By Night in Chile

by Roberto Bolaño

This short book by Bolaño is unlike any of the previous ones I've read.  Sure, it is about a writer, as are all of his books that I've read, but there aren't many more similarities than that.

By Night in Chile is comprised of the deathbed confessions of Father Urrutia, a Catholic priest, literary critic, and poet who held a place of some prominence in Chilean literary circles at the end of the Allende era and through Pinochet's regime.  Not knowing anything about Chilean literature, I don't know if any of the other figures in the book, such as Farewell, the critic, are real (aside from Neruda, obviously), not that it matters, because the story drifts along just fine either way.

Urrutia begins his narrative as he leaves the seminary, and begins publishing his poetry.  He starts running in Farewell's circle, meets Neruda, and becomes established.  Later, he's sent on a tour of European churches that employ falconry as a way of maintaining their structures (pigeon shit is corrosive).  Later still, he is employed to teach Marxism to General Pinochet and his associates, just after they come to power.  After that, he settles into older age, and attends a number of literary salons at the home of a society woman who is trying to break into the publishing world, and has a strange connection to the regime.

The entire book is one paragraph, as if Bolaño was on some kind of Saramago tip.  Normally I can't handle things like this (I like to have visual divisions to the page), but I didn't mind it too much with this book.  I did find the book to be oddly soulless considering that Urrutia is supposed to be at the end of his life.  During the scenes with Pinochet, which clearly are the centrepiece of the novel, I found it weird that Urrutia explained how each lesson went, and detailed his nervousness at the first session, but did not explain how they affected his daily life.  For weeks, he met with the men who had seized control of his country, in secret.  I assume something like that would play on one's nerves, and affect how they go about their daily thing, but it's not mentioned here.

Bolaño's writing is stellar in places, as his sentences sprawl and swoop across the page like the falcons flying around the European churches.  This is not one of his major works, but it is a pretty impressive one.