Chekhov's Mistress
This is Not the End of Bolano
I went through a period of literary despondency for days after finishing Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and there’s little of this infectous writer in English I haven’t read. The good news: We still have more to look forward to (contrary to this report in The New Yorker). This Fall New Directions is publishing The Romantic Dogs, Bolaño’s poems from 1980 to 1998. What I gather about Bolaño was that his heart was in poetry, so perhaps this will be a look into the real man, even if these are not the works he’s known for. The text in Spanish is out on the internet and New Directions has a poem from the new translation available from their Website (at the link above). Of course I’ll have more to say about 2666 in the coming months, but it’s not due out until November (lucky blog boy that I am) so it will be more fun to talk about then.
comments
I’ve also heard that La pista de hielo (The Ice Rink) is going into translation to be published in the near future. (An informal review is embedded in the hyperlink of my name below.) I look forward to reading your thoughts on that massive tome soon.
– amcorrea (08/25 at 05:04 PM)
(That is, if you type “html” after the last dot...)
I wonder how long it took Natasha Wimmer to translate 2666? How long did it take you to read it?
– amcorrea (08/25 at 05:14 PM)
You can’t ask a father of three young children how long it took to read a 900 page book! 
But since you asked, about a month. It took me much longer to read Against the Day, so maybe that says something about Bolano’s ability to engage, but it’s also not a terribly complex novel despite its sweeping range.
My guess is that it wouldn’t have taken too long to translate - relatively speaking - because the language and phrasing doesn’t seem to me to be difficult and there doesn’t appear to me to be the layers of meaning you’d find in, say, the Quixote.
Thanks for the link (which I fixed) - The Ice Rink sounds Rashomon-like.
– Bud Parr (08/26 at 08:37 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: August 25, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:3
- Links to this Post: Technorati
