Author: David Kurnick
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550650
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Book Description
The Savage Detectives elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanish-speaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño’s novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño’s life and work have obscured his achievements—and that The Savage Detectives is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores The Savage Detectives as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations—of states, continents, and generations—and the everyday stuff—parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation—of which they’re made. For Kurnick, Bolaño’s book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. Kurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel’s microclimates and neighborhoods—the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño’s most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that The Savage Detectives holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality.
The Savage Detectives Reread
Author: David Kurnick
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550650
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Book Description
The Savage Detectives elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanish-speaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño’s novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño’s life and work have obscured his achievements—and that The Savage Detectives is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores The Savage Detectives as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations—of states, continents, and generations—and the everyday stuff—parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation—of which they’re made. For Kurnick, Bolaño’s book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. Kurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel’s microclimates and neighborhoods—the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño’s most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that The Savage Detectives holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550650
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Book Description
The Savage Detectives elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanish-speaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño’s novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño’s life and work have obscured his achievements—and that The Savage Detectives is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores The Savage Detectives as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations—of states, continents, and generations—and the everyday stuff—parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation—of which they’re made. For Kurnick, Bolaño’s book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. Kurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel’s microclimates and neighborhoods—the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño’s most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that The Savage Detectives holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality.
Roberto Bolaño's Fiction
Author: Chris Andrews
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537530
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Since the publication of The Savage Detectives in 2007, the work of Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) has achieved an acclaim rarely enjoyed by literature in translation. Chris Andrews, a leading translator of Bolaño's work into English, explores the singular achievements of the author's oeuvre, engaging with its distinct style and key thematic concerns, incorporating his novels and stories into the larger history of Latin American and global literary fiction. Andrews provides new readings and interpretations of Bolaño's novels, including 2666, The Savage Detectives, and By Night in Chile, while at the same time examining the ideas and narrative strategies that unify his work. He begins with a consideration of the reception of Bolaño's fiction in English translation, examining the reasons behind its popularity. Subsequent chapters explore aspects of Bolaño's fictional universe and the political, ethical, and aesthetic values that shape it. Bolaño emerges as the inventor of a prodigiously effective "fiction-making system," a subtle handler of suspense, a chronicler of aimlessness, a celebrator of courage, an anatomist of evil, and a proponent of youthful openness. Written in a clear and engaging style, Roberto Bolano's Fiction offers an invaluable understanding of one of the most important authors of the last thirty years.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537530
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Since the publication of The Savage Detectives in 2007, the work of Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) has achieved an acclaim rarely enjoyed by literature in translation. Chris Andrews, a leading translator of Bolaño's work into English, explores the singular achievements of the author's oeuvre, engaging with its distinct style and key thematic concerns, incorporating his novels and stories into the larger history of Latin American and global literary fiction. Andrews provides new readings and interpretations of Bolaño's novels, including 2666, The Savage Detectives, and By Night in Chile, while at the same time examining the ideas and narrative strategies that unify his work. He begins with a consideration of the reception of Bolaño's fiction in English translation, examining the reasons behind its popularity. Subsequent chapters explore aspects of Bolaño's fictional universe and the political, ethical, and aesthetic values that shape it. Bolaño emerges as the inventor of a prodigiously effective "fiction-making system," a subtle handler of suspense, a chronicler of aimlessness, a celebrator of courage, an anatomist of evil, and a proponent of youthful openness. Written in a clear and engaging style, Roberto Bolano's Fiction offers an invaluable understanding of one of the most important authors of the last thirty years.
2666
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466804823
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1053
Book Description
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466804823
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1053
Book Description
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
Understanding Roberto Bolano
Author: Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611176492
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
An examination of the novels, short story collections, and poetry of the Latin American author In Understanding Roberto Bolaño, Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Chilean poet and novelist whose work brought global attention to Latin American literature in the 1960s unseen since the rise of García Márquez and magic realism. Best known for The Savage Detectives, winner of the Rómulo Gallegos Prize; the novella By Night in Chile; and the posthumously published novel 2666, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bolaño died in 2003 just as his reputation was becoming established. After a brief biographical sketch, Gutiérrez-Mouat chronologically contextualizes literary interpretations of Bolaño's work in terms of his life, cultural background, and political ideals. Gutiérrez-Mouat explains Bolaño's work to an English-speaking audience—including his relatively neglected poetry—and conveys a sense of where Bolaño fits in the Latin American tradition. Since his death, eleven of novels, four short story collections, and three poetry collections have been translated into English. The afterword addresses Bolaño's status as a Latin American writer, as the former literary editor of El País claimed, "neither magical realist, nor baroque nor localist, but [creator of] an imaginary, extraterritorial mirror of Latin America, more as a kind of state of mind than a specific place."
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611176492
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
An examination of the novels, short story collections, and poetry of the Latin American author In Understanding Roberto Bolaño, Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Chilean poet and novelist whose work brought global attention to Latin American literature in the 1960s unseen since the rise of García Márquez and magic realism. Best known for The Savage Detectives, winner of the Rómulo Gallegos Prize; the novella By Night in Chile; and the posthumously published novel 2666, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bolaño died in 2003 just as his reputation was becoming established. After a brief biographical sketch, Gutiérrez-Mouat chronologically contextualizes literary interpretations of Bolaño's work in terms of his life, cultural background, and political ideals. Gutiérrez-Mouat explains Bolaño's work to an English-speaking audience—including his relatively neglected poetry—and conveys a sense of where Bolaño fits in the Latin American tradition. Since his death, eleven of novels, four short story collections, and three poetry collections have been translated into English. The afterword addresses Bolaño's status as a Latin American writer, as the former literary editor of El País claimed, "neither magical realist, nor baroque nor localist, but [creator of] an imaginary, extraterritorial mirror of Latin America, more as a kind of state of mind than a specific place."
Last Evenings on Earth
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811216883
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Stories of the "failed generation" set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811216883
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Stories of the "failed generation" set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe.
The Return
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9780330510615
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
One of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they seem to tell what Bolaño called 'the secret story', 'the one we'll never know'. The Return contains thirteen unforgettable tales bent on returning to haunt you, most of them appearing in English for the first time here. Wide-ranging, suggestive, and daring, a Bolaño story is just as likely to concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend, the history of a porn star or two embittered police detectives debating their favourite weapons: his plots go anywhere and everywhere and they always surprise. Consider the title piece: a young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor; just as his soul is departing his body, it realizes strange doings are afoot - and what follows next defies the imagination (except Bolaño's own, of course).
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9780330510615
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
One of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they seem to tell what Bolaño called 'the secret story', 'the one we'll never know'. The Return contains thirteen unforgettable tales bent on returning to haunt you, most of them appearing in English for the first time here. Wide-ranging, suggestive, and daring, a Bolaño story is just as likely to concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend, the history of a porn star or two embittered police detectives debating their favourite weapons: his plots go anywhere and everywhere and they always surprise. Consider the title piece: a young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor; just as his soul is departing his body, it realizes strange doings are afoot - and what follows next defies the imagination (except Bolaño's own, of course).
By Night in Chile
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811215474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
"During the course of a single night, Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean priest who is a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a mediocre poet, relives some of the crucial events of his life. He believes he is dying, and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters, as if in sequences from a horror film. Among them are the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German novelist Ernst Junger, and General Augusto Pinochet - whom Father Lacroix instructs in Marxist doctrine - as well as various members of the Chilean intelligentsia whose lives, during a period of political turbulence, have touched his own."--Jacket.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811215474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
"During the course of a single night, Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean priest who is a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a mediocre poet, relives some of the crucial events of his life. He believes he is dying, and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters, as if in sequences from a horror film. Among them are the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German novelist Ernst Junger, and General Augusto Pinochet - whom Father Lacroix instructs in Marxist doctrine - as well as various members of the Chilean intelligentsia whose lives, during a period of political turbulence, have touched his own."--Jacket.
Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811218147
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Collection of most of Bolaño's newspaper columns, articles (many about other literary authors), prefaces, and texts of talks or speeches given by Bolaño during the last five years of his life. "Taken together, they make a surprisingly rounded whole . . . a kind of fragmented 'autobiography.'"--Introduction, p.1.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811218147
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Collection of most of Bolaño's newspaper columns, articles (many about other literary authors), prefaces, and texts of talks or speeches given by Bolaño during the last five years of his life. "Taken together, they make a surprisingly rounded whole . . . a kind of fragmented 'autobiography.'"--Introduction, p.1.
Antwerp
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 125089817X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
“It’s hard to think of a writer who has multiplied the possibilities more times than Roberto Bolaño . . . [Antwerp is] exceptional and moving.” —Nicole Krauss, The Guardian Oft called the “big bang” of Roberto Bolaño’s universe, Antwerp is his first novel—or the shattered remnants of one. Written when he was just twenty-seven years of age, it was so intensely strange and solitary that he tucked it away for more than twenty years, certain that any publisher would slam the door in his face. It proceeds in hallucinatory sketches: a lonely highway, a desolate campground, a freshly abandoned hotel room; a tryst, an interrogation, a murder; and somewhere just out of reach, a young, feverish writer named Roberto Bolaño drifting in and out of view. A radical, sui generis effort by a burgeoning genius, Antwerp is an essential part of Bolaño’s oeuvre.
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 125089817X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
“It’s hard to think of a writer who has multiplied the possibilities more times than Roberto Bolaño . . . [Antwerp is] exceptional and moving.” —Nicole Krauss, The Guardian Oft called the “big bang” of Roberto Bolaño’s universe, Antwerp is his first novel—or the shattered remnants of one. Written when he was just twenty-seven years of age, it was so intensely strange and solitary that he tucked it away for more than twenty years, certain that any publisher would slam the door in his face. It proceeds in hallucinatory sketches: a lonely highway, a desolate campground, a freshly abandoned hotel room; a tryst, an interrogation, a murder; and somewhere just out of reach, a young, feverish writer named Roberto Bolaño drifting in and out of view. A radical, sui generis effort by a burgeoning genius, Antwerp is an essential part of Bolaño’s oeuvre.
The Unknown University
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811219283
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 839
Book Description
Collects the poetic works of the Chilean author, including works of prose poetry, fiction in verse, and pieces that defy categorization.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811219283
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 839
Book Description
Collects the poetic works of the Chilean author, including works of prose poetry, fiction in verse, and pieces that defy categorization.