The Goodman Theater is providing free streaming of their stage adaptation of 2666 through April 2020 (at least).
Watch here:
https://www.goodmantheatre.org/Watch2666/
The adaptation changes some features of the book. For some reason, the first section is retitled “The Part About the Academics.” I haven’t watched all of it yet, but it is well worth your time.
Johnathan Russell Clark has published the first book about 2666. It’s a slim volume from Fiction Advocate’s new series called “…Afterwords” (which includes other books on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home). If you are Bolaño fan or critical reader, it is well worth your time.
Clark’s book is a hybrid of personal memoir, plot summary, and analysis. He offers critical commentary on the novel’s reception and place in literary history. There is some close reading of the novel–especially around the meaning of Archimboldi’s novels. There are five parts to the book (in addition to a personal prologue and epilogue): a part about Bolaño’s biography, a part about Bolaño’s other writing, a part about the structure of 2666, a part about 2666 as a “Single Work of Art”, and a part about Bolaño’s legacy. Though the whole thing is riveting, two of the five parts of the book focus exclusively on the text of 2666.
Clark engages with Bolaño’s disruptive place in the post-Boom lineage of Latin American writers. However, we are fifteen years past Bolaño’s death and there is another generation of Latin American writers working today acutely aware of the shadow from Blanes. For those interested in how Bolaño altered and transformed the literature of the Spanish language, this new generation, which includes the wildly varying styles of Valeria Luiselli, Laia Jufresa, Brenda Lozano, Carlos Gonzalez, and Yuri Herrera, is out there today, leading Latin American literature in exciting new experiments and literary forms. Clark’s further reading for Bolaño does not include The Return, Monsieur Pain, or A Little Lumpen Novelita, but I would argue that any one of those could be a fine entry point into Bolaño’s shorter fiction before attempting the epic 2666.
The world desperately needs more critical examination of Bolaño s work. Clark’s book is an excellent entry point for what is hopefully a long tradition. There is much to admire about this book but (and I’m saying this to myself and literally every other critic considering writing on B) let’s focus a little more on Bolaño’s work and less on our personal experience of having read it, or even it’s place in the world of literature.
I wrote about Bolaño’s legacy and the state of Latin American literature in translation for Full Stop: http://www.full-stop.net/2015/12/02/features/essays/mattbucher/beyond-bolano-and-beyond/
The question always arises: why hasn’t Mario Bellatin or Jorge Volpi or Fernando Vallejo or Ricardo Piglia or Enrique Vila-Matas or Daniel Sada (whom Bolaño called “the most difficult, a radical writer if there ever was one”) or Rodrigo Fresan or Juan Villoro (“his stories are some of the best written in Spanish today”—Bolaño) or Sergio Pitol or X, Y, or Z attained the same status in U.S. publishing circles (and the American reading public) as Bolaño? And inevitably the answers are convoluted and usually involve the ignorance or lack of cultivation and discernment among American readers, or the sad state of the publishing industry, but the Occam’s Razor truth is often that those writers, whoever they may be, are simply not as good. And that’s okay. Many of these books still need a champion. The truly inventive ones, such as Luis Martin-Santos’ Time of Silence or Mempo Giardinelli’s Sultry Moon, still need a prominent advocate to stand up and say repeatedly, in more than one review: “This is a truly important book.” Which is what happened with the Boom writers and Bolaño.
“Unlike the majority of gringo publishers, White was not monolingual. And in contrast to the majority of gringos who speak Spanish and have spent some time in Latin America and think that gives them a kind of international third-world experience that confers on them the intellectual and moral qualifications for—I don’t quite know what—White really did understand the fucked-up mechanisms of Latin American literary history.”
UPDATE: MARCH 3, 2016 – Alfaguara, a division of Penguin Random House (Spain) has announced that they will publish Bolaño’s The Spirit of Science Fiction and a collection of previously unpublished short stories in November 2016. One can only hope that English editions of both books will follow soon thereafter. Full press release here: http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9ace57d6ba2c597f9a4e40484&id=57ca75b431&e=f872eabf7d
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After A Little Lumpen Novelita was released in English last year, it’s worth considering how much of Roberto Bolaño’s writing remains to be published or translated. Have we seen all we will see in English of Bolaño? After even a cursory round of research, the answer is likely no. I will try to enumerate all the possibilities for unpublished or untranslated Bolaño works below.
Tl;dr: there is a TON of untranslated and unpublished Bolaño still out there, at least four novels and one short story collection
There is not a 1-to-1 correlation between Bolaño’s books in Spanish and his books in English because many of the stories and poems were grouped into different collections (with different titles) and, in English, Between Parentheses collected a lot of material that was published in various forms in Spanish.
The chart below from the 2013 Archivo Bolaño exhibit catalog shows the timeline of when Bolaño wrote most of his major works, divided into the periods when he lived in Barcelona, Gerona, and Blanes. (Another thing this chart shows is that he started Woes of the True Policemen long, long before starting 2666 – so it’s factually incorrect to call Woes a missing section of 2666 [though there might well be unpublished sections of 2666 still out there].)
Archivo Bolaño stated that the archive contains (using Google Translate here) “14,000 pages, 84 books, 167 interviews, 1,000 letters received and copies of some sent, 26 short stories and four unpublished novels, newspaper clippings, piles of papers … and a crumpled napkin from a bar in Mexico City, where Bolaño scrawled a poem sometime in the 70s.” The article goes on to state that Bolaño’s widow, Carolina, who introduced the exhibit at the opening, “is emphatic about the unpublished works: they still have ‘outstanding value’ and the supply will not run short. This frustrates me (believe me: if I say I have two months left to live, I would want to spend one month reading unpublished Bolaño). Most unpublished texts shown here include an excerpt, along with the number of pages and a summary of the story as a lure to publishers.”
However, this report from the press conference states that Carolina claimed “categorically that the estate has no intention of publishing the unedited works yet, though they have made a first reading for cataloging, most still require a thorough study and conscientious analysis to determine their value.”
This article mentions some of the same unpublished works have these titles (only four of which are novels–the rest are short stories): Lento palacio de invierno (1979), Tres minutos antes de la aparición del gato (1979), Las alamedas luminosas (1979), Las rodillas de un autor de ciencia-ficción, atrás (1979), El náufrago (1979-1982), Ellos supieron perder (1979-1982), La vÃrgen de Barcelona (1980), El contorno del ojo (1979-1982), El espectro de Rudolf Armand Philippi (1982), Adiós, Shane (1983), D.F, la paloma Tobruk (1983), Diorama (1983-1984), El espÃritu de la ciencia-ficción (1984), El maquinista (1986), Última entrevista en Boca-cero (1995-1996), Sepulcros de vaqueros (1996), Todo lo que la gente cuenta de Ulises Lima(1996-1997), Vuelve el man a Venezuela (1999), Corrida (1999-2000), Comedia del horror de Francia (2001) y Dos señores de Chile (2001).
Many of these titles overlap with the chart above and we can see where they fit in, but none of these after El Maquinista appear in the chart (and some have been published in the time since).
Let’s break this down and see if we can make sense of this list. Since there isn’t much concrete info on any of these, I am going to speculate wildly about many of them, based solely on the title and date.
1. Lento palacio de invierno [Slow Winter Palace] (1979) -Â A short story, 13 pages long, about a day in the life of an illegal immigrant in Barcelona.
2. Tres minutos antes de la aparición del gato [Three minutes before the appearance of the cat] (1979) - No info.
3. The bright malls [Las alamedas luminosas] (1979) - According to this photo from Archivo Bolaño, this book was inspired by two newspaper articles: one about six children crossing the desert in search of love and futbol and another about a Chilean poet named Julio Arriagada Auger who was “starved to death by his wife.” You can see some of the text here.
4. Las rodillas de un autor de ciencia-ficción, atrás [Knees an author of science fiction, back] (1979)  – No info.
5. El náufrago [The Castaway] (1979-1982)  - This report from the exhibition says that the first line of it is “Se comportaba de tal manera desfasado que uno no podÃa sino pensar que detrás de esos gestos se ocultaban semanas y tal vez meses de cuidado mimetismo con la figura de Robert Gordonâ€. (Roughly translated as “He behaved in such an outdated way, but no one could think that behind these gestures weeks and perhaps months were spent hiding with care the mimicry of the figure of Robert Gordon”.) You can make out more of the text in this photo.
6. Ellos supieron perder [They were able to lose]Â (1979-1982)Â Â – No info.
7. La vÃrgen de Barcelona [The Virgin of Barcelona] (1980) – Very little info.
8. El contorno del ojo [The Outline of the Eye]Â (1979-1982) – Possible reference to Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye?
9. El espectro de Rudolf Armand Philippi [The Spectre of Armand Rudolf Philippi] (1982) – Rodolfo Armand Philippi was a German naturalist and scholar based in Chile. He helped found the National Museum of Natural History in Chile. Apparently this is a book-length manuscript.
10. Adiós, Shane [Bye, Shane] (1983) – Possible reference to the film Shane?
11. D.F, la paloma, Tobruk [DF, The Pigeon, Tobruk] (1983) РTobruk is a city in Libya, the site of a WWII battle, which was the inspiration for a WWII hex-style boardgame called Tobruk. Bola̱o famously wrote about WWII boardgames in The Third Reich. But D.F. is Mexico City and Tobruk is also a Rock Hudson war movie. According this article, it is one of the four unpublished novels. I would be very interested to know more about this book.
12. Diorama [Diorama] (1983-1984), First mentioned on this site in 2009; also mentioned here. This is one of the four unpublished novels.
13. El espÃritu de la ciencia-ficción [The Spirit of Science Fiction] (1984). The Archivo Bolaño exhibit featured a large collection of Bolaño’s personal science fiction paperback collection. No doubt Bolaño was deeply influenced by the expansiveness of science fiction, especially as a younger writer. This also appears to be a novel and not a short story. I would imagine that the other stories here, if they are deemed suitable for publication and not mere juvenilia could be grouped together into a separate volume.
14. El maquinista [The Machinist] (1986) – No info.
15. Última entrevista en Boca-cero [The Last interview in Boca-cero] (1995-1996) – Melville House published a book called The Last Interview but it’s not clear if this is the same thing. The dates don’t match, for one, and I have a feeling this Boca-cero is a novel not an actual interview with Bolaño. I’m not sure what “Boca-cero” is. Boca is the best-known futbol team in Argentina and cero means zero, but is it also a place? The last interview in a town called Boca Zero?
16. Sepulcros de vaqueros [Graves of the Cowboys]Â (1996) – No info.
17. Todo lo que la gente cuenta de Ulises Lima [Everything that people think about Ulises Lima] (1996-1997) – Lima is, of course, a key figure in The Savage Detectives and Bolaño’s fictional universe. The fact that he was writing about Ulises Lima (who is based on his friend Mario Santiago Papasquiaro) in 1996 corresponds roughly to the time he was also composing The Savage Detectives. It’s not clear if this is an excised section of that novel or something separate.
18. Vuelve el man a Venezuela [The man returns to Venezuela] (1999) – No info, but this is around the period that Bolaño returned to Chile. Much of his writing about that trip is collected in Between Parentheses as “Fragments of a Return to the Native Land.” Not sure if this a fictionalization of that trip or something else entirely.
18. Corrida [Run] (1999-2000) – No info.
19. Comedia del horror de Francia [French Comedy of Horrors]Â (2001) – No info.
20. Dos se̱ores de Chile [Two Gentlemen of Chile] (2001) РLikely refers to Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, but could also be a reference to Two Gentlemen of Verona?
AND YET, there are at least two short novels that have been published in Spanish but not yet translated into English.
21. Consejos de un discÃpulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce [Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fan] – Written in collaboration with Antoni Garcia Porta, this was Bolaño’s first published novel (1984). This article describes the novel as “A noir account of an unlikely crime spree undertaken by a Joyce-obsessed Spanish writer and his South American girlfriend over a long Barcelona summer.” It is divided into 24 short chapters with an appendix titled “Manuscript Found in a Bullet: The Journal of Angel Ros.” So far it has not been translated into English.
22. Diario de Bar [Bar Diary] – Story included in the 2006 reprint of Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fan. It is set in February 1979 in Barcelona
There is no doubt that the information about unpublished Bolaño works is more comprehensive in Spanish. And I’m not a native Spanish speaker so I am relying on my own translations or Google Translate for a lot of this text. Bolaño has received much more attention and scholarly work in the Spanish-speaking world than the English-speaking world.
THIS ARTICLE says that “The list [above] may seem tedious (and it is), but so is reading the displayed excerpts of original manuscripts: except for some posters of introductory works that provide a brief gloss (only in Catalan, causing foreign consternation in the exhibition) for visitors, there is nothing here that to infer if the observer is facing a novel or a story, if the story or novel is unfinished and was completed by the author and if it was considered a quality text or a discard.” So there is still lots of work to be done on Bolaño’s archive and the work has only just begun.
If you have information about any of these titles, email me and I’ll add it.
I reviewed A Little Lumpen Novelita for the Dublin Review of Books and also considered its role in Bolaño’s fictional universe.
http://www.drb.ie/essays/a-leap-into-darkness
The myth of Bolaño then is that it was supposedly created by book marketers and the media. The myth is that there is only one way for an American (or English-speaking) idea of a “Latin American author†to exist. If an author’s story or works do not neatly fit into that mould, then the reality will be twisted into the desired shape. But that logic creates a counter-myth if the myth itself is easier to comprehend than the reality at stake.
Part of what makes Bolaño so appealing and so confounding is his wide interest in various subjects and themes. His work operates on a hyper-realistic model of everything-all-at-once. A Little Lumpen Novelita is unique in his fictional universe because it is set in Rome (and features a Libyan character), but throughout his many novels and stories he explores the history and literature of dozens of countries, the politics of Europe, Mexico, Central and South America. His books examine religion and Catholicism, the nature of death, drama, academia, games, World War II, the lives of the poets, drinking, sex, the police, oceans, disappearances, murder, sports and film, just to name a few. His literary styles and techniques are equally varied diverse. And yet he manages to return to several key motifs and characters throughout his four decades of writing.
Wild Lord has an excellent essay up about the very nature of 2666:
To my mind, 2666 is — by a long shot — the greatest novel of this young century, and that distinction should stand for some time. It is sprawling, gorgeous, horrifying, hilarious, unbearably sad and just as unbearably beautiful. It is virtually indescribable.
The essay pairs well with Chris Andrews’ recently released book of criticism, Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction: An Expanding Universe. Here is an excerpt from that book:
The publication of The Savage Detectives by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007 was a breakthrough. The novel was reviewed widely and at length, with almost unanimous enthusiasm. In its first year, The Savage Detectives sold 22,000 copies in hardcover, a remarkable success for a translated book. But the climactic moment in Bolaño’s posthumous North American camÂpaign was undoubtedly the publication of 2666 in November 2008, which, to reclaim a term overused by marketing departments, truly was an event. When proof copies of the book began to circulate, Leon Neyfakh claimed in The New York Observer that carrying one was like “driving an open-top Porsche.” The reviews were even more numerous, and, overall, even more positive. Within days of publication, Farrar, Straus rushed out a second printing, bringing the total to more than 75,000 copies.
Bolaño burst onto the American literary scene in 2007—four years after his death—with The Savage Detectives. The long novel is divided into three sections: I) Mexicans Lost in Mexico (1975), II) The Savage Detectives (1976-1996), and III) The Sonora Desert (1976).
I started working on this post about locations in The Savage Detectives four years ago. I plotted some of the maps out shortly after I had mapped out some of the Mexico City locations in 2666. In our 2009 group read of 2666, we also created a map of most of the locations mentioned in all five sections of that novel. In the time since then, Gabe Habash has published a wonderful map of the road trip that takes place in third section of The Savage Detectives.
Many people read the fairly short first section of the novel, which is narrated by Juan Garcia Madero and hopscotches around the tangle of streets in Mexico City, and loved it, but were often put off by the second lengthy section of interviews. Some called it a slog and didn’t see how that second section tied in with the rest of the book.
I’m also interested in that first section (all the sections, really) and so I’m going to focus on the geography of Mexico City described in the novel’s opening 120 pages. Let me also start with the caveats that I have not been to Mexico City, I do not speak Spanish, and that in fact, the geography of the book is one of the hooks for me “into†the book. Imagining the passage of people through spaces helps me see the story differently than I otherwise might.
At one point, Juan Garcia Madero is inside the Fonts’ walled estate and he is so immersed in that environment that he can’t believe “Mexico City is really out there.†That’s how I feel. I’m so immersed in my own little world that I forget that I’m actually surrounded by a vibrant city, state, country, and continent.
I also realize that Bolaño is describing a Mexico City of 38 years ago and that many of the places he’s describing have vanished or changed, and are not visible in Google Street View, but the general layout of the streets has not changed. And it seems that Bolaño derives great pleasure from mentally re-walking the streets of his youth, describing elaborate routes and recalling exact street names. I hope someone with more knowledge than I will leave a comment explaining where I have erred and what I have missed.
The page numbers below correspond to the 2012 Picador UK edition of the novel.
p. 6 – Madero, Lima, and Belano take a pesero to Reforma, from there they walk to a bar on Calle Bucareli. Reforma is a huge avenue in DF. Here’s a look at the intersection of Reforma and Bucareli:
That yellow statue is in front of a skyscraper called the Torre del Caballito.
Could this be the bar they visit?
Probably not (see below).
p. 7—We learn that Madero lives in Colonia Lindavista {Lindavista is located in the borough of Gustavo A. Madero}; he goes back to the bar on Bucareli.
[Note that Insurgentes runs right through the neighborhood. It is the main artery of traffic here.]
p.8—After a brief mention of the sewers of Chapultepec, Madero is back in the bar on Bucareli. We learn that the bar is called Encrucijada Veracruzana.
This guy claims to have taken photos of many of the real places in The Savage Detectives, including Encrucijada Veracruzana (which roughly translates to “Crossroads of Veracruz”; later on we find out that Rosario, the waitress, is from Veracruz).
This “Cantina Bar Bucareli” still exists at 66 Calle Bucareli.
p. 10—Madero takes the UNAM bus and wanders around “downtown†where he stops at a bookstore called   “LibrerÃa del Sótano.” He then crosses Juarez and eats his lunch in the Alameda.
“Downtown” is essentially “Centro”, or the area around the historic city center – the Zocalo. The Alameda park Madero visits is the western border of “downtown.”
Júarez is the street on the southern border of the Alameda, implying that the bookstore is right there on Júarez or very nearby. And, in fact, if you waltz down Júarez, you’ll see the bookstore, called “LibrerÃas del Sótano,” is still there:
Here is a park bench in the Alameda:
Madero then spent the evening on Calle Corazón (which is one block over from where Madero lives in Colonia Lindavista). I think this is a fictional street name, but Madero says he watches a soccer game being played there and there is one soccer pitch right in the middle of Lindavista, bordering Calle Lima. I’m going to consider that a nod to Ulises Lima. Or vice-versa.
pp. 12-13—Madero goes to Café Quito on Bucareli, which is a little past the Encrucijada. The real-life Cafe Quito, confirmed by Bolaño’s translator, is a place called Cafe La Habana.
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Maria Font’s house is in Colonia Condesa; Catalina O’Hara’s house in Colonia Coyoacán.
Colonia Condesa is right next to Chapultepec.
And Coyoacán, the famous artist’s district once home to Frida Kahlo, is farther south, down near UNAM.
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p. 18—Ulises Lima lives in a room on a rooftop on Calle Anahuac, near Insurgentes.
Here is Anahuác, just off Insurgentes. Could that be Lima’s place up there?
p. 19—they steal books from the Libreria Francesca in the (upscale) Zona Rosa and from the Libreria Baudelaire on Calle General Martinez, near Calle Horacio in Polanco.
“Libreria Francesca” just means “French bookstore” and in fact there is a real French-language bookstore in Zona Rosa, also called Temps de Lire. The LibrerÃa Baudelaire is actually a bookstore in Santiago, Chile, that Bolaño here seems to have superimposed onto Mexico City.  The Avenida Horacio (not Calle) in Polanco (just north of Chapultepec) doesn’t appear to have a “Calle General Martinez” anywhere near there. However, Polanco is interesting in that it has streets named after Horace (Horacio), Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Archimedes, Hesiod, Ibsen, Racine, Homer, Pascal, Galileo, Cicero, Pliny, Sophocles, Seneca, Moliere, Jules Verne, Oliver Goldsmith, Edgar Allan Poe, Lafontaine, Anatole France, Dumas, Tennyson, Emerson, Schiller, Isaac Newton, Hegel, and Euler among others. No doubt this appealed to Bolaño.
p. 22—the Fonts live in Colonia Condesa on Calle Colima. Colima sort of dead-ends on the eastern edge of Condesa, so I’m assuming it’s that end of Colima that houses the Font estate. In that last block of Colima is now the Museo Histórico JudÃo y del Holocausto.
p. 26—Pancho and Madero meet at El Loto de Quintana Roo, a Chinese café (where they drink coffee) near the Glorieta de Insurgentes. “El loto” means the lotus and Quintana Roo is a state in the Yucatan. It’s a funny image. The Glorieta de Insurgentes is a large monument in a traffic circle on Insurgentes.
Note that just off Avenida Chapultepec is Calle Amberes. Amberes (or Antwerp) is the title of Bolaño’s short, seminal work of experimental fiction. Pancho and Juan then head for the Fonts’ home in Colonia Condesa (p. 27).
p. 29—We learn that Laura Damian died when she was struck by a car in Tlalpan, which is on the southern edge of D.F., south of Coyoacán.
pp. 32-33—Maria meets Garcia Madero at Café Quito. They leave and walk along Bucareli toward Reforma, then cross Reforma and head up Avenida Guerrero. Maria says “this is where the whores are.†Basically, they are just walking north on Bucareli as it turns into Guerrero north of Reforma. They continue north past Violeta and Magnolia, “Someday I’m going to live here,†she says. [Calle Magnolia is called “J. Meneses” west of Guerrero.]
p. 34—We learn the dance school Maria attends is on Donceles. Donceles is just  a  couple of blocks off the Zocalo and is indeed in the arts district where there are several theaters, museums, and dance companies.
They turn left on Magnolia, on to Avenida Jesus Garcia, then walk south to Heroes Revolucionarios Ferrocarrileros, where they go into a coffee shop. (Magnolia changes into J. Meneses, and then into Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. In this section of the novel, Madero makes a “banal remark” about Sor Juana to Maria and she judges him harshly—he avoids the topic of Sor Juana after that. {You can also see here how frequently streets change names. Stay on one DF street long enough and it is certain to be called something else. Bolaño says “Every hundred feet the world changes.”}) I’m not sure who “J. Meneses” commemorates. Perhaps this Chilean priest?
If they go east on Heroes/Mina, all the way back to Guerrero, they will have just made a circle.
p. 37—Lupe tells the story of how she got beat up and sat down on a bench in the Plaza San Fernando to die. You can see “Calle San Fernando” and the adjacent plaza in the picture just above (in the lower right corner). The park benches there have a unique look.
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When Lupe’s son died, she was living in a building on Paraguay, near the Plaza de Santa Catarina. After that story, there is a lot of back and forth to the Fonts’ house.
p. 58—Pancho and Garcia Madero leave the Fonts’ House in Colonia Condesa. They walk through the Parque España, down Parras, through the Parque San Martin, and along Teotihuacan. They get to Insurgentes, then head down Manzanillo, turn onto Aguascalientes, then south again onto Medellin, walking until they reach Calle Tepeji, stopping in front of a five-story building. This is a fairly easy route to follow on Google Maps and gives us a better idea of where exactly on Colima the Fonts live: likely in the block between Guadalajara and Sonora. Here is the route, starting on Colima, down through the two parks, across Insurgentes and south on Manzanillo.
And here’s the rest of the route: south on Manzanillo, to Aguascalientes, to Medellin, to Tepeji.
Somewhere on that block of Tepeji they go into a five story building. All of the buildings on this block are two-story, except for the one right at the corner of Medellin, which is blue and five stories tall.
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p. 59—From the roof of that building they can see the lots of the Parque de las Americas, the Medical Center, the Children’s Hospital, and the General Hospital. Although, I don’t think there is any park called that per se – the park here is Jardin Ramon Lopez Velarde.
p. 65—Madero goes to the bus stop on Insurgentes, but then decides to go back to the Fonts’ house.
Here is the nearest bus stop on Insurgentes.
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Madero calls Maria Font and tells her he is near her house, at Plaza Popocatépetl. (Note here that Avenida Sonora connects the Plaza and Colima, Font’s street. Section III of The Savage Detectives is called “The Sonora Desert.”)
Madero waits in the Plaza for two hours, writing in his journal and reading a book of poems, before venturing back over to the Fonts’ estate.
p. 75 – Madero and Maria go to a lecture by Octavio Paz. They meet Ernesto at the lecture, at the Capilla Alfonsina. Afterward they go to a restaurant on Calle Palma called La Palma de la Vida.
Some of the following pages mention places we’ve already visited: Reforma, Cafe Quito, Bucareli, etc.
p. 79 – Madero sleeps with Rosario “at her place, a crummy tenement building way out in the Colonia Merced Balbuena, near the Calzada de la Viga.” Â Here is just such a building:
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pp. 81-86 – Madero leaves the Encrucijada Veracruzana (on Bucareli) and “turns the corner” at the Reloj Chino and walks toward La Ciudadela, looking for a cafe where he can write. He crosses the Jardin Morelos, crosses Niños Heroes (also called Calle de Balderos), Plaza Pacheco, and is about to turn up Revillagigedo toward the Alameda when Quim Font and Lupe surprise him. They turn right on Victoria to Dolores and go into a Chinese cafe. They leave the cafe at one in the morning and go looking for a hotel. They finally find one on Rio de la Loza called Media Luna and leave Lupe there. Quim and Garcia Madero keep walking toward Reforma and Quim takes a taxi at Niños Heroes.
p. 90 – Madero looks for Belano and Ulises Lima in bookstores, starting with “Plinio el Joven, on Venustiano Carranza” then the “Lizardi bookstore on Donceles” and the “antiquarian bookstore Rebecca Nodier” at Mesones and Pino Suarez.
Calle de Venustiano Carranza is a shopping district just south of the Zocalo. I didn’t see any bookstores on the street now, or anything called Pliny the Younger, but there is a restaurant called Bolaño’s.
Calle Donceles is a used bookstore mecca. There are at least a dozen used bookstores in this one street.
There are no bookstores there any longer, but here is the intersection of Mesones and Pino Suarez:
pp. 91-92 – Madero again visits a bunch of bookstores: LibrerÃa del Sotano on Juarez, LibrerÃa Mexicana on Calle Aranda, near the Plaza de San Juan, the LibrerÃa Pacifico at Bolivar and 16 de Septiembre, the Viejo Horacio on Correo Mayor, LibrerÃa Orozco on Reforma between Oxford and Praga, LibrerÃa Milton at Milton and Darwin, and the LibrerÃa El Mundo on Rio Nazas.
We’ve already visited the LibrerÃa del Sotano on Juarez (above), but the LibrerÃa Mexicana on Calle Aranda, near the Plaza de San Juan, is long gone, replaced by a district of chicken restaurants.
The LibrerÃa Pacifico at Bolivar and 16 de Septiembre is also either gone or fictional, but on that same block (and coincidentally, somewhat closer to Avenida Francisco Madero) is the American Bookstore.
The Viejo Horacio on Correo Mayor is also in the general vicinity of these other locations, Centro. No Old Horace bookstore there, though. The LibrerÃa Orozco on Reforma between Oxford and Praga, if it existed, would be here:
The LibrerÃa Milton at Milton and Darwin is near Polanco, on this block:
Finally, the LibrerÃa El Mundo on Rio Nazas is also non-existent, but, for effect, here is a bookstand on Rio Nazas:
Rio Nazas seems to be a fairly upscale street, home to the French Embassy, a yoga studio, cafes, etc.
For more on bookstores in Mexico City, there is a good (English-language) walking tour here.
pp. 97-99 – Madero goes to Cafe Quito, walks to Montes, where Jacinto lives, then wanders around after calling the Fonts’, before finding himself in a “bleak stretch of Colonia Anahuac, surrounded by dying trees and peeling walls.” He goes into a place on Calle Texcoco and drinks coffee then calls Angelica Font again. Later he walks back to Sullivan and as he crosses Reforma, near the statue of Cuauhtemoc, he runs into Belano and Ulises Lima.
There are several mentions of “Calle Montes” in the book, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe that street has been renamed? We do know that it’s near the Monument to the Revolution, which is between Bucareli (A) and Anahuac (C).
There is still plenty of peeling paint and dying trees in Anahuac.
Here is Madero’s route back from Anahuac to Reforma, where he runs into Belano and Lima (and then wakes up in Rosario’s room out in Merced Balbuena).
p. 106 – Madero and Rosario walk to a bathhouse on Calle Lorenzo Boturini called “El Amanuense Azteca.”
You can see that Lorenzo Boturini is the name of a neighborhood directly south of Merced Balbuena, and Lorenzo Boturini is the name of the main avenue in that neighborhood.
There is no bath house there, but there is a gym on Lorenzo Boturini:
View Larger Map
p. 109 – Garcia Madero wanders around downtown, stopping by the Zócalo and ending up at a café on Madero called Nueva SÃbaris (new Sybaris implies something erotic there and indeed Pancho recounts his night of whoring for Madero there).
The Zócalo, where Madero’s “pores opened up at last”:
The borough is called “Gustavo Madero,” but the avenue just off the Zócalo is “Francisco I. Madero.” On this avenue is a Gandhi Books store (there are several in DF). It was in Gandhi Books in 1976 where Bolaño stood up and first read the Infrarealist Manifesto.
I’m fairly certain that the Gandhi Books Bolaño stole from and read at is this one on Juarez, near LibrerÃas del Sótano and the Alameda.
[photos from CCCB touring dossier]
p. 110 – Madero and Pancho catch a taxi at Reforma and Juárez (Francisco I. Madero turns into Juárez) and head back toward the Fonts’ house on Calle Colima in Colonia Condesa.
[click the image]
p. 116 – Madero is at the Fonts’ house and hears sounds of a party from one of the houses on Calle Guadalajara or Avenida Sonora. This allows us, finally, to pinpoint the exact block of the Fonts’ house. It seems safe to assume here that it is on Calle Colima between Guadalajara and Sonora.
Most of the buildings on that block are now large medical offices or multi-story apartment buildings, but there are a couple of single-family homes left on the south side of the street.
p. 120 – a brief mention of Calle Cuernavaca, which Colima dead-ends into in the west.
p. 124 – Ulises Lima, Belano, Garcia Madero, and Lupe make their escape from Calle Colima in Quim’s Impala. In “less than two seconds we were on Avenida Oaxaca, heading north out of the city.”
Many of the same locations show up in Part II of the novel. I’m working on mapping those, but will have to break the locations into five or six posts.
UPDATE: I’ve posted Maria Serrano’s commentary about each of the images below.
The CCCB in Barcelona is currently hosting an exhibit of Bolaño’s personal effects (manuscripts, notebooks, typewriters, etc.) titled BOLANO ARCHIVE. 1977-2003.
EXPOSICIÓ // ARXIU BOLANO 1977-2003 from CCCB on Vimeo.
Additionally, the exhibit includes several audio-visual works based on Bolaño’s writing. Here’s an example:
Wallace-l lister Maria Serrano attended the exhibit in Barcelona and shares with us these pictures. Click to enlarge.
Maria says: “This image belongs to the manuscript of 2666. It’s from “The part about Amalfitano”, when Professor Amalfitano suddenly starts drawing geometric figures while his students do their work. The text in the novel reads like this: “The next day, as his students wrote, or as he himself was talking, Amalfitano began to draw very simple geometric figures, a triangle, a rectangle, and at each vertex he wrote whatever name came to him, dictated by fate or lethargy or the immense boredom he felt thanks to his students and the classes and the oppressive heat that had settled over the city. Like this:
What appears to be a map of Santa Teresa:
Tinajero’s “poem” from The Savage Detectives, but Maria notes this is actually a manuscript page from Antwerp:
Maria notes: “This page is also from Antwerp. In this case its the Postscript. It reads like this (I love this quote, I think the image it summons is very powerful): “POSTSCRIPT: Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I’m at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to grid himself with courage.”
Bolaño’s business card. He calls himself a Poet and Vagabond.
Another draft of Tinajero’s poem. Maria says: “The Savage Detectives / Cion [in Mexican Spanish sounds like “Sion”] / visual poem? By Cesarea Tinajero found in an issue of “Caborca” / that according to Lima and Belano meant / Navigation /Acta Est Fabu”.
One thing that strikes me is how clean and neat these journals are. Here are some of Madero’s drawings (claves = keys) for The Savage Detectives:
Marvin Kleinemeier also attended the exhibit and took some fantastic photos. I especially love the picture of Bolaño’s copy of The Rise and Decline of the Third Reich board game.
April 28, 2013 would have been Bolaño’s 60th birthday. The CCCB is hosting “Bolaño Day” in his honor. Here are a few ways to participate, including using the hashtag #diabolano on Twitter.
Why is Bolaño so obsessed with Germany? Maybe this is naive (and US-centric) question, but throughout his work, Bolaño displays an interest in Europe as the center of culture, with the U.S. playing much more of a supportive role. We see this in 2666 wherein the three critics are European and travel to Mexico. Oscar Fate represents the only significant American character—and he is an outsider. In The Third Reich, Udo Berger plays the board game “The Third Reich” and as a model of World War II, the focus is not on the Pacific Theater or the US, but on Europe. One of the benefits of reading a lot of contemporary Latin American fiction is gaining a different perspective on the world—especially one that does not countenance the United States of America very much. Bolaño and Enrique Vila-Matas (among others) share a fascination with Paris. Bolaño moved from Chile to Mexico to the Costa Brava, Spain—the setting of The Third Reich.
The Third Reich is the story of a man who goes to Spain on vacation and can’t bring himself to leave. This is sort of what happened to Roberto Bolaño. So, it’s easy to see how the novel is a love letter to Spain, La Costa Brava, the Mediterranean Coast, and Blanes. Even though this is a novel about the interplay of games, I would argue that one of Bolaño’s main interests here is geography. Geography and history.
“History in general is a bloody thing, you have to admit.”—Udo
The game (The Third Reich) appears to be a more intricate and detailed version of Risk or Axis & Allies: Europe. But as a realistic reflection of World War II, a better parallel would probably be the game Europa. [Note the large gameboard, complex documentation, rulebooks, calculators, tweezers (!!), and hex units:]
EUROPA
http://www.zoi.wordherders.net/?page_id=22
At first glance, Bolaño doesn’t seem too interested in making the details of the game known. It’s not until late in the book that he reveals how the game is actually played (with dice) and at first, it seems more like a chess game (which requires no apparatus beyond the game pieces). But as the game between Udo and El Quemado evolves, we see more details emerge relating to how the game is actually played. Also, Bolaño initially ties up the “game” sections of the novel into standalone set pieces (which can be skipped over cleanly), but once the balance of power begins to shift from Udo to El Quemado (and Ingeborg and Hanna leave, and Udo is alone), the “game” sections become more intertwined into the main narrative.
Historically, obviously, Germany is a losing position. Yet, Udo is a national champion gamesman, from Germany, playing the German side. Until he actually loses to El Quemado, he remains convinced that he can always prevail with the German side. But he believes this is more of a strategic declaration than sympathy for the Nazis. Udo even says “I’m a kind of anti-Nazi.” It’s El Quemado whose ambiguous heritage represents the Other, the victim and enemy of the Germans. Udo is trying to re-write history in the name of geographical strategy.
Udo finds himself in a real-world game. The other game pieces are trapping him on multiple fronts and, like his match with El Quemado, the balance of power begins to shift and he finds his control over the situation slipping away. “The Wolf” and “The Lamb” seem less people than game pieces. When they corner the maid, Clarita, in Udo’s hotel room, Udo notes “she took possession of a strategic spot next to the bed.” Udo sees everything as a game, a contest, the people merely players.
Like many other novels, and many other games, there is a lot of setup without a lot of action. Like a lot of wars and a lot of summer vacations, there is monotony, a hurry-up-and-wait mentality. The allure of The Third Reich is all about setting and geography and atmosphere and scenarios. And yet, the characters, the world Bolaño creates here, comes to life as much as The Savage Detectives or 2666.
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