| Nazi Literature in the Americas | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Roberto Bolaño |
| Translator | Chris Andrews |
| Cover artist | Allen Frame / Semadar Megged |
| Country | Chile |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | New Directions |
| Publication date | 1996 |
| Published in English |
2008 |
| Media type | Print (Cloth) |
| ISBN | 978-0-8112-1705-7 |
| OCLC Number | 173299026 |
| Dewey Decimal | 863/.64 22 |
| LC Classification | PQ8098.12.O38 L5813 2008 |
Nazi Literature in the Americas is a work of fiction by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. It was published in 1996. Chris Andrews’ English translation was published in 2008 by New Directions which was shortlisted for the 2008 Best Translated Book Award.
Contents |
Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as an encyclopedia of right-wing writers. The book is composed of short biographies of imaginary Pan-American authors. The literary Nazis—fascists and ultra-right sympathizers and zealots, most from South America, a few from North America, portrayed in that book are a gallery of self-deluded mediocrities, snobs, opportunists, narcissists, and criminals. About Nazi Literature in the Americas, Bolaño told an interviewer:
Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully situated in real literary worlds: Bolaño's characters rebuff Allen Ginsberg’s advances in Greenwich Village, encounter Octavio Paz in Mexico City, and quarrel with José Lezama Lima in Cuba.
Forerunners to this type of fictional writer biographies can be seen in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, particularly "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain".
Presents the Argentinian poetess Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, her son Juan Mendiluce Thompson, and her daughter Luz Mendiluce Thompson. Edelmira, among other ventures, attempts to create a room based on Edgar Allan Poe's essay "Philosophy of Furniture" and founds The Fourth Reich in Argentina, a literary magazine and publishing house which publish works by several of the writers appearing later in the book. Juan is a novelist and politician while Luz is a talented but troubled poet who suffers failed marriages, struggles with alcoholism and overweight, and is eventually doomed by her love for a much younger woman.
This section differs in tone from the rest of the book, rather than being delivered as a dry encyclopedic entry it is narrated by a character, named Bolaño, who was a witness to some of the events. The story was later expanded into the novella Distant Star, with the name of the protagonist changed to Alberto Ruiz-Tagle. this is explained in the introduction to the novel thus:
Stacey D'Erasmo, in a review for The New York Times, describes Nazi Literature in the Americas as:
“a wicked, invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges’s wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right littérateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth and great lost hope."[4]
Michael Dirdra, of The Washington Post states that the novel, "very much deserves reading: It is imaginative, full of a love for literature, and, unlikely as it may seem, exceptionally entertaining."[5] John Brenkman of The Village Voice sees the book as both a satire and an elegy, stating,
"Nazi Literature in the Americas is first of all a prank, an act of genius wasting its time in parodic attacks on a hated sort of writer. But beyond that, it produces an unsettling mix of overt satire and covert elegy. The reductive force of summary after summary starts to have an effect that transcends the satire; the book begins to convey a sense of the vanity of human endeavor and the ease with which a lifetime's work might be flicked into oblivion by a witty remark."[6]
In a dissenting opinion Alberto Manguel, writing for The Guardian, finds the novel is,
"at first mildly amusing but quickly becomes a tedious pastiche of itself. Like a joke whose punchline is given in the title, the humour is undermined, and all that is left is a series of names, dates and titles that, since they don't come across as funny, become merely irritating [...] It is not enough to invent a character and lend it a name and a bibliography and a few circumstantial details; something must justify its existence on the page, which otherwise risks resembling an annotated phonebook."[7]
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