REVIEW: Nazi Literature of the Americas

It's been a few weeks since I finished Roberto Bolaño's weird and entertaining book, and a few weeks that it's itched on my mind. Here, then, let me scratch.

Nazi Literature of the Americas is a pseudo-encyclopedia of 30 imaginary Fascist writers of the past, present, and future ("future" indicated by the death dates of some authors that are well into the 2000s). As well, there's an "Epilogue for Monsters." All writers are native to North and South America that plausibly intersect with real-life history, literary cliques and public figures.

While the organization of the book into sections labeled with a name and dates (to say nothing of the faux index or bibliography of secondary literary figures) implies an academic objectivity, a personality emerges behind the biographical sketches. We see it in how some authors have oddly abrupt and eclectic bios, while others linger in the emotional life, dwelling on, for example, a writer's terrifying break-up. We see, also, a narrative teased out of how the writers' lives do and do not intersect with each other. Some are siblings, others lovers, others brothers-in-arms, still others are wholly alone. White space is as much a storytelling element as text.

It's all wickedly funny and creepy, but in the last third of the book I began to wonder what Bolaño was going to do with all this. I worried that the momentum would fall slack and the book would implode into the cleverness of its conceit.

For all of Bolaño's golden reputation, this is the first of his books that I've read. So forgive me for my doubt. Indeed, the final bio on "the infamous Ramirez Hoffman"  pulls together threads of what's come before, while shoving the narrative forward, crystallizing the personality of the book's rarely-cited "I" into someone named (who'd've thought) Roberto Bolaño, a character emotionally invested in this final, strangest subject.

What's fascinating is how my reactions to the various writers incarnated in this book are manipulated to craft the story. I'm fond of many of the writers described, Fascist or no, while others bewilder me. And in the descriptions of the books and magazines they published, I was surprised to find myself rather sad that such interesting literary experiments didn't actually exist. By conjuring such reactions from me via fragmentary sketches of imagined lives, Bolaño gives substance to this elliptical book that's full of white space (both literal and metaphorical). That is, Bolaño uses the reader's emotions as the glue to hold the book together into a singular unit; without such breath-catching writing in the bios, Nazi Literature of the Americas would've been doomed as a series of witty sketches.

I should note, though, that while the book finally coheres, I did wish for more. I wish everything didn't depend on that last bio, that the fusing of the fragments would've begun earlier in the book, resulting in a deeper finish.

And there is, of course, so much intriguing material. Nazi Literature of the Americas leads to twitchy questions: What does it mean to be an artist with a bankrupt moral code? Because these invented lives are most certainly people with minds committed to literature and creativity, alongside their commitment to extreme right-wing ideology.

How is our literary language influenced (infected?) by our politics, whatever our beliefs may be? Why is it that being a 'patron of the arts' sounds like such an unquestionably good thing? Does it matter if that arts patron is supporting a Fascist artist? Can you be both a poet and a Nazi? Am I a bad person if I like a poem written by a Nazi? How does language and literature shape a nation and national experience?

Oh, Bolaño, you mad writer, look how you've made my mind turn.

The Quarterly Conversation compared "the dark abuse that kneels beneath the dazzling surface" of this book to Lolita. Fueled by a passion for literature that trills off the pages, alongside sly humor, a penchant for discomfort, and a shade of terror, Nazi Literature of the Americas is finally a book that is--is it odd to say?--fun to read. It might've been more, but rather than dwell on what's absent, I'll delight in this as it is. And look forward to the next Bolaño book I'll read; if the adulation of critics is to be trusted, The Savage  Detectives brings the best of Nazi Literature of the Americas with the additional substance I crave.

Image Credit: The Colour of Memory

Comments

[freeverse21]

This guy sounds like a contemporary incarnation of Borges.

[Anna Clark]

It's hard to ignore the parallels! The big difference: Borges does his magic in a dizzying, compact few pages. Bolaño slows the pace down, has a bit of a mosey to his writing.

[a]

borges is better