This is me being lazy: taking posts that I never finished and dropping the rough draft on my blog just to have an “update.” Whatever works.

BroadsideBolanoLIt might be starting to seem more like a crush than a mild obsession with a modern writer, but damn I’m in awe of Roberto Bolaño. First I sent off $12 to New Directions trying to purchase copies of the poster on the left, then I spent last Sunday morning reading the latest translation—one of his earliest novels, The Skating Rink.

I was prepared to finish the book only mildly impressed, since it seems to have been a first novel by a writer who considered himself a poet and seemed to approach novels like others approach the writing of commercial jingles or advertising. It’s no Savage Detectives, but it’s still a very good book and a great starting point for somebody who has not read Bolaño before—the plot a bit more solid, the atmosphere a bit less disorienting.

Let me try to explain what it does, and why I think Bolaño is the finest of modern writers:

Here’s one funny thing about calling it an obsession: I really don’t care much about Bolaño’s life. In the typical modern fashion, those who treat him like a legend are followed by those who destroy the legend. I’ve read a few articles lately questioning the myths of Bolaño’s life, primarily his heroin addiction and his arrest during the Chilean coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. (He, of course, supported Allende.)  Maybe I’m too cynical to search for inspiration in a writer’s legend (unlike my early Kerouac worship). I care that he committed to writing, and that he spoke often and vibrantly about his opinions, and that he struggled to balance restlessness with life. That’s enough for me.