BOLAND
-:-estament: A Soldier's Story of the Civil War,
2003; Fight for Freedom: The American
Revolutionary War, 2004; The Fated Sky:
Astrology in History, 2005
Bertrand Partes/ AFP/Getty Images
Bolafio, Roberto
Apr. 18, 1953-Ju1y 15,2003 Poet; novelist; short-
story writer; nonfiction writer
Although the Chilean writer Roberto Bolario lived
only 50 years and did not produce his first novel
until he was 43, he has become known
internationally as one of Chile's most influential
writers. "Bolafio, it seemed to me, hovers over
many young Latin American writers, even those in
their 40's, the way Garcia Marquez must have over
his generation and the following one," Francisco
Goldman wrote for the New York Times Magazine
( ovember 2, 2003). "Bolafio wrote somewhat in
the manner that Martin Amis calls the 'higher
autobiography'-with the high-voltage first-person
braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme and
subversive personal vision of his own." In the
London Financial Times (November 27, 2004),
Angel Gurria-Quintana wrote, "From his earliest
writings to his last, hefty volume, Bolano seemed
to be developing, and expanding on, a specific type
of book-part novel of ideas, part deranged road
novel, part literary essay. He became increasingly
preoccupied with an image of the deserted
wasteland-whether Antarctica or Santa Teresa-
towards which civilisation is hurtling. "
"Bolafio's genius is not just the extraordinary
quality of his writing, but also that he does not
conform to the paradigm of the Latin American
writer," Ignacio Echeverria, a former literary editor
of the Spanish daily E1 Pais, told Larry Rohter for
the New York Times (August 9,2005). "His writing
is neither magical realism, nor baroque nor
localist, but an imaginary, extraterritorial mirror of
Latin America, more as a kind of state of mind than
a specific place." Indeed, though Bolafio is
identified as a Chilean writer, he was more of a
postnationalist; Bolafio lived in several different
countries during his life, returning to Chile only
once after Augusto Pinochet's successful coup, in
1973-a situation reflected in his many vagabond
characters. "Roberto was one of a kind, a writer
who worked without a net, who went all out, with
no brakes, "Jorge Herralde, his Spanish editor, told
Rohter, "and in doing so, created a new way to be
a great Latin American writer."
Roberto Bolano was born on April 18, 1953 in
Santiago, Chile, to Victoria Avalos and Le6n
Bolafio, A skinny, bookish (though dyslexic) child,
he spent his early years in Santiago, before moving
with his parents to Mexico City, in 1968. At 17 he
dropped out of school to work as a journalist and
became involved in left-wing politics. In late 1970
the socialist Salvador Allende was elected the
president of Chile, prompting Bolano to return to
his native country, in 1973, just a month before the
army, under the command of General Augusto
Pinochet, seized power. Bolano was arrested and
held prisoner for a week in the city of Concepci6n.
He was fortunate enough to be recognized by two
former classmates who were serving in the
national police, and they authorized his release.
Bolano then spent a brief period in El Salvador,
associating with the poet Roque Dalton and the
guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front, before returning to Mexico to live
the life of a Bohemian poet, supporting himself by
writing book reviews. Shortly after his return, in
1974, he co-founded, along with the poets Mario
Santiago and Bruno Montane an avant-garde
literary movement known as "infrarealism." The
following year he published his first collection of
poetry, Gorriones cogiendo altura, and in 1976 his
second, Reinventar e1 amor. He departed for
Europe in 1977, settling for a while in Paris, then
moving to Barcelona, Spain.
In Spain Bolafio worked as a dishwasher,
campground custodian, bellhop, garbage collector,
and at other temporary jobs while he wrote. In
1984 he collaborated with Antoni Garcia Porta to
write the novel Consejos de un discipulo de
Morrison a un [atuitico de Joyce, which won the
Premio Ambito Literario de Narrativa award. Two
of his early novels, La senda de 10s e1efantes
(which translates as "the elephant path," 1982) and
La pista de hielo (which translates as "the ice
track," 1993), were published by local government
authorities and won prizes in provincial literary
contests. In the mid-1980s he married Carolina
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Lopez, with whom he later had a son and a
daughter, and settled in the village of Blanes, on
the Costa Brava. Jorge Herralde told Rohter that
though Bolafio had thought of himself as a poet, he
"abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence"
and began to focus on narrative fiction, after the
birth of his son, in 1990, when he "decide[d] that
he was responsible for his family's future and that
it would be easier to earn a living by writing
fiction." In 1993 Bolafio published a compilation
of the poetry that he had written between 1977 and
1990, Los perros rom6nticos (which translates as
"the romantic dogs"), and three years later he
established himself as a novelist with the
publication of La literatura Nazi en America
{which translates as "Nazi literature in America"),
a miniencyclopedia of fictitious Nazi literature
from Latin America. In a review for the London
Independent (July 24, 2003), Chris Andrews, who
translated three of Bolafio's other books into
English for New Directions Publishing, called it a
"tour de force of black humour and imaginary
erudition [that] has a lineage that runs back
through [Jorge Luis] Borges' Universal History of
Infamy to the Imaginary Lives of Marcel Schwob."
Ilan Stavans, writing for the Los Angeles Times
(January 31, 2005), described La literatura Nazi en
America as "one of the most courageous and
imaginative books produced in the region since
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of
Solitude appeared in 1967."
Bolafio published the short-story collection
Llamadas telef6nicas (which translates as
"telephone calls") in 1997, and followed that with
his breakthrough novel Los detectives salvajes
(1998), which is scheduled for publication in 2007
as The Savage Detectives. Described by Nick
Caistor, writing for the London Guardian (July 17,
2003), as "a challenging mixture of thriller,
philosophical and literary reflections, pastiche
and autobiography," the novel follows the
characters Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima,
founders of the fictional "visceral realist"
movement, as they attempt to discover what
became of a fellow writer who supposedly
disappeared after the Mexican revolution. Not only
did the novel draw critical acclaim and garner both
the Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio
Romulo Gallegos, it also led many critics to
compare Bolafio's work to such Latin American
literary giants as Carlos Fuentes and Borges-the
latter being one of Bolano's most revered
influences. Chris Andrews noted that critics had
compared Los Detectives salvajes to Julio
Cortazar's Hopscotch, which he considered well-
justified, given the book's "energy and humour, its
formal ingenuity and the intercontinental sweep of
its action." Bolafio revived a minor character from
Los detectives salvajes to narrate his 1999 novel
Amuleto (which translates as "amulet"). Another
novel, Monsieur Pain, was released that same year,
and the following year he published a collection of
poetry, Tres. In 2001 he published another
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collection of stories, Putas asesinas, and in 2002
two novellas, Amberes and Una novelita lumpen.
Bolafio's 2000 novel Nocturno de Chile (By
Night in Chile), was translated into English in
2003. A bitter satire of Chilean politics and
religion, By Night in Chile is written as a night-long
confessional rant by a dying priest and member of
Opus Dei, Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix (whose
character was loosely based on Jose Miguel Ibanez
Langlois, the leading literary critic of a right-wing
newspaper under Pinochet). Through Urrutia's
memories Bolafio illustrates the problems of Chile,
and, by extension, the modern world. By Night in
Chile was universally admired by anglophone
critics, and Chris Andrews won plaudits for his
translation as well. "This is a wonderful and
beautifully written book by a writer who has an
enviable control over every beat, every change of
tempo, every image," Ben Richards wrote for the
London Guardian (February 22,2003). "The prose
is constantly exciting and challenging-at times
lyrical and allusive, at others filled with a biting
wit (Bolano has dissected the Chilean literary
tradition with such gleeful eloquence that the
novel may not win him many dinner invitations
back in the country of his birth)." The London
Times (February 1, 2003) critic James Hopkin
described By Night in Chile as "deadly earnest,
foreboding, and yet joyfully whimsical" and "a
wonderful introduction to Bolafio's work." For the
New York Times Book Review (January 11, 2004),
Mark Kamine wrote, "In Chris Andrews's lucid
translation, Bolafio's febrile narrative tack and
occasional surreal touches bring to mind the
classics of Latin American magic realism; his
cerebral protagonist and nonfiction borrowings are
reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard and W. G.
Sebald."
Bolano died in a Barcelona hospital while
awaiting a liver transplant, on July 15, 2003.
Shortly after his death, the novel El gaucho
insufrible (2003) was published, which was
followed by a collection of essays, Entre patentesis
(2004). In the years that followed, interest in his
work continued to grow in the U.S., with Farrar,
Straus and Giroux acquiring the rights to publish
the U.S. editions of Los detectives salvajes and a
novel that was published posthumously under
Bolano's working title, 2666. Though Bolafio had
intended to publish his final work as five separate
novels, released one per year, it was printed as one
large tome that was divided into five sections when
it was launched in Barcelona, in 2004. The novel
won nearly every Spanish-language literary award
for which it was eligible-yet reviewers were
divided. "Critics are already arguing over whether
2666 is a work of genius or a self-indulgent,
sprawling behemoth. Surely the answer lies
somewhere between the two. Bclafio's death has
certainly left everyone wondering whether, given
more time, he would have made it leaner and
tighter," Angel Gurria-Quintana wrote, noting that
"the final irony is that for all his [Bolafio's] vitriolic

depiction of critics as enthusiastic cannibals,
interested less in literature than in literary
criticism, he has left behind a body of work so
dense in veiled references and sly allusions that it
will keep them employed for generations to come."
New Directions, which published By Night in
Chile, planned to release translations of the rest of
Bolafio's works (excepting those acquired by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In 2004 it published the
novel Distant Star, which was originally published
in 1996, under the title Estrella distante. The
novel, set in Chile during Pinochet's rule, was
described by Ian Thomson, writing for the London
Sunday Telegraph (November 28, 2004), as "a
haunting addition to that well-worn genre, the
Latin-American 'dictator novel'." When compiling
La literatura nazi en America, Bolafio had become
obsessed with one character, Carlos Wieder (aka
Alberto Ruiz-Tagle), a fascist poet who unsettled
the Chilean literary establishment during the
Pinochet era, and though the author dedicated
more than twenty pages of that book to the
character, he was unsatisfied and used Wieder as
the main character in Distant Star. A pilot as well
as a poet, Wieder offers his support for the
Pinochet regime by infiltrating intellectual circles
in Concepcion and disseminating his "New
Chilean Poetry"-that is, sky-writing pro-junta
slogans over the skies of numerous Chilean cities.
"This absurd, oddly egalitarian poetic technique is
contrasted in the novel by a very disturbing
account of Wieder murdering two girls and their
aunt," Chad W. Post wrote for the Review of
Contemporary Fiction (March 22, 2005). "And
these aren't the only people he 'disappears'
following the coup. In fact he creates a poetic
display of pictures of those tortured and murdered
for the 'amusement' of other members of the
military .... There's definitely some black humor
in this novel, but its core is horrifying, as the tales
of poets killed or exiled following the coup are
placed in juxtaposition to Wieder's story." Ilan
Stavans argued that this complicated portrait of a
disturbed artist sets Bolafio's work apart from his
contemporaries: "Far too often in Latin American
letters, authority figures, especially dictators, are
turned into cartoons. Authors minimize their lives
by turning them into senseless marionettes. What
makes Bolafio so fascinating is his refusal to
simplify those who pushed him out of Chile. . . .
Bolano's literature is about silences and absences,
about reevaluating national memory. As today's
Chile moves to distance itself from the atrocities of
the military period, it is forced to confront the
ghosts of its past. In Bolafio's able hands, those
treacherous ghosts have universal value."
The third English translation that New
Directions released, Last Evenings on Earth, is a
collection of short stories set in Chile, Spain,
Mexico, and Germany. In these tales, as in much of
Bolafio's work, he examined the relationship of the
artist to society. "Most of Bolafio's stories are about
writers, and this concern sometimes grows to an
BOLGER
obsession with petty literary politics," Benjamin
Lytal wrote for the New York Sun (May 3, 2006).
"But his obsession actually works as an anti-
obsession, exorcising Latin American literary
circles of their self-seriousness .... Bolafio is not
a satirist, however. He reserves an important
respect for serious, sensitive literary affairs. 'We
never stop reading, although every book comes to
an end,' he writes, 'just as we never stop living,
although death is certain.' Literature is a way of
breathing in Bolafio's world-in a world, to borrow
one character's phrase, 'where vast geographical
spaces could suddenly shrink to the dimensions of
a coffin.''' Lytal concluded: "If this collection is
any indication, Bolafio's late work will ensnare
more and more American readers. Our own
tradition of noir is rendered not magical, but
refreshingly alien-and politically relevant, after
Bolafio's fashion."
-S.Y.
Suggested Reading: (London) Guardian Saturday
Pages p28 Feb. 22, 2003; (London) Independent
p16 July 24, 2003; (London) Times Features p14
Feb. 1, 2003; Los Angeles Times Book Review p4
Dec. 14, 2003; New York Times E p3 Aug. 9,
2005; World Literature Today p217 Winter 2002
Selected Works in English Translation: By Night
in Chile, 2003; Distant Star, 2004; Last Evenings
on Earth, 2006
Bolger, Dermot
(BUL-jer)
Feb. 6, 1959- Novelist; poet; playwright; editor;
publisher
Dermot Bolger has become internationally known
for presenting Ireland not as it has been viewed
traditionally-centered around rural life, poverty,
alcoholism, and the church-but as a place that has
embraced modernity and postmodernity with such
haste that tradition has become lost. Bolger began
his writing career while still in his teens and, over
his nearly three-decade-long career, has produced
at least seven full-length volumes of poetry, nine
novels, and about half a dozen plays, as well as
editing and publishing more than 100 other books,
many of them prescient selections of work by
unknown, little-known, or nearly forgotten Irish
writers. Both as a publisher and a writer, Bolger is
credited with helping usher in a Renaissance in
Irish writing, thanks in part to his interest in the
seedy side of contemporary Irish life, particularly
in Dublin and more particularly in Finglas, the part
of Dublin in which he was raised. "I hate the idea
of a straitjacket, of being labelled as one kind of
writer," Bolger told Mary Holland for the London
Observer (Iune 2, 1991). Bolger added: "Where I
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