Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
New York : New Directions, c2010.
Description
Contains five short stories and two essays by Chilean author Roberto Bola?o.
User reviews
LibraryThing member railarson
In death, Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has become the Tupac Shakur of the literary world. Since succumbing to liver failure in 2003, he has consistently released books every year (including the 900-page masterpiece, 2666). I realize that this incredible feat is due more to the slow process of
This year’s offering is The Insufferable Gaucho—a slim but powerful collection of short stories as well as a pair of essays in which he elliptically explores his own approaching mortality and place in the pantheon of Latin American literature.
Bolaño’s Police Rat revisits Franz Kafka’s hidden world of Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk. Pepe the Cop, a nephew of Josephine’s who, like his famous aunt, has a sensitivity that raises him a cut above the common rat, is on the tail of a killer in their midst. Unfortunately for Pepe—and as we have learned through countless police stories—individuality isn’t necessarily a trait that is appreciated by superior officers.
As Josephine’s star wanes, Kafka’s narrator muses, “She is a small episode in the eternal history of our people, and the people will get over the loss of her.” One has to wonder if Bolaño was winking at us from his own position as a singing rat of some renown and one fully aware of his own demise. Perhaps it was a poke back at his own growing fame in the years right before he died when he chose the epigram for this book from the end of Kafka’s story: “So perhaps we shall not miss so very much at all.”
If Martin Scorsese ever decides to direct an animated movie for Pixar, I’d like to see Police Rat on the big screen. I could just imagine Robert De Niro doing the voiceover for Pepe: “Have you ever taken on a weasel? Are you ready to be torn apart by a weasel?” Maybe it’s time for the studio to leave behind Lady and the Trampist fare like Ratatouille, and get real. I digress.
In Literature + Illness = Illness, a many-faceted facing of the terminal disease that cut his life short at 50, Bolaño writes, “Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.” It is a shout back from the ragged edge of things, and about as true as anything I’ve ever heard.
This is one rat that will miss Bolaño when publication finally catches up to his work’s inevitable conclusion.
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translation than any powers Bolaño may have developed from beyond the grave, but I really wouldn’t put anything past him.This year’s offering is The Insufferable Gaucho—a slim but powerful collection of short stories as well as a pair of essays in which he elliptically explores his own approaching mortality and place in the pantheon of Latin American literature.
Bolaño’s Police Rat revisits Franz Kafka’s hidden world of Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk. Pepe the Cop, a nephew of Josephine’s who, like his famous aunt, has a sensitivity that raises him a cut above the common rat, is on the tail of a killer in their midst. Unfortunately for Pepe—and as we have learned through countless police stories—individuality isn’t necessarily a trait that is appreciated by superior officers.
As Josephine’s star wanes, Kafka’s narrator muses, “She is a small episode in the eternal history of our people, and the people will get over the loss of her.” One has to wonder if Bolaño was winking at us from his own position as a singing rat of some renown and one fully aware of his own demise. Perhaps it was a poke back at his own growing fame in the years right before he died when he chose the epigram for this book from the end of Kafka’s story: “So perhaps we shall not miss so very much at all.”
If Martin Scorsese ever decides to direct an animated movie for Pixar, I’d like to see Police Rat on the big screen. I could just imagine Robert De Niro doing the voiceover for Pepe: “Have you ever taken on a weasel? Are you ready to be torn apart by a weasel?” Maybe it’s time for the studio to leave behind Lady and the Trampist fare like Ratatouille, and get real. I digress.
In Literature + Illness = Illness, a many-faceted facing of the terminal disease that cut his life short at 50, Bolaño writes, “Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.” It is a shout back from the ragged edge of things, and about as true as anything I’ve ever heard.
This is one rat that will miss Bolaño when publication finally catches up to his work’s inevitable conclusion.
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LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
Except for one story, it is a big bore
LibraryThing member librarianbryan
A mixed bag of scraps from the increasingly legendary Bolano. In a few places we feel the magick that made him so incisive: “Two Catholic Tales,” “Literature Illness = Illness,” and the brutal “The Myths of Cthulhu.” We also see some of the ideas that got hammered into 2666: “Police
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Rat” and “Álvaro Rousselot's Journey.” The title story relies way too much on a Borges story I don't remember enough for to me comment. Show Less
LibraryThing member pessoanongrata
brilliance in half-assedness. how does he do it? it's like he wrote these stories on the back of an envelope while riding a bus on his way to his publisher to have the very same story published. it works. his essays in the back are great too.
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
I was worried when I ordered this book that I was making the mistake of many completists - would this be a good Bolano, like Distant Star, or a barrel-scraping like Woes of the True Policeman?
Fortunately, this book offers some true, classic Bolano, and serves - in places - as an almost perfect
Bolano did not achieve acclaim for his essay writing, which besides does not always survive the translation away from Spanish. But "Literature + Illness = Illness" proved quite fascinating, especially with its focus on the interplay (and importance) of sex, books, and travel.
All in all, an excellent collection that deserves its place on the bookshelf next to 2666 and By Night in Chile.
Fortunately, this book offers some true, classic Bolano, and serves - in places - as an almost perfect
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introduction to his style. "The Insufferable Gaucho" is an excellent meditation on identity and madness; "Police Rat" is a police procedural set in the sewers; and "Alvaro Rousselot's Journey" is a Borgesian delight. There are missteps - subjectively speaking - such as "Jim" and "Two Catholic Tales", although the latter is worth rereading to figure out the overlap between the two pieces.Bolano did not achieve acclaim for his essay writing, which besides does not always survive the translation away from Spanish. But "Literature + Illness = Illness" proved quite fascinating, especially with its focus on the interplay (and importance) of sex, books, and travel.
All in all, an excellent collection that deserves its place on the bookshelf next to 2666 and By Night in Chile.
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LibraryThing member JBarringer
My favorite story in this collection is the one about Pepe, the young nephew of Kafka's Josephine the Singing Mouse. The nephew is a rat, and works as a cop.
Language
Original language
Spanish