The first column in Las Últimas Noticias appeared on July 30, 2000 (“An Afternoon with Huidobro and Parra”). Bolaño began by recycling many of the columns already published in the Diari de Girona, sometimes lightly revised. The columns in Las Últimas Noticias were published once a week, with very few exceptions, until July 4, 2001 (“An Attempt at an Exhaustive Catalogue of Patrons”). Around this time, Bolaño informed Andrés Braithwaite that he wouldn’t be able to send him new articles because he was so absorbed by the writing of 2666. But behind this explanation lay a growing fatigue, due to health problems. In fact, beginning especially in January 2001, Bolaño’s correspondence with Andrés Braithwaite begins to contain frequent references to the deterioration of his health. “My health is bad,” writes Bolaño on January 16. “The long-awaited moment seems to have come or is imminent . . . Of course, now I don’t feel like writing. In fact, I don’t even answer letters anymore. But maybe all of this will pass, and it’s caused by the fear or exhaustion that flare up in situations like this. Really, the situation has its humorous side.” On January 24 he returns again to the same subject: “I don’t feel much like working, it’s true. In my current state, what the body craves is the reading aloud of the Tibetan book of the dead or the praying of the rosary, but I won’t let you down.” And on February 7, never losing his sense of humor, he writes: “Today I sent you a piece [“The Ancestor”] that I think is good. A year from now you might even have enough material to put together a posthumous book. I suggest the following title: Thus Spake Bolaño. I don’t know, it seems tasteful and suggestive, as our friend Carlos Argentino Daneri from El Aleph would say.”
A little more than a year later, Bolaño decided to start up his column in Las Últimas Noticias again. “Get ready, girls, because Bolaño’s back. I’ll be writing . . . weekly,” he tells Braithwaite on August 28, 2002. And on September 9, 2002, “Jim” is published, which marks the beginning of the third and final stage of Bolaño as columnist. This new round would end on January 20, 2003 (“Humor in the Wings”), once again for health reasons. Around this time Bolaño writes to Braithwaite, apologizing for the delay in sending the final column: “I’ve had it up to here with all the tests. And now I’m on the transplant list. In other words, they could call me at any minute, since my blood group — B+ — is rare, and according to the doctors, I’m not in a position to chivalrously give up my place in line. You know what this means. More Bolaño or finis terrae or c’est tout. I’m sorry to make things difficult for you, but ultimately that’s what editors are there for.” After he had stopped contributing to Las Últimas Noticias, as late as March 4, 2002, Bolaño promises Braithwaite that he’ll keep writing for the newspaper “as soon as I recover.” But as we know, that was not to be.
Like the columns for the Diari de Girona, the columns written for Las Últimas Noticias were eventually recycled by Bolaño for other publications, sometimes slightly recast, revised, or with new titles. On September 9, 2000, in sábado, the cultural supplement of the Mexican newspaper unomásuno, Bolaño published eight columns, under the title “Alfabeto de lecturas” [Alphabet of Readings] that had previously appeared in the Diari de Girona and were later reclaimed for Las Últimas Noticias. During the fall-winter of 2001–2002, in the same cultural supplement, Bolaño had a section titled “Carta de Blanes” [Letter from Blanes] that featured pieces that had generally been published before in one of the two newspapers. Later, in the summer of 2001, Roberto kicked off a short-lived new section titled “Ventana” [Window] in the Mexican weekly Cambio, for which he again used columns that he’d already written. And one can imagine the same thing happening here and there with whichever of the many publications, based in Spain or Chile, Mexico, Argentina, or any other Latin American country, that solicited contributions from Roberto.
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 Se
ix 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.
Index
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
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
Born, Bertrán de, 202
Bornelh, Giraut de, 202, 221, 234
Boullosa, Carmen, 270-74, 339, 368
Braithwaite, Andrés, 5-6, 226-27, 377-78
Braque, Georges, 191–92, 235
Breton, André, 101, 206–208
Brod, Max, 271-73, 352
Brodsky, Pascual, 133
Brodsky, Roberto, 132–33, 376
Brooke, Lord, 351
Brontë Sisters, 149
Brown, Norman O., 150
Brueghel, Pieter, 323
Bryce Echenique, Alfredo, 327
Bukowski, Charles, 204, 229-30
Buñuel, Alfonso, 268
Buñuel, Luis, 268
Burgess, Anthony, 251
Burroughs, William, 51, 159–60, 334
Byron, Lord, 127, 243
Cabot, Bartomeu, 154
Cabrera, Grau de, 258
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 156
Calvin, John, 156
Camus, Albert, 344–45
Canetti, Elias, 300
Cansinos-Assens, Rafael, 311
Cantatore, Vicente, 54
Cárcamo, 62
Cardenal, Ernesto, 73, 181–82
Cárdenas, 62
Cargol, Salvador, 4
Carpentier, Alejo, 182
Carriego, Evaristo, 20
Carrington, Dora, 138
Carroll, Lewis, 221
Carver, Raymond, 351
Casado, Miguel, 130–31, 150–52
Castaño, Marina, 307
Castellanos Moya, Horacio, 184–86
Castro, Fidel, 171, 323, 338
Castro, Raúl, 172
Cataño, José Carlos, 54–55
Caupolicán, 50
Cavalcanti, Guido, 117, 194
Cela, Camilo José, 8, 306-7, 350, 380
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 304
Cercas, Javier, 164–65, 189-91, 355, 357
Cercas, Raulito, 165
Cernuda, Luis, 99, 313
Ceronetti, Guido, 235
Cervantes, Miguel de, 35-36, 239-40 242, 331, 338
Cézanne, Paul, 65
Chabon, Michael, 219
Chagall, Marc, 254, 257
Champfleury, 343
Chandler, Raymond, 155
Chatwin, Bruce, 275
Chekhov, Anton, 351
Chesterton, G. K., 22
Chomsky, Noam, 214
Churchill, Winston, 284
Cid, Teófilo, 71
Clausewitz, Carl von, 141
Clemens, Orion, 294
Coelho, Paulo, 111, 359
Collyer, Jaime, 218, 339
Colonna, Francesco, 235
Coltrane, John, 121
Conrad, Joseph, 109, 322
Contreras, Gonzalo, 218, 339
Corominas, Joan, 87
Cortázar, Julio, 20, 22, 108, 241–42, 315–317, 320, 350, 353, 364, 367
Cortés, María, 206
Cortés-Monroy, Marcial, 72, 74, 143-44
Costamagna, Alejandra, 68, 70-71
Coupland, Douglas, 109
Cuesta, Jorge, 105
Dalí, Salvador, 140, 307
Dalton, Roque, 355
Dante Alighieri, 96
Darío,
Rubén, 43-45, 52, 101, 171, 241, 243
Daudet, Alphonse, 177–79, 343
Daudet, León, 178, 238
Day Lewis, Daniel, 276
de Kooning, Willem, 169
de la Guardia, Patricio and Antonio, 171
de la Selva, Salomón, 112
de Rokha, Carlos (Carlos Díaz Anabalón), 71
de Rokha, Pablo (Pablo Díaz Loyola), 42, 73, 95
Debord, Guy, 30, 40, 125–26
DeLillo, Don, 197
D’Halmar, Augusto, 108
Di Stéfano, Alfredo, 54
Diamant, Dora, 352
Diana, Princess of Wales, 358
Dick, Philip K., 51, 196–97, 219
Dickens, Charles, 149, 233, 240, 296
Diderot, Denis, 242
Diogenes, 144
Disney, Walt, 294
Domínguez, Oscar, 140
Donoso, Armando, 167
Donoso, José, 107–109, 217, 320
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 22, 238
Duchamp, Marcel, 96, 135, 192
Duras, Marguerite, 71
Duvall, Robert, 129
Dylan, Bob, 358
Echevarría, Ignacio, 184, 219, 357, 375
Edwards, Alexandra, 66
Edwards, Jorge, 217
Eliade, Mircea, 198, 200
Eliot, T. S., 358
Elizondo, Salvador, 146
Ellroy, James, 221-22
Eltit, Diamela, 4, 70, 75-76, 79-80, 359
Emar, Juan, 23, 70
Enrigue, Álvaro, 368
Ercilla, Alonso de, 43-45, 50, 101, 162
Espinoza, Patricia, 364
Euripides, 250
Faulkner, William, 297
Faust, Karl, 258