Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003
Description
Between Parentheses collects most of the newspaper columns and articles Bolano wrote during the last five years of his life, as well as the texts of some of his speeches and talks and a few scattered prologues. "Taken together," as the editor Ignacio Echevarría remarks in his introduction, they provide "a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented 'autobiography.'" Bolano's career as a nonfiction writer began in 1998, the year he became famous overnight for The Savage Detectives; he was suddenly in demand for articles and speeches, and he took to this new vocation like a duck to water. Cantankerous, irreverent, and insufferably opinionated, Bolano also could be tender (about his family and favorite places) as well as a fierce advocate for his heroes (Borges, Cortázar, Parra) and his favorite contemporaries, whose books he read assiduously and promoted generously. A demanding critic, he declares that in his "ideal literary kitchen there lives a warrior" he argues for courage, and especially for bravery in the face of failure. Between Parentheses fully lives up to his own demands: "I ask for creativity from literary criticism, creativity at all levels."Product Details
Price
$24.95
$23.20
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
May 30, 2011
Pages
390
Dimensions
5.68 X 1.37 X 8.05 inches | 1.24 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780811218146
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, received the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize when it appeared in 1998. Roberto Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.
Natasha Wimmer is a translator who has worked on Roberto Bolaño's 2666, for which she was awarded the PEN Translation prize in 2009, and The Savage Detectives. She lives in New York.
Reviews
What a refreshing surprise it is to hear Bolaño in his own words.--J.C. Gabel
Bolaño frolics in pithy essays on friendship, women, ancestors, and courage. He's irreverent and purposeful, cerebral and casual, insouciantly opinionated and ironic, and charming and funny.--Donna Seaman
Bolaño frolics in pithy essays on friendship, women, ancestors, and courage. He's irreverent and purposeful, cerebral and casual, insouciantly opinionated and ironic, and charming and funny.--Donna Seaman