Bolano: Was he a junkie, and does it matter?

Roberto Bolaño is one of the most outlandishly unorthodox writers to hit the mainstream literary big time in quite a while, but the New York Times wants to know if the great Chilean writer was — what, was he on Oprah or something? — a fraud. Larry Rohter reports in this story for the Old Gray Lady that Bolaño’s ex-wife had “mentioned en passant” to his agent that reports of Bolano’s heroin use were “inaccurate.”

Where did these stories come from? Mostly from an essay Bolaño himself wrote for a Spanish newspaper that the Times reports, alas, is unavailable in English. However, ever-intrepid MobyLives was able to track it down after consultation with our secret source, whom I can only tell you goes by the code name “Google.” The essay was, in fact, published on the literary site Eyeshot, here. It’s one very long sentence, which begins “I kicked heroin and went back to the little town and began taking methadone, which I was given at the outpatient clinic, and I had nothing much else to get up for each morning ….” Aha. Well.

Of course, the subject may be breaking news to the Times, but it has been under disussion in the book blogosphere for a while — for example, the terrific book blog The Millions talked about it back in November in this report, called, well, Was Bolaño a Junkie? There, Garth Risk Hallberg pointed to some more detailed consideration of how the rumor got started, such as in what may be its first airing, in this New Yorker profile of Bolaño by Daniel Zalewski, “who gave the legend its fullest and most ingenuous treatment.” But what’s the significance of it all if Bolaño did indeed make up his own myth? Hallberg points to a Scott Esposito essay for Hermanocerdo about the Bolaño myth which observes, “I believe that Bolaño’s life-story and his novels have generated a genuine interest in foreign novels here, and in a culture so typically disinterested in what foreign literature has to offer this is no small thing.” Meanwhile, he observes, “I am convinced that romance alone does not account for his burgeoning reputation over here.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

Robot Killer

Um. I think the real question was wether Bolano was in Chile or not during the Pinochet coup. Intravenous drugs are small potatoes in comparison.
Robot Killer

Um. I think the real question was wether Bolano was in Chile or not during the Pinochet coup. Intravenous drugs are small potatoes in comparison.
Bolalano

Of course he created myths around himself and perpetuated them in his writing. This persona is even the narrator in Distant Star. Who knows if he was around for the coup, he would have been very young. What seems evident from his books, which is really all we can go on, is he had an obsession with chileans living in exile and seemed to desire this for himself, even if it is fantasy. He also seems to have an obsession with the elite class, in particular the highly educated elite. This would suggest that he, who was probably not formally educated, was an outsider to this group as they are elevated and mythicized in all of his work. He created the world he desired not one that really existed. The irony in his work is that the tangled hopeless world he created is probably less tangled and hopeless than truth (e.g. the real Ciudad Juarez murders or someone like Jimmy Bulger).
Bolalano

Of course he created myths around himself and perpetuated them in his writing. This persona is even the narrator in Distant Star. Who knows if he was around for the coup, he would have been very young. What seems evident from his books, which is really all we can go on, is he had an obsession with chileans living in exile and seemed to desire this for himself, even if it is fantasy. He also seems to have an obsession with the elite class, in particular the highly educated elite. This would suggest that he, who was probably not formally educated, was an outsider to this group as they are elevated and mythicized in all of his work. He created the world he desired not one that really existed. The irony in his work is that the tangled hopeless world he created is probably less tangled and hopeless than truth (e.g. the real Ciudad Juarez murders or someone like Jimmy Bulger).
Daniel Campos

BolaÃ±o when he lived in Mexico away from the social changes occurring in his native Chile in the early 70s was just another curious young emerging writer popping into classes at the UNAM in Mexico City with friends. He could not afford tertiary studies or anything of the like. He only smoked. The drug allegations are purely that. His ill liver took his toll so during his times he did convey memoirs along with all his writings, he was more distressed on his melancholy of living so far away from his homeland when he eventually settled in Blanes or in and around Barcelona.
The English-speaking world needs to insert more if this is to just a mere example of Hispanic writers and culture that sometimes mislead into inaccurate proportions of tales, profiles, biographies and stories of individuals that have a made an impact in Â people’s lives.
BolaÃ±o will forever be BolaÃ±o as a character, a persona, a human-being, a writer, a narrator but above all as he put it, an avid reader and a humble defence-less samurai who has to fight against another samurai knowing he will be defeated because according to him that is literature.

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January 29, 2009