Monsieur Pain
Roberto Bolaño
(Author)
Chris Andrews
(Translator)
Description
A Bolaño classic. The Peruvian poet César Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness and unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow him and bribe him not to treat Vallejo. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, Pain does not intend to abandon his new patient, but his access to the hospital is barred and Madame Reynaud mysteriously leaves Paris. Another practitioner of the occult sciences enters the story (working for Generalissimo Franco, using his mesmeric expertise to interrogate prisoners) -- as do Mme. Curie, tarot cards, an assassination, and nightmares. Meanwhile, a haunted Monsieur Pain wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . .Product Details
Price
$13.95
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
February 23, 2012
Pages
134
Dimensions
5.0 X 0.4 X 7.8 inches | 0.35 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811218894
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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.
Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He studied at the University of Melbourne and taught there, in the French program, from 1995 to 2008. He also taught at the University of Western Sydney, where he was a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. As well as translating nine books by Roberto Bolano and ten books (and counting) by César Aira, he also brought the French author Kaouther Adimi's Our Riches into English for New Directions. Andrews has won the Valle-Inclán Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for his translations. Additionally, he has published the critical studies Poetry and Cosmogony: Science in the Writing of Queneau and Ponge and Roberto Bolano's Fiction: An Expanding Universe as well as two collections of poems, Cut Lunch and Lime Green Chair, for which he won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.
Reviews
Delightfully noirish.--Brad Hooper
John Coltrane jamming with the Sex Pistols.--John M. Richardson
Employing a reserved and stately voice reminiscent of pre-Modernist fiction, Pain's tale is itself mesmerizing, debonair and entertaining.--Cooper Renner
This beautifully translated early novella, set in Paris... joins the late author's other works in all its aching splendor.
A surrealistic attic of unlikely juxtapositions. . . . The novel melds existential anxiety to political terror in a measure peculiar to Bolaño. Imagine the protagonist of Poe's 'Tell-Tale Heart' if he were being interrogated by the secret police on suspicion of having hidden subversives behind his wall.--Will Blythe
Roberto Bolaño was an examplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown, he had to go there himself, and there invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results are multi-dimensional.--Sarah Kerr
Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own.--Francisco Goldman
A very good read and essential for Bolaño completists.--Craig Morgan Teicher
A real discovery and a substantial addition to the growing Bolaño library in English.--Stephen Henighan
Bolaño's gleeful but deadpan bouillabaisse of French surrealism, expressionism, and Kafkaesque unease.--Dan Vitale
It is more accessible than anything else of his I've read. We're sailing smoothly on Bolaño's flowing prose.--Trevor Berrett
Monsieur Pain plays with genre the way a cat plays with a mouse.
Monsieur Pain, an early novella, beautifully translated by Chris Andrews, joins his other works in all their aching splendour.--Carolina de Robertis
John Coltrane jamming with the Sex Pistols.--John M. Richardson
Employing a reserved and stately voice reminiscent of pre-Modernist fiction, Pain's tale is itself mesmerizing, debonair and entertaining.--Cooper Renner
This beautifully translated early novella, set in Paris... joins the late author's other works in all its aching splendor.
A surrealistic attic of unlikely juxtapositions. . . . The novel melds existential anxiety to political terror in a measure peculiar to Bolaño. Imagine the protagonist of Poe's 'Tell-Tale Heart' if he were being interrogated by the secret police on suspicion of having hidden subversives behind his wall.--Will Blythe
Roberto Bolaño was an examplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown, he had to go there himself, and there invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results are multi-dimensional.--Sarah Kerr
Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own.--Francisco Goldman
A very good read and essential for Bolaño completists.--Craig Morgan Teicher
A real discovery and a substantial addition to the growing Bolaño library in English.--Stephen Henighan
Bolaño's gleeful but deadpan bouillabaisse of French surrealism, expressionism, and Kafkaesque unease.--Dan Vitale
It is more accessible than anything else of his I've read. We're sailing smoothly on Bolaño's flowing prose.--Trevor Berrett
Monsieur Pain plays with genre the way a cat plays with a mouse.
Monsieur Pain, an early novella, beautifully translated by Chris Andrews, joins his other works in all their aching splendour.--Carolina de Robertis
