélas, et j'ai lu tous les livres." In characteristic fashio
lling, "abusing reading that obliged me to wear glasses....abusing sex but never contracting a venereal disease....the loss of my teeth for me was a kind of homage to Gary Snyder, whose life of a zen vagabond made him neglect his dental hygiene." To this litany one could add the abuse of alcohol, drugs and heroin, but after these long years of travelling, "long walks without rhyme or reason," there comes a settling down and life changes: "But everything arrives. Child
yage of the condemned. I'm going to travel, I'm going to lose myself in unknown territory, to see what I find, to see what happens....The voyage, this long and accidental voyage of the 19th century, is like the trip the patient makes on a stretcher, from his hospital room to the operating room, where beings with faces hidden behind masks are waiting, like bandits from the Hashishin sect." And finally this stanza:
Bitter knowledge that the voyage offers!
The world, small and monotonous, today, yest
nd then I never saw him again”: this phrase recurs with eer
ad written only one poem, and that it wasn’t any good.
ant, acidly intelligent poet of Indian extracti
“Dadaism, Mexican style.” The
poken of her “fear,” before approaching a lectern, that infrarealistas might be lurking in the audience: “They were the terror o
ll those clairvoyant señoritas and intercourse-inspiring moles—and reëstabl
ort story ‘Dance Car
air of policemen who recog
lled infrarrealismo. Th
ño led a vagabond life in Europe, mostl
er learned, a compromised liver. A few years after getting clean, Bo
ears a heroic productivity: seven nove
normous fin
s appeal
vellous
hat literature is basically a dangerous calli
ultaneous revere
rrators are wit
solate wa
table except
ponsored and susta
ly as if – li
llas, reall
mulet, her acqua
venings on Ear
old by writ
ally abo
st oft
ets. T
ool of ‘viscera
st ora
esses calle
tar concer
ole poe
lean air force
air and sky-writ
nomic but ide
ppeared’ a number of fell
ogression, an argument, a story (liter
lan.’
out the idea that a poet can endur
have a child. The experience of childbirth, those were his words’); much ha
rid, but I’m not sure any more’); much was never known (why Ma
rona with five cats and a dog’). You don’t feel that
ether or not any real-life original ever existed – something per
fer constantly to what they don’t know and can’t rem
pression tha
ggest honest
half of verisimi
traction, or wo
ll that mattere
ll ran do
cient hist
lain and mer
ll. To be sur
llas (and more rarely i
lement carrie
erge from a narra
should learn how to write. I aske
acqua
ore si
ide, the narra
kage of manusc
o maps or cod
ms, mainly in the style of M
erred to witho
o back to the story’s opening par
o endure any
lievers of that kind. Yo
ve pro
ing iron
vaunts the special statu
age Detecti
20-odd pages cons
worlds of poetry and sex. Much of the action tak
ntally crumb
ther of two lovely poet daughters and the design
wo issues of the visceral real
al Lee
rline senseless, it su
Font household after the arch
ting hi
arrowing are always clos
asse ends wh
rd Impala.
‘Time Passes’.
Just as the first and
dium: oral history. Instead of a sing
mer lovers or passing acqua
eir words date-lined with time and loca
count to the best of their knowl
llection what happ
ndered count
ntin
rrealist country-and-western so
long with his mi
rrators, nor do the do
ereoscopica
fine the exact sh
lume of the poets’ char
onic and arro
o be quie
ll in fi
dence to be entered, unsynt
eats with utmo
limpsed disapp
rannuated Rimb
frican jungle. Li
eaking politel
o his old bête no
ddest voice I would ever hea
as a p
hey sold drugs.’
rrators are naturall
buting any footno
isible ink to Me
mmersed in the strea
y something else entirely,
d or new narrator takes up
eir air of disconnect
thing that was or wasn’t happening betwee
ter that we stopped seei
ermination without completen
pigrammatic concentrat
fusing any form of summ
are occa
ermit
larity swiftly erod
ear the en
eco
ourna
panish liter
tic recall
tic and Bel
llenge
tic to a duel:
ding ange
hind the ora
artbreakingly, no one re
alf-forgo
ll-but-forgott
oxically, of the gene
aries of mute inglorio
ss-cro
ppear (but only app
ssess no
ppallingly lif
ccumula
co-ord
arch towards ob
lose to a mirac
tense narr
ntrif
entee main cha
ripheral fig
et, in spit
pparent (and oft
al) formlessness, a large part of its distincti
precedente
ply-voi
fessional or fir
tiple voice
ernist mod
gical exte
dency tow
lf-eff
ttown’ s
he Waves, and –
everal pitfalls opene
ay rely exc
ese.
fficul
pullin
ff an orator
ovel.)
ll-spoke
ocal colo
pless particulari
tent that they soun
mmon situ
ttening effe
peech in any lan
tting so many voices to comme
ame events, or sing to the sa
tting each voi
gocentricity. True, the read
here before pa
ssible to recog
ovel ali
rowing in the Son
ism – our scepti
n or said of any life, and whose li
range belie
llowshi
empti
tín eviden
ack of tal
lf-sa
toward
tic and wilfully maudit, Santiago was a poet of huge talent, somewhat wrecked but still writing long after the group broke up. He died under a bus in 1998.
nd then I never saw him again”: this phrase recurs with eer
wreckingball
neoplasm
dream driving into mexico
in blue chevy nova w/ cop engine
i don't know it yet but i'm gonna buy a rug
in the mountain pattern
in the mountain pattern
in the mountain pattern
later i will spend 40 years contemplating this very rug in a not her country
i look over at my fat passenger
bitchy arizona shopkeep rock collector
i hate thoroughly with minimum guilt
minimum guilted lilly lally liberally
libel
VIOXX VIAGRA VALIUM WITHOUT A PRESCRIPTION !
the dot matrix printer has not disappeared in mexico
yet
fatty goes off to do something thick & singular
i nip into a cafe & drink
i buy a rug
i buy the rug
the rug i came to buy
i just sold my shitty house
where someone had definitely died
i should have known BUT
fatty overpriced rock seller gets back in the car
on the arizona side she instructs me to stop at a landscape design (generous descr.) place
where someone she fancies works
i look at pathetic concrete angels that seem fucking pricey
considering
i get back in the car & turn on the radio
this song is improbably playing LOUD:
because it hasn't been written yet
but i listen anyway
we drive back to town
the Bigfoot Enthusiast guy
(vanity plates: B1GFOOT)
& some indians
are drinking coffee
in a parking lot
i never see her again
i check the rearview:
the rug is nestled in the backseat
like a baby
