By Night in Chile

I bought this book in Spanish for my sister in law and decided to buy it in English for myself. Although I speak, read and write Spanish also, I'm more accustomed to reading in English. Bolano is a prolific writer and if you are a serious reader you will thoroughly enjoy this literary work.

What I have come to appreciate reading Bolaño's book is the fact that he takes you on several small journeys getting you from plot-point to plot-point. You almost don't realize that he is doing it until you finish one of these tangents and get led carefully back to the main storyline. That Bolaño trusts his talents enough to introduce characters that are only there to make a single point, that they exist in the novel just to die or to cease to exist just so some small nuance of Chile, the Church or his personal imagination can be revealed is truly something. For instance, a "Guatemalan Painter" is introduced and given depth and perspective before being assigned his lonely fate which is to fade away to nothingness despite having great talent just so that the author can depict the grim experiences of displaced foreigners and to introduce Don Salvador Reyes to Ernst Jünger. He introduces Salvador Reyes and rounds him out as a character, portrays him as a man of principles and position, an erudite pillar of society. The meeting of the three men only accomplishes one single thing, a book translated in French is passed from Reyes to Jünger providing the context for the only mention in the history of World War II of a Chilean ever taking part in the greatest conflict known to man. As if to say, one of us took part in this great endeavor, and although nothing of the man exists or of the painter who made possible the acquaintance with the German officer and writer, Ernst Jünger who documents the existence of our participant, but one of us was there and here is the proof and displaced and erased we may be in this gigantic, Western history, at least ONE of us was there. One Chilean. One man. One proof. And without further explanation, the whole tale falls under the title "Landscape: Mexico City an hour before dawn". It is a poem, not a story. Bolaño does this to you again and again with such a light touch in these side-stories hidden among what is actually happening. And if you focus too closely on what is more obviously happening to Urrutia Lacroix as he becomes party to Mr. Fear and Mr. Hate, to the falconers and their destruction of spirit, to the Marxists he teaches and disowns, to the suppressed homosexuality of Farewell and the more literary circles, to the duality of his roles as liberal writer and conservative critic, and the old man denouncing and finally ceasing to renounce his wizened youth only at the end, etc...if you look at only these more blatant metaphors you will miss the really fine morsels hidden in the tedious little filler pages, poetry masquerading as fluff, revelation in the side-notes.

The narrator of Roberto Bolaño's surreal novella By Night in Chile is an Opus Dei priest, Fr. Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix. Using the image of "the wizened youth," Bolaño brilliantly portrays the struggle for the survival of the human spirit trapped in Opus Dei for many years. His imagery is so vivid and provocative that the reader feels as if he or she is lifted up into his dream. "The wizened youth," or Fr. Sebastian's true self is being slowly destroyed by Fr. Sebastian's new Opus Dei identity. This interior battle captures the essence of the Opus Dei experience, as if Bolaño himself had been a celibate member. Initially, it appears as if Fr. Sebastian's newly-formed spirit is soaring toward the heavens; for example, he says "my prayers rising up and up through the clouds to the realm of pure music, to what for want of a better name we call the choir of angels, a non-human space but undoubtedly the only imaginable space we humans can truly inhabit, an uninhabitable space but the only one worth inhabiting, a space in which we shall cease to be but the only space in which we can be what we truly are." In reality, however, Fr. Sebastian's spirit, manipulated by his Opus Dei superiors, Raef and Etah (Fear and Hate spelled backwards) is slowly crushed over a period of many years because he denies the truth and his former self, "the wizened youth." Fr. Sebastian is ordained an Opus Dei priest at the age of 14, at which time there isn't much of a struggle at all. In fact, Fr. Sebastian is happy to bury the memories of his unpleasant childhood; and is filled with "immaculate hopes" about his future as the protégé of the finest literary critic in Santiago, Farewell. Like so many others who join Opus Dei at an impressionable age, Fr. Sebastian is lured by the promise of an appealing and exciting adventure. The fourteen-year-old is impressed by Farewell's attire, his grand estate, and the prestigious company of the literary elite with whom he shares an exquisite meal. The name "Farewell" symbolizes Fr. Sebastian's bidding his former self farewell. When Fr. Sebastian meets Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet at Farewell's house, he says, "I bet the wizened youth has no stories like this to tell. He didn't meet Neruda." His new identity enthusiastically and blindly submits to the calling higher than himself - to change the tone of literature in society. As he matures in his career, his intentions become tainted when he gives himself a pen name H. Ibacache (meaning: was hidden) so that he could praise his own books and criticize those of his colleagues, calling for a return to the classics and more culture. His pen name symbolizes the burial of the universal truths found in literature as well as the concealment of his new identity as an Opus Dei member. Even though Fr. Sebastian becomes a successful literary critic, his spirit starts to rebel as he becomes bored with his book reviews and starts to write deep meaningful poems, which he quickly destroys. H

I was there, I saw them walking on the street leaving the world behind. I was there when they left Mexico and when they came back. I was one of the few who remembers the chilean who saved the girl. I was there when Belano arrived to Africa. I've never understood their motives. I was a distant witness of a story thousands and thousands larger than mine. I was there, like a ghost. Los Detectives Salvajes is the kind of book that you read to realize that you haven't read enough. This astounding novel takes you in a strange journey following the steps of two latinoamerican poets while they escape from an unknown past. It's a novel about the books that will never be written and the writers who were condemned to be their authors. I strongly recommend you this book. This is Bolaño's best, and Bolaño is, undoubtly, one of the best spanish-speaking writters of late 20th century.

Enrique VilaMatas said about this book, "And historic Move on to Cortazar's Rayuela". Since then, and a year after Bolaño's death, I've hear all kind of opinions. The real fact is, that in despite of comparing the quality, the structure or the author, this book is a step over the latinamerican literature. In a time when all the american boom's writters had started to repeat each others, "Los detectives Salvajes" is proposing a new kind of literature. A literature that is easy to read (fluid) but hard to understand. As Carver, everything is a metaphore of something big, in an aparently common anecdote. Maybe you could like this book, maybe not. But it is a MUST if you want to keep in touch with the new literature.