Monsieur Pain (Roberto Bolaño)

Spoilers.

I read Monsieur Pain a week ago. The "Epilogue for Voices" section is another rug-sweeping metaliterary device that reminds me of Nazi Literature in the Americas' "Epilogue for Monsters." I think Monsieur Pain is a prefiguration of Nazi Literature in that aspect and also in the structure itself of the "voices" where the name of the character in question is followed by the city and year of his/her birth and death. The narrator of Nazi Literature is identified, at least in the final story "The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman" where the storytelling voice shifted to a more personal one and where the name of the narrator is revealed in the story. We know also that the last story in Nazi Literature is further reworked and extended by Bolaño in Distant Star, which contains a sort of preface where the self-effacing narrator mentions his identity and that of his collaborator. So by extension, the narrator of Monsieur Pain could be the same two voices, Bolaño and his collaborator, except that I don't think that the time frame of the story in Monsieur Pain, 1938 Paris, supports this authorship. Bolaño's co-writer, and alter-ego, was born at a later date. The point of view of the novel proper of Monsieur Pain itself is a sort of first-person in a free indirect style before moving to an omniscient one in the epilogue, both of which manifest the winking narrator in Bolaño's latter books. This is getting pedantic, but it's one way of identifying the narrator of this elusive and enigmatic novel. Bolaño certainly conceived of his literary universe not as independent works but as part of a greater design, an entire oeuvre. It appears that the presence of an alter-ego is a necessary invention for the latter works which appear to be more autobiographical.

The present novel is soaked in an atmosphere of dread, fear, pain, and disorientation. It's a sort of an extended dream sequence. I like the idea of a friend of mine about the relationship between mesmerism and the rise of fascism. It's a very subtle and disturbing connection that transforms an apparently mystery novel into a political one. The motivation for mistreating the Peruvian poet César Vallejo in the hospital is an indication of the possible role of literature that is being suppressed by, here again, the embodiments of Fear and Hate, elements that we see also harassing Padre Urrutia Lacroix in By Night in Chile. The final character that Pierre Pain meets at the end certainly appears as a prototype of evil, specifically evil engendered and sponsored by an authoritarian government. We can think of the novel's characters as emblems or stand-ins for abstract/literary concepts, with Vallejo representing Poetry, and Pierre Pain as a failed Cure, and the circumstances as Sickness itself. The two foreign strangers who accosted the acupuncturist Pain are dead set at preventing the meeting of the poet and Pain, who can be his only cure. (Just imagine the name of your healer as Pain and you can't get more ironic than that. If we think of Vallejo's poetry output as something that is "humanist" (I read a collection of his translated posthumous poems called Poemas Humanos. Bolaño himself described Vallejo as "Virtue and spraining. The lyric that neutralizes itself.") then we get the idea why certain bad people are trying to censure him.) In the end, the reader is left to ponder the tale, pierced by images and voices as if pricked by needles all over the body. His curiosity remains unsatisfied, as he is prevented from getting the cure or absolution or closure that he wants to get from a book. But what do we expect?

The Year of Tiger Bolaño

Six years after Bolaño's death, he remains as alive as ever. B is not so dead this year, not by a long shot. Tiger Bolaño continues to growl from the grave with his red hot words. And he’s like metal in publishing nowadays. The lot of books coming out this year is proof of his increasing, spreading, and enduring appeal to worldwide readers.


A reason to expand our wish list


2010 brings into print a harvest of Bolaño books. At least 4 books in English translations and one more posthumous book in Spanish are coming out. The new English translations will be released by the publisher New Directions. New editions of his previous books will also be available and excerpts of his unpublished works are appearing in literary magazines and journals.

Here’s a timeline:


January

New Directions Publishing will bring out Monsieur Pain, translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews.

El tercer Reich (“The Third Reich”), a book discovered among Bolaño’s papers after his death, will be published in original Spanish by Anagrama in Spain and by Vintage Español in the US on March. English readers will have to wait for a translation until January of next year. According to Natasha Wimmer, who is set to translate the book, it’s about “an elaborate board game called “The Third Reich” (Bolaño was a great fan of war games) [and] it takes place on the Costa Brava ...”

Also, Nazi Literature in the Americas will be reissued by Picador.


March

In March, the Spanish novel El tercer Reich is published in the US via Vintage Español.

The first of the three poems in Tres appears in the March issue of the web journal Words Without Borders. Bolaño considers Tres to be one of his two best books. The poem in question is “Tales from the Autumn in Gerona.” According to its two translators, it’s a fantastic sequence of prose poems. Erica Mena’s translation is the one that will appear in the magazine, though Laura Healy (the translator of The Romantic Dogs) has also prepared a translation of the book.

Extracts of Tres in Spanish can be found here and here.


April

Antwerp, a poetic novella, is coming out in April. Translated by Natasha Wimmer, this book was first published in Spanish (Amberes) in 2002 but was actually written in 1980. It is probably the earliest novel written by B.

From Cantos, the blog of New Directions: “Bolaño’s friend and literary executor, Ignacio Echevarria, once suggested [that] Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolaño’s fictional universe. From this springboard – which Bolaño chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he’d written in – as if testing out a high dive, he would plunge into the unexplored depths of the modern novel.” Antwerp is excerpted in the Fall 2009 issue of Conjunctions.


July

The 13-short story collection The Return is slated for publication in July. This book presumably contains stories from Llamadas telefonicas and Putas asesinas that were not included in Last Evenings on Earth. The translation is by Chris Andrews. It’s being called "The Return" now. The publisher will most likely not adopt the Spanish title Assassin Whores.


August

The English of El gaucho insufrible (“The Insufferable Gaucho”) is originally set to appear in August. But most likely the publication will be moved to a later date as The Return was moved from June to July. The posthumous book (as published in its original Spanish edition) is an anthology of 5 short stories, mostly set in Argentina, plus two essays. Chris Andrews translates this too.


September

Picador reissues The Skating Rink.