Conversation about a cathedral, 2

We play at believing ourselves immortal. We delude ourselves in the appraisal of our own works and in our perpetual misappraisal of the works of others. See you at the Nobel, writers say, as one might say: see you in hell.

- 2666

In his last interview for the Mexican Playboy, Roberto Bolaño was asked of his opinion of those who think he will win the Nobel Prize. “I am sure, dear Maristain, that I will not win it, as I am sure that some lazy person from my generation will win it and not even in passing mention me during his or her Stockholm speech.”

I’m not sure what Bolaño meant by a lazy person. Is that the same as a lazy writer? The present laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, is not of the same generation as Bolaño. Nor did he mention Bolaño in his Nobel lecture, though the Peruvian did harbor certain opinions of the Chilean.

It’s interesting nonetheless that two young writers from Peru, in talking about Vargas Llosa’s win, couldn’t help but speak of Bolaño in the same breath.

Bolaño is not of the same generation as Vargas Llosa’s. Bolaño is what came after. We would have to wait until 2020 – at least that’s the year Carlos Fuentes predicted, in his novel, that César Aira will win the Nobel – when a Latin American writer of the same generation as Bolaño will stand on a Swedish podium.

The last interview took place shortly before Bolaño’s death, and one can surmise that Bolaño was sure that he will not win it because “death is certain”, as he wrote between his teeth in Last Evenings on Earth. His first book to be translated in English, Shit Storms By Night in Chile, will not appear until the end of that year (2003). But for the life of him, posthumous fame will certainly not qualify him for any well-meaning award.

Not unless it was decided in Comala.

Bolaño could not have predicted Vargas Llosa’s win. Or maybe he just did. In the last piece in The Insufferable Gaucho (trans. Chris Andrews), in an essay called “The Myths of Cthulhu” (a fascinating essay wherein Bolaño gave a diagnosis of Latin American literature, but really a meandering, perhaps unfinished, yet very snobbish essay, snobbish in a bookish-snobbish way, an essay of the most wicked negative psychology), he differentiated the virtues (vices) of the bestselling writers (Pérez Reverte, Muñoz Molina, et al.) from those no one reads anymore (Puig, Arlt, et al.). In the same essay, he discussed how critics cling to old masters and what this implies for Latin American letters. And how much literature loves power too...

Today I read an interview with a famous and shrewd Latin American author. They ask him to name three people he admires. He replies: Nelson Mandela, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. With that answer as a starting point, you could write a whole thesis about the current state of Latin American literature. The casual reader might wonder what links those three figures. There is something that links two of them: the Nobel Prize. And there is something more that links all three: years ago they were all left wing…. All three have made way for deplorable heirs: the clear and entertaining epigones of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, and, in the case of Mandela, the indescribable Thabo Mbeki, the current president of South Africa, who denies the existence of AIDS. How could anyone name those three, without batting an eyelid, as the figures he most admires? Why not Bush, Putin and Castro? Why not Mullah Omar, Haider and Berlusconi? Why not Sánchez Dragó, Sánchez Dragó and Sánchez Dragó, disguised as the Holy Trinity?

And from there Roberto's own eyelids hit for low batting average.

Conversation about a cathedral: Or, what would Roberto think?

Of course, the well-read and opinionated Bolaño has certain opinions of Vargas Llosa. When asked about what comes to his mind when he hears the name of García Márquez, he replied: "A man who's enchanted by the fact that he's known so many presidents and archbishops." And Vargas Llosa: "The same, but more polished."

Among the celebrated Boom writers (García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, and Cortázar), Cortázar is apparently the one he most admired. As for Carlos Fuentes, he also had some things to say. He thought that Octavio Paz is "more universal" than Fuentes, that Paz is a "more interesting" writer of prose (in his essays) than Fuentes, and if he had to sit between them, he'd rather "sit closer to Octavio Paz than to Fuentes."

Bolaño's writing is seen as a break from the magical realist mode of the Boom writers and their imitators. His fiction is a sort of reaction to the previous generation's realism. However, it doesn't mean that he entirely objected to the literary outputs of the rest of the Boom writers. Possibly, he didn't like their politics or he just didn't like them as persons. But still he was an avid reader of their books. In a 1999 interview with two writers of a Chilean magazine (one of his published interviews in English), he shared his positive assessment of the (now) two Nobel winners.

Soto & Bravo: Perhaps the emblematic figures of the [Boom] movement were too adored, an injustice for quieter figures like Monterroso and Onetti, who are vindicated more and more. They’ve stayed relevant with the passage of time.

Bolaño: I don’t believe so. The literature of Vargas Llosa or García Márquez is gigantic.

Soto & Bravo: A cathedral.

Bolaño: More than a cathedral. I do not think time will harm them. The work of Vargas Llosa, for example, is immense. It has thousands of entry points and thousands of exit points. So does the literature of García Márquez. They’re both public figures. They’re not just literary figures. Vargas Llosa was a candidate for president. García Márquez is a political heavyweight and very influential in Latin America. This distorts things a bit, but it shouldn’t make us lose sight of the position they have in the hierarchy. They are superiors, superior to the people who came after and, to be sure, to the writers of my generation….

I suppose, though I’m not entirely sure, he didn’t answer in an ironic tone.