Customer Reviews

The Insufferable Gaucho (New Directions Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When the speaker's friend makes this statement in "Jim," the first story in this small but unforgettable collection of five stories and two essays by Chilean author Roberto Bolano, the reader cannot help but feel that Jim is in many ways the author's alterego. Bolano also began his writing life as a poet, something that is obvious in his recognition of the tiny, seemingly insignificant moment or detail which becomes extraordinary within its context. Such "extraordinary" moments or details are worthy of notice, and even wonder, but as the author shows, they are not necessarily "wonderful." Extraordinary moments are temporal, and, though meaningful, they can also be shocking or sad.

Throughout these stories, the reader becomes hypnotized by the succession of Bolano's images, by the lives he depicts (including his own in the two essays), and by the metaphysical suggestions and possible symbols of his stories, despite the fact that Bolano does not make grand pronouncements or create a formal, organized, and ultimately hopeful view of life. There is no coherence to our lives, he seems to say: chaos rules. Although artists of all kinds try to make some sense of life, Bolano suggests that their visions may not be accurate since they have no way of knowing or conveying the whole story, the big picture, the inner secrets of life. Vibrant and imaginative, Bolano's stories seduce the reader into and coming back to them again and again looking for answers or explanations that often remain tantalizingly out of reach.

"Jim," which takes place in Mexico, one of the many places the peripatetic Bolano lived, tells of a sad, often desperate man who considers himself a poet, someone the speaker once saw staring rapt, bewitched by a fire-eater, who was performing just for him. The symbolism is clear, but the story's conclusion is less so. In "The Insufferable Gaucho," set in Argentina, where Bolano also lived, an honest lawyer in Buenos Aires is affected by the passage of time and the distancing of his children as they grow up and leave home. Believing that Buenos Aires is "sinking" under its crime, violence, and failed economy, he returns to his dilapidated family ranch on the pampas and tries to restore it and himself. "Police Rat," the grimmest of the stories, features Pepe the Cop, a rat who describes life in the sewers, even taking time to comment on the non-role of the arts in the lives of rats. In "Two Catholic Tales," Bolano creates parallel stories, telling of a seventeen-year-old boy who is trying to see if he has a vocation for the priesthood, and of a long-time patient at an insane asylum, who describes his terrible experience with priests.

Two essays at the end are particularly poignant. "Literature + Illness = Illness" explores the relationship between writing and the illness which will claim Bolano's life at age fifty, soon after writing this. In "the Myths of Cthulhu," a wonderful companion essay, he comments on the "perfect novelist," one whose work is famous for its "readability," someone who is popular, and successful as a result. Bolano eventually concludes that "We [writers] are the middle class generation...We think our brain is a marble mausoleum, when in fact it's a house made of cardboard boxes, a shack stranded between an empty field and an endless dusk." Mary Whipple

Another beautiful collection by Bolaño, this one including two essays, one, dedicated to his hepatologist, on (terminal) illness, the other on Spanish literature. The title story is an allegory about Argentinean politics, and the book as a whole--typical for Bolaño--are studies, meditations, and anecdotes on sex, death, politics, violence, terror, and joy. Told with Bolaño's floating style that seems simultaneously to be about everything and nothing. Chris Andrews's translation is impeccable, as it is with Bolaño's other novels translated for New Directions.

I always prefer a novel to a novella. Short pieces are far down on my list of `druthers. I've made an exception for Bolano, whom I've recently discovered and raised to a priority on my reading list.

This book has 5 short stories and 2 essays. The short stories are very good and I highly recommend each of them. The essays ramble; hence, the 4 star rating.

Each short story has very different content and style. The shortest piece, "Jim" is first, and serves, sort of, as an introduction in that it may be a signature for the author. The title piece is next, which is a commentary on social, political and economic life in Argentina followed by the somewhat allegorical "Police Rat". "Two Catholic Tales" tells parallel stories using a unique numbered non-paragraph format. My favorite story in this collection, "Alvero Rousselot's Journey", shows the activity of daily life and how the unexpected can be quite mundane through an excellent development of character and plot.

I read the stories in two sittings, but, should have savored each on its own, one or two at a sitting... or maybe, even, one a week. There is a lot to think about in each and each deserves, and will get, a re-read.

The essays ramble. The one on illness may have been written in Bolano's last months in 2003, but may be collected material with excerpts from the later personal experience. There is no way to know. I may have derived more from the one on literature had I more knowledge of South American writers and popular culture, but even without this knowledge, the meaning is very clear. While some ideas are presented in an original way, conculusions are not new, the same can be said for North American literature.

There are no notes or introductions, not even dates. The translator, perhaps, took pity on the poor reader (or maybe it's required by IP law or courtesy) and offered some fine print notes on the copyright page. One provocative note alludes to "Josephine the Singer or The Mouse People" by Kafka.