jewish daily forward – Three Percent /College/translation/threepercent a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:34:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.6 Review of Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas /College/translation/threepercent/2008/01/10/review-of-bolanos-nazi-literature-in-the-americas/ /College/translation/threepercent/2008/01/10/review-of-bolanos-nazi-literature-in-the-americas/#respond Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:55:15 +0000 http://www.wdev.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent-dev/2008/01/10/review-of-bolanos-nazi-literature-in-the-americas/ Joshua Cohen has one of the first (hopefully of many) reviews of Roberto Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas in yesterday’s .

A surprise to probably no one, the book sounds awesome:

Nazi Literature in the Americas, first published in Spanish in 1996, is not a work of nonfiction, though it reads as an encyclopedic history, or a biographical dictionary of criminous thought. [. . .]

What Bolaño has given us is a mock reference text, an indispensible companion to the work of collaborationist poets and novelists in the Americas ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½” writers who, whether actively or through aesthetic allegiance, kept company with the Nazi cause. Included and representative are entries on ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½œThe Mendiluce ClanÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½�: Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, an austere ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½œlady poetÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½�; Juan Mendiluce Thompson, her son, an angry novelist who denounced Julio Cortázar and his mentor Borges, ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½œwhose stories, so he claimed, were ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½˜parodies of parodiesÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½�; and Luz Mendiluce Thompson, the familyÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s obese poet-daughter, who cherishes throughout her life a photograph of her baby self being cradled by Hitler.

One of the best aspects of the review is the passing reference to a joke manifesto Bolano once wrote:

Bolaño seems to have summarized his own life in the prankish manifesto for the literary movement he founded, ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½œInfrarealismÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½�: ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½œExperience at full tilt, self-consuming structures, stark raving contradictions . . .”

Later in this document (of which Bolaño was the sole author and signatory), he wrote: ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½œRisk is always elsewhere. The true poet is always leaving himself behind.ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½�

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