Roberto Bolaño: Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003

PLAYBOY: Is Octavio Paz still the enemy?

BOLAÑO: Definitely not for me. I don’t know about the poets who wrote like his clones when I lived in Mexico, what they think. It’s been a long time since I knew anything about Mexican poetry. I do reread José Juan Tablada and Ramón López Velarde, I can even recite Sor Juana, if it comes to that, but I don’t know anything about what’s being written by the poets who are nearing fifty, like me.

PLAYBOY: Wouldn’t Carlos Fuentes play that role now?

BOLAÑO: It’s been a long time since I read anything by Carlos Fuentes.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the fact that Arturo Pérez-Reverte is currently the the most widely read writer in Spanish?

BOLAÑO: Pérez-Reverte or Isabel Allende, it makes no difference. Feuillet was the most widely read French writer of his time.

PLAYBOY: And the fact that Arturo Pérez-Reverte has been inducted into the Royal Academy?

BOLAÑO: The Royal Academy is a hotbed of genius. Juan Marsé isn’t a member, Juan Goytisolo isn’t a member, Mendoza and Javier Marías aren’t members, Olvido García Valdés isn’t a member, I can’t remember whether Álvaro Pombo is a member (if he is it’s probably a mistake), but there’s Pérez-Reverte. Well, Paulo Coelho is a member of the Brazilian Academy.

PLAYBOY: Do you regret criticizing the dinner you were served by the writer Diamela Eltit?

BOLAÑO: I never criticized her dinner. If anything, I should have criticized her sense of humor, her vegetarian sense of humor, or better yet, her diet-starved sense of humor.

PLAYBOY: Does it trouble you that she considers you a bad person after your account of that ill-fated meal?

BOLAÑO: No, poor Diamela, that doesn’t trouble me. Other things trouble me.

PLAYBOY: Have you shed any tears over all the times you’ve been criticized by your enemies?

BOLAÑO: Many tears. Every time I read that someone’s said something bad about me I sob, I throw myself on the floor, I claw at myself, I stop writing for an unspecified length of time, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I exercise, I go for walks along the shore, which as it happens is less than thirty yards from where I live, and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish that ate Ulysses, why me, when I’ve never done them any wrong.

PLAYBOY: Whose opinion of your work do you value most?

BOLAÑO: Carolina reads my books first, and then Herralde, and then I try to forget them forever.

PLAYBOY: What did you buy with the money from the Rómulo Gallegos Prize?

BOLAÑO: Not much. A suitcase, I seem to remember.

PLAYBOY: During the time when you made a living from story competitions, were there ever any that didn’t pay up?

BOLAÑO: Never. In that regard, Spanish municipalities are above reproach.

PLAYBOY: Were you a good waiter, or were you better at selling cheap jewelry?

BOLAÑO: The job I was best at was being a night watchman at a campground near Barcelona. No one stole anything while I was there. I broke up some fights that could have turned ugly. I prevented a lynching (though afterwards I would happily have lynched or strangled the guy myself).

PLAYBOY: Have you experienced terrible hunger, bone-chilling cold, choking heat?

BOLAÑO: I quote Vittorio Gassman from a movie: In all modesty, yes.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever stolen any book and later discovered you didn’t like it?

BOLAÑO: Never. The good thing about stealing books (as opposed to safes) is that one can carefully examine their contents before perpetrating the crime.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever walked in the desert?

BOLAÑO: Yes, and once even arm in arm with my grandmother. The old lady just kept going and I was afraid we wouldn’t make it out alive.

PLAYBOY: Have you seen colored fish underwater?

BOLAÑO: Of course. In Acapulco, to begin with, in 1974 or 1975.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever burned yourself with a cigarette?

BOLAÑO: Never on purpose.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever carved the name of your beloved into a tree trunk?

BOLAÑO: I’ve done more outrageous things, but let’s let them languish in oblivion.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever seen the most beautiful woman in the world?

BOLAÑO: Yes, when I was working at a store, sometime around 1984. The store was empty and a Hindu woman came in. She looked like a princess and maybe she was. She bought some earrings from me. I almost swooned, of course. She had copper-colored skin, long red hair, and everything else about her was perfect. A timeless beauty. When I had to ring her up I was incredibly embarrassed. She smiled as if to say that she understood and I shouldn’t worry. Then she disappeared and I’ve never seen anyone like that again. Sometimes I think she was the goddess Kali, patron saint of thieves and goldsmiths, except that Kali is also the goddess of assassins, and not only was this Hindu woman the most beautiful creature on Earth, she also seemed to be a good person, very sweet and considerate.

PLAYBOY: Do you like dogs or cats?

BOLAÑO: Dogs, but I don’t have pets anymore.

PLAYBOY: What do you remember about your childhood?

BOLAÑO: Everything. I have a good memory.

PLAYBOY: Did you collect trading cards?

BOLAÑO: Yes. Of soccer players and Hollywood actors and actresses.

PLAYBOY: Did you have a skateboard?

BOLAÑO: My parents made the mistake of giving me a pair of skates when we lived in Valparaíso, which is a city of hills. The results were disastrous. Every time I put on the skates it was as if I had a death wish.

PLAYBOY: What’s your favorite soccer team?

BOLAÑO: I don’t have one anymore. The teams that drop quickly through the divisions down to the regionals, and then are gone. The ghost teams.

PLAYBOY: What historical characters would you have liked to model yourself after?

BOLAÑO: Sherlock Holmes. Captain Nemo. Julien Sorel, our father; Prince Mishkin, our uncle; Alice, our teacher; Houdini, who is a mix of Alice, Sorel, and Mishkin.

PLAYBOY: Did you fall in love with older neighborhood girls?

BOLAÑO: Of course.

PLAYBOY: Did the girls at school pay attention to you?

BOLAÑO: I don’t think so. At least I was convinced they didn’t.

PLAYBOY: What do you owe the women in your life?

BOLAÑO: A lot. A sense of challenge and the ambition to aim high. And other things that I won’t mention for the sake of decorum.

PLAYBOY: Do they owe you anything?

BOLAÑO: Nothing.

PLAYBOY: Have you suffered for love?

BOLAÑO: The first time I suffered terribly, then I learned to take things with more of a sense of humor.

PLAYBOY: What about hatred?

BOLAÑO: It may sound a little pretentious, but I’ve never hated anyone. At least, I know I’m not capable of sustained hatred. And if hatred isn’t sustained, it isn’t hatred, is it?

PLAYBOY: How did you woo your wife?

BOLAÑO: By cooking rice for her. In those days I was very poor and all I ate was rice, so I learned how to cook it lots of ways.

PLAYBOY: What kind of day was it when you became a father for the first time?

BOLAÑO: It was nighttime, a little before midnight, I was alone, and since you couldn’t smoke in the hospital I smoked a cigarette practically perched on a ledge four floors up. It was a good thing no one saw me from the street. No one but the moon, as Amado Nervo would say. When I came back in a nurse told me that my son had just been born. He was very big, almost completely bald, and his eyes were open as if to ask who the hell this guy holding him was.

PLAYBOY: Will Lautaro be a writer?

BOLAÑO: I just hope he’ll be happy. Which means it would be better if he were something else. A pilot, for example, or a plastic surgeon, or an editor.

PLAYBOY: In what ways do you see yourself in him?