Melville House Books

Over at the New York Times‘ Paper Cuts blog, their “Stray Questions” segment features none other than… Roberto Bolaño.  Excerpted from our new collection of interviews with Bolaño — Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview & Other Conversations — the questions show Bolaño’s more casual, and certainly humorous side, as in this back and forth with journalist Monica Maristain from the last interview he ever gave:

M.M.: Have you shed one tear about the widespread criticism you’ve drawn from your enemies?

R.B.: Lots and lots. Every time I read that someone has spoken badly of me I begin to cry, I drag myself across the floor, I scratch myself, I stop writing indefinitely, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I engage in sport, I go for walks on the edge of the sea, which by the way is less than 30 meters from my house and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish who ate Ulysses: Why me? Why? I’ve done you no harm.