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

At the same time, Roberto would occasionally appropriate pieces originally intended for other purposes for his columns. This was the case, for example, of the column titled “A Few Words for Enrique Lihn,” published September 30, 2002 and originally written as the prologue to Tigre de Pascua [Easter Tiger], by Enrique Lihn, published by Calembé in Santiago de Chile in the fall of 2002.

SCENES

Town Crier of Blanes. Read at the opening ceremony of the holiday celebrations in Blanes, July 1999.

The Maritime Jungle. El Viajero (travel supplement of the newspaper El País , January 9, 2000.

Beach. El Mundo (Madrid), August 17, 2000. The piece was part of a section titled “The Worst Summer of My Life.”

In Search of the Little Bull of Teruel [ch]. El Viajero (travel supplement of the newspaper El País , Madrid), March 25, 2001.

Vienna and the Shadow of a Woman. El País (Madrid), “Summer Magazine,” August 25, 2000.

The Last Place on the Map. El Mundo (Madrid), November 2, 2001.

Fateful Characters. Remarks commemorating the publication of the catalogue of an exhibition of photographs by Sergio Larraín held at the IVAM [Valencia Institute of Modern Art] from July 1 to September 26, 1999.

THE BRAVE LIBRARIAN

Our Guide to the Abyss. Prologue to the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , by Mark Twain, published by the Biblioteca Universal del Círculo de Lectores, Barcelona, 1999, pp. 11–21. Bolaño felt a great and enduring admiration for this novel. Later, in the text “About The Savage Detectives,” he would write that his novel was “a response, one of many, to Huckleberry Finn .”

The Mad Inventors. El Periódico (Barcelona), February 29, 1999.

Words and Deeds. El País (Madrid), January 19, 2002. This article was written two days after the death of Camilo José Cela, and it is a response to the countless obituaries that portrayed him in a very admiring light.

Vila-Matas’s Latest Book. Published as a review in the cultural supplement of the Diari de Girona , March 17, 2000. Also published in sábado (cultural supplement of the newspaper unomásuno , Mexico) on November 11, 2000.

The Brave Librarian. Diagonal (cultural supplement of the newspaper El Metropolitano , Santiago de Chile), August 22, 1999. Also published in the Diari de Girona , May 23, 1999.

Bomarzo . Prologue to Bomarzo , by Manuel Mujica Láinez, published by Biblioteca El Mundo (sold with the newspaper El Mundo ), 2001.

The Cubs, Again. El Mundo (Madrid), August 11, 1999. Article published on the occasion of the publication of The Cubs in the collection “Las 100 Joyas del Milenio” [The 100 Gems of the Millennium], sold with the newspaper.

The Prince of the Apocalypse. Prologue to The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta , by Mario Vargas Llosa, published by the Biblioteca El Mundo in 2001.

Notes on Jaime Bayly. Lateral (Barcelona), Number 53, May 1999, pp. 37–38. Also in Diagonal (cultural supplement of the newspaper El Metropolitano , Santiago, Chile), May 23, 1999. Text of remarks commemorating the publication of the book Yo amo a mi mami (Barcelona, Anagrama, 1999), at an event at the Barcelona bookstore La Central on Thursday, March 25, 1999. In the magazine, the piece appears under the title “ Disforzados Characters, Patas . .”; here it’s given Bolaño’s original title.

A Stroll Through the Abyss. Published as a stand-alone story in Las Últimas Noticias , May 22, 2002. Later it was also published in the newspapers Página 12 of Buenos Aires and Reforma of Mexico.

Sevilla Kills Me. Unfinished speech that Roberto Bolaño planned to read at the I Encuentro de Escritores Latinoamericanos [First Conference of Latin American Writers], organized by the publishing house Seix Barral and held in Sevilla during the month of June, 2003. In the end, Bolaño read the text “Los Mitos de Cthulhu” [“The Myths of Cthulhu”], previously presented in a course on his work offered by Cátedra de las Américas (Institut Català de Cooperació Iberoamericana de Barcelona) in November 2002. The text is collected in the volume Palabra de América [Word of America] (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2003, pp. 17–21, which is a collection of the papers presented by the twelve participants in the conference.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A NOVELIST

Who Would Dare? Babelia (book supplement of El País , Madrid), January 31, 1998. The piece was part of a section titled “Mis lecturas” [Books I’ve Read].

The Private Life of a Novelist. Clarín (Buenos Aires), March 25, 2001. Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories. Quimera (Barcelona), number 166, February 1998, p. 66. In the magazine, it was published under the title “Numbers.”

About “The Savage Detectives.” Text published as part of the program for the ceremony in which Roberto Bolaño received the 1999 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, held in Caracas, April 1999.

THE END

Roberto Bolaño. Interview with Mónica Maristain published in the Mexican edition of Playboy , Number 9, July 2003, pp. 22–30. Also published in the Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12, July 23, 2003, under the title “Distant Star,” retained here.

Adán, Martín, 92

Adrover, Emma, 206

Aira, César, 25, 26, 146–47, 153, 223, 331, 338

Alderete, Jerónimo de, 44, 50

Allen, Woody, 251

Allende, Isabel, 110-12, 356, 358-59

Allende, Salvador, 80, 358

Alvar, Carlos, 202

Amis, Kingsley, 197

Amis, Martin, 197, 221-22

Andrzejewski, Jerzy, 146

Ansieta, Malala, 66

Arenas, Reinaldo, 109, 217, 242

Ariño, Teresa, 206

Aristophanes, 250

Arlt, Roberto, 20, 22-5, 242, 312, 316

Arnaut, Daniel, 117, 202

Archilochus, 57–58, 60, 117, 161

Arrabal, Fernando, 306

Arrate, Jorge, 4, 76–77, 79–80, 82

Arreola, Juan José, 178, 345

Arretxe, Izaskun, 206

Artaud, Antonin, 195-96

Aspúrua, Javier, 225–27

Asturias, Miguel Ángel, 152

Austen, Jane, 149

Aylwin, Patricio, 77

Azócar, Pablo, 73, 76, 80

Balzac, Honoré de, 324, 329

Barbusse, Henri, 111

Barceló, Miquel, 66, 154

Barnatán, Marcos Ricardo, 317

Barral, Carlos, 205, 214

Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 65, 219

Baudelaire, Charles, 31, 118, 154, 177, 238

Bayly, Jaime, 8, 325–31, 380

Bazzi, Giovanni Antonio, see Il Sodoma

Beardsley, Aubrey, 176

Beauvoir, Simone de, 348

Beerbohm, Max, 175–77, 343

Bell, Vanessa, 138

Bellatin, Mario, 339

Bello, Antoine, 174–75

Benavente, Jacinto, 306

Benedetti, Mario, 55

Benet, Juan, 109, 306

Benjamin, Walter, 213

Berceo, Gonzalo de, 73, 100

Berenberg, Heinrich von, 127

Bernhard, Thomas, 185, 272

Bertoni, Claudio, 97, 113, 218

Bianchi, Soledad, 68

Bianciotti, Héctor, 54, 304

Bianco, José, 20, 315-16

Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 20-2, 109, 176, 219, 242, 278, 303, 315-16, 350, 365

Bizet, Georges, 178

Bloom, Harold, 199–200, 202

Bolaño, Alexandra, 16n, 357, 365

Bolaño, Lautaro, 16, 62, 76, 130, 357, 363

Bolívar, Simón, 31, 33

Bombal, María Luisa, 70

Borel, Petrus, 238, 351

Borges, Jorge Luis, 10, 19–22, 25–27, 87, 99, 147, 156, 177, 187–88, 199, 200, 219, 224, 239-40, 242, 294, 303-4, 315-16, 337, 350-1, 353, 365, 369