Authors

Bolaño forever in El País

~ bythefirelight

El País has yet another article marveling at the excitement about Roberto Bolaño in the English speaking world. The author is primarily interested in whether the excitement is misplaced.

I have read that the North American success of Bolaño is due to his premature death and in fact have constructed a cursed legend partly false of someone politically persecuted, on the literary margin, and a heroin addict. I have read the the success of Bolaño is due to the way in a certain mode Bolaño was a North American author whose literary models are North American and whose prose works better in English than in Spanish. I have read that the North American success of Bolaño is because he found a great North American editor that has known how to use all these things to make Bolaño a great success in North America. I have many answers more, but all of them has produced an embarrassing sensation that these have been engineered not only to reduce the merit of Bolaño’s success, which at the end of these stories is unimportant, but to diminish the merit of Bolaño’s works, if they have any. I confess that I don’t understand them.

He leído que el éxito norteamericano de Bolaño se debe a su muerte prematura y al hecho de que se haya construido en torno a él una leyenda maldita y en parte falsa de perseguido político, marginado literario y adicto a la heroína. He leído que el éxito norteamericano de Bolaño se debe a que en cierto modo Bolaño era un escritor norteamericano, cuyos modelos literarios son norteamericanos y cuya prosa funciona mejor en inglés que en castellano. He leído que el éxito norteamericano de Bolaño se debe a que ha encontrado un gran editor norteamericano que ha sabido usar todas esas cosas para convertir a Bolaño en un gran éxito norteamericano. He leído muchas respuestas más, pero todas ellas me producen la embarazosa sensación de que han sido ingeniadas no sólo para rebajar el mérito del éxito de Bolaño, lo que a fin de cuentas no tendría ninguna importancia, sino para rebajar el mérito de la obra de Bolaño, lo que sí la tiene. Confieso que no alcanzo a entenderlas.

In the end he says it is due to the art of Bolaño that he is a success.

The reality is that Bolaño experienced during his life an absolute success. I want to say that the ghostly question is a mistaken question and the question that at first look seems correct also es a mistaken question. Every true writer knows that success and failure (or what tends to be called success and failure) are illusions: the test is that they obtain it, the great writers, the good writers, the average writers, the bad writers, and the terrible writers; or in other words: every true writer knows that what truely is a success and a failure. Cyril Connolly wrote that “the true mission of a writer is create a master work.” There are few writers who get to create one; in my opinion, Bloaño was one of them: he experienced the incomparable intensity of writing not just one master work but more than one. No one that I have known knows better that Bolaño in order to be a writer there is no greater success than to be able in your wildest dreams compare yourself to him.

Porque la realidad es que Bolaño conoció en vida un éxito absoluto. Quiero decir que la pregunta fantasmal es una pregunta equivocada y la pregunta que a primera vista parece acertada también es una pregunta equivocada. Todo escritor de verdad sabe que el éxito y el fracaso (o eso que suele llamarse éxito y fracaso) son espejismos: la prueba es que lo obtienen escritores buenísimos, escritores buenos, escritores regulares, escritores malos y escritores malísimos; o dicho de otro modo: todo escritor de verdad sabe lo que son de verdad el éxito y el fracaso. Cyril Connolly escribió que “la verdadera misión de un escritor es crear una obra maestra”. Hay poquísimos escritores que consiguen crearla; en mi opinión, Bolaño fue uno de ellos: experimentó la intensidad incomparable de escribir no una obra maestra sino más de una. Nadie que yo haya conocido sabía mejor que Bolaño que para un escritor no hay ningún éxito que pueda ni remotamente compararse a ése.

Perhaps only an author would say this, but there is some truth for non writers too.

Brief Daniel Sada Interview at El Universal

~ bythefirelight

A brief interview with Daniel Sada appeared in El Universal. It doesn’t get into too much but there are a couple quick quotes worth noting.

In a novel “the characters are the most important, more than the language or the plot” […]

Sada took apart the argument of those who define him as a writer who mainly focuses on the language and that some have called baroque, and affirmed that en the best novels of all time, the characters were the most important.

En una novela “los personajes son lo más importante, más que el lenguaje y que la historia” […]

Sada desmontó los argumentos de quienes le definen como un escritor especialmente centrado en el lenguaje y al que algunos han llegado a calificar de barroco, al afirmar que, en las mejores novelas de todos los tiempos, lo más importante son los personajes.

Having started to read some of his writing (mainly a short story from Letras Libres), it is obvious that he is a great stylist, but he tends to keep his style short and compressed, focusing more on the details, rather than long clause heavy digressions.

He also wanted to note that he isn’t just a northern writer, which if you read Christopher Domínguez Michael’s review in Letras Libres, as I did, you may have that impression.

He also wanted remove what he defined as “the nickname of northern writer” that he always wanted to get rid of it because it guarantees that it limits him a lot and because, en his opinion, “there are many norths.”

También ha querido desvincularse de lo que definió como “el mote de escritor norteño” que siempre se quiso quitar porque asegura que le limita mucho y porque, en su opinión, “hay muchos nortes”.

Yu Hua at Elliott Bay Book Co

~ bythefirelight

Yu Hua was at Elliott Bay Book Co on March 1st. He is promoting his new book Brothers and is on a tour of the states. Since it is rare to have access to an author like him, especially since he doesn’t speak English, it was a treat to see him. He is a funny man even with an interpreter and has a good sense of the dark. He made a few comments that are of special interest.

  1. He picks his translators himself. Although he doesn’t speak English he looks for someone who knows the literature of the target language. He isn’t as interested in the Chinese scholars who only know about Chinese literature. He is more interested in having the readers be able to read the book, than a pure translation.
  2. Since he went to school during the Cultural Revolution his education was hindered. Therefore, when he began to write he only knew about 4000 characters. The lack of characters led to a sparse writing style. He said from a bad thing came a good thing.
  3. Like a good cook who  is made better by eating many different types of food; a writer who samples good writing will become better.
  4. He has been lucky to live in a land where changes that have taken place over the last 40 years in China, took 400 years to occur in Europe.
  5. His father was a surgeon whose surgery was in the same building as their house and the morgue was next to the bathroom. Occasionally, he would sleep in the morgue because it was cool. He can remember seeing his father covered in blood from surgeries. These memories informed his early works with violence. He also told a little joke wondering what made the trees near the house grow so well, the bathroom or the morgue.
  6. When Mao died he said the sound of 1000 people sobbing sounded ridiculous, not sad. He couldn’t keep from laughing. So he put his head down on the stool in front of him. He was shaking from the laughter so much that the teachers thought he was crying the hardest.