Last Evenings on Earth
Thursday, January 31st, 2008 @ 04:50
by Roberto Bolaño
Selected from Editorial Anagrama’s collections, the short stories in Last Evenings on Earth were previously published in English in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and Tin House. Written in direct, short sentences, one feels, as Bolaño said (or so according to the book jacket), “the melancholy folklore of exile” pervading these stories.
The stories are richly alluded with references and name-droppings, peopled with real-life characters (oftentimes writers and artists), as well as those with initial names such as A, B, X, U, and Arturo Belano (Bolaño’s thinly-disguised alter-ego that also appears in Savage Detectives?), mostly living at the margins of society. This, coupled with Bolaño’s direct reportage narration, with absence of quotation marks, gives the readers a feeling of listening to (but not reading) witness’ reports/testimonials, complete with seemingly unconscious mixes of detours and twists, about unresolved attempts.
