Roberto Bolano Read Online Free PDF

Juan Rulfo (1917–1986) stopped publishing narrative fiction, despite the enormous critical success of his books. Both Faulkner and García Márquez were influenced by Rulfo’s prose.
    Born in Honduras, raised in Guatemala, and eventually exiled to Mexico, Augusto Monterroso (1921–2003) was a deeply respected short story writer. His story “The Dinosaur” is said to be literature’s shortest story. In full, it reads: “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.” His
Complete Works and Other Stories
(1995) is available in English.
    HS/MB: Perhaps the emblematic figures of the movement were too adored, an injustice for quieter figures like Monterroso and Onetti, who are vindicated more and more. They’ve stayed relevant with the passage of time.
    RB: I don’t believe so. The literature of Vargas Llosa or García Márquez is gigantic.
    HS/MB: A cathedral.
    RB: More than a cathedral. I do not think time will harm them. The work of Vargas Llosa, for example, is immense. It has thousands of entry points and thousands of exit points. So does the literature of García Márquez. They’re both public figures. They’re not just literary figures. Vargas Llosa was a candidate for president. García Márquez is a political heavyweight and very influential in Latin America. This distorts things a bit, but it shouldn’t make us lose sight of the position they have in the hierarchy. They are superiors, superior to the people who came after and, to be sure, to the writers of my generation. Books such as No One Writes to the Colonel are simply perfect.
    No One Writes to the Colonel
is a García Márquez novella.
    HS/MB: Since you read the Boom during its own time, your reading must have been from the perspective of a poet. During that period, you were only writing poetry.
    RB: Yes, but I read plenty of narrative work, although it’s clear that my readings were from the perspective of a poet, which is a shame in a sense. If my reading had been from a narrator’s perspective, I would have probably learned more. Perhaps I have gaps in the way I look at the internal structures of a novel. I would have learned this sooner had I read with a different perspective.
    HS/MB: I have the impression that you compose small plots, which you then fit into the overall novel, although it isn’t so clear whether you do it with a preconceived idea of what the work will eventually be.
    RB: I always have an idea. Each time I begin to write a novel, I have a very elaborate structure in mind.
    HS/MB: Very elaborate, yes. But it does not prevent each of your phrases, given the rhythm and inflection you infuse them with, from being justified, though not always in the service of the novel’s unfolding plot.
    RB: Well, I think that’s something else. It relates to the elemental debt all prose writers have, which consists of cleaning a bit, trying to get close to language with open eyes and ears. I appreciate your words very much, but I don’t assign great relevance to hygienic definitions of my work. I’m very demanding in that sense. Without going any further than
Savage Detectives
, there are phrases and whole paragraphs in it that seem to me to be very bad. They seem terrible to me.
    HS/MB: Your books are distinct approximations of a particular world, a world of writers and rather marginal people who are in between being obsessives and losers. Your stories and novels also center around the same situations or the same characters.
    RB: Also around the same arguments.
    HS/MB: Exactly. Your characters are crusaders for revolutionizing art and changing the world, which is the project of your generation.
    RB: Revolutionizing art and changing life were the objectives of Rimbaud’s project. And reinventing love. At heart, to make life a work of art.
    HS/MB: But you are a part of the world that you describe, and you look affectionately toward it.
    RB: Perhaps I’ve been attempting to forgive myself.
    HS/MB: You’re not an apologist for the project or