Book Reviews
By Night in Chile
If you are ready for a crazy ride into the mind of one of Latin America’s most unique voices, Roberto Bolaño, you should start with this book, By Night in Chile, his first to be published in English.
By Night in Chile
130 pp. New Direction Books
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By Night in Chile is one long meandering, exquisitely written paragraph that develops over 130 pages and tells of Father Sebastian Urrutia’s death bed ramblings. The book was written in 2000, before Bolaño had written his masterpiece, 2666, and before his untimely death at age 50. Nonetheless, his early genius comes through as it did in his first novel The Savage Detectives written in 1998.
In 2003 this work was published in English to the delight of his growing American audience and tells, in long uniquely crafted sentences the tale of the hesitant Chilean priest who is a writer, critic, world traveler and occasionally a man of the church.
Urrutia death bed ramblings recall his work for Opus Dei, meeting CIA operatives, teaching General Pinochet communism, dining with Pablo Neruda – confusing I know but if you can follow you are in for a literary treat. Bolaño’s unique voice is his ability to tell and teach while crafting words in a unique way to describe the ordinary human condition:
“… life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain…”
At times you might get lost in this short novel but what is clear is Bolaño indictment of Chile’s literary elite and the way they turned their heads from the death and torture of many ordinary citizens during the Pinochet regime. Bolaño himself was jailed by Pinochet on suspicion of being a terrorist and he clearly never forgot it.
