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A wondrous reverie - rich and strange......... Dec 29, 2003 (64 of 69 found this helpful)
Roberto Bolano, alas, died this year. BY NIGHT IN CHILE is his only work translated into English (very sensuously and beautifully by Chris Andrews) despite the fact that he wrote nine novels, short stories and poetry in Spanish. Chilean by birth, but expatriated to Barcelona and Mexico City because of political issues, Bolano is an enormously gifted, unique voice. Hopefully Chris Andrews will continue to translate his other works for us as I know the reading public will demand more Bolano after reading this short novel.
In a brief but densely packed 130 pages, Bolano takes the voice of Fr. Urrutia who on his deathbed tries to organize the chaotic thoughts that have represented his life before he enters the ultimate climax of death. We learn of his childhood as a poor boy who longed to be a poet, his conversion to the priesthood, his contribution to the literary world of not only his own poems but literary criticism or other writers, and his rather bizarre ramblings of this life adventures - his 'assignment' to unravel the workings of the Opus Dei (with an hilarious metaphor of each church throughout Europe training a falcon to destroy the pigeons in order to keep the buildings free of pigeon excrement only to realize they were destroying the universal symbol of the Holy Spirit!), his conversations with the Chilean critic Farewell, meetings with Pablo Neruda, and his assignment to teach Marxism to Pinochet and the Junta after the fall of Allende, and more. All of this glowing stream of conscience is delivered in words and phrases that stand with the finest of writers - James Joyce, ee cumings, Ezra Pound, Neruda, Marquez - but at the same time they retain flavor which makes them uniquely Chilean. "...I cannot have been properly awake, for deep in my brain I could hear the voices of popes, like the distant screeching of a flock of birds, a clear sign that part of my mind was still dreaming or obstinately refusing to emerge from the labyrinth of dreams, that parade ground where the wizened youth [himself as a child] is hiding, along with the dead poets who were living then, and who now, against the certainty of imminent oblivion, are erecting a miserable crypt in my cranial vault, building it with their names...." or: "...flocks of starlings....appeared again like a lightening bolt, ...and stooped on the huge flocks of starlings coming out of the west like swarms of flies, darkening the sky with their erratic fluttering, and after a few minutes the fluttering of the starlings was bloodied, scattered and bloodied, and afternoon on the outskirts of Avignon took on a deep red hue, like the colour of sunsets seen from an aeroplane, or the colour of dawns, when the passenger is woken gently........and lifts up the little blind and sees the horizon marked with a red line, like the planet's femoral artery, or of the planet's aorta..."
These are but too brief abstracts of Bolano's luxuriant writing ( and Andrews' equally gifted translation!) that flow unceasingly from this richly succinct masterwork. This is easily one of the more rewarding new books I have read and I could not recommend it more highly. Read it all in one sitting..and I would gently wager you will immediately re-read it.
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A good read Nov 29, 2004 (29 of 31 found this helpful)
It is tempting when reading this volume, to check Chilean literary history or the politics of the Allende era ... but it is better to simply read the novel as a good read - at least for the first time. This is a novel that almost invites a study of its references and techniques, to the point one may gloss over the universal aspects of the story. While the novel is deliberately Chilean, the motifs of professional and ethical social climbing and compromising are universal. A young priest is "seduced" by the opportunity to be in the best literary circles - seduced into support of the right wing side of the Church and of politics. This volume is his own telling of his story, near the end of his life, in an attempt to excuse/explain/confess his choices throughout his life. The author's brilliance is in his compact telling of a universal condition in the very specific details of a particular life in a particular time.
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The dulling of the human conscience Sep 16, 2005 (27 of 30 found this helpful)
The narrator of Roberto Bolaño's surreal novella By Night in Chile is an Opus Dei priest, Fr. Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix. Using the image of "the wizened youth," Bolaño brilliantly portrays the struggle for the survival of the human spirit trapped in Opus Dei for many years. His imagery is so vivid and provocative that the reader feels as if he or she is lifted up into his dream. "The wizened youth," or Fr. Sebastian's true self is being slowly destroyed by Fr. Sebastian's new Opus Dei identity. This interior battle captures the essence of the Opus Dei experience, as if Bolaño himself had been a celibate member. Initially, it appears as if Fr. Sebastian's newly-formed spirit is soaring toward the heavens; for example, he says "my prayers rising up and up through the clouds to the realm of pure music, to what for want of a better name we call the choir of angels, a non-human space but undoubtedly the only imaginable space we humans can truly inhabit, an uninhabitable space but the only one worth inhabiting, a space in which we shall cease to be but the only space in which we can be what we truly are." In reality, however, Fr. Sebastian's spirit, manipulated by his Opus Dei superiors, Raef and Etah (Fear and Hate spelled backwards) is slowly crushed over a period of many years because he denies the truth and his former self, "the wizened youth."
Fr. Sebastian is ordained an Opus Dei priest at the age of 14, at which time there isn't much of a struggle at all. In fact, Fr. Sebastian is happy to bury the memories of his unpleasant childhood; and is filled with "immaculate hopes" about his future as the protégé of the finest literary critic in Santiago, Farewell. Like so many others who join Opus Dei at an impressionable age, Fr. Sebastian is lured by the promise of an appealing and exciting adventure. The fourteen-year-old is impressed by Farewell's attire, his grand estate, and the prestigious company of the literary elite with whom he shares an exquisite meal. The name "Farewell" symbolizes Fr. Sebastian's bidding his former self farewell. When Fr. Sebastian meets Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet at Farewell's house, he says, "I bet the wizened youth has no stories like this to tell. He didn't meet Neruda." His new identity enthusiastically and blindly submits to the calling higher than himself - to change the tone of literature in society. As he matures in his career, his intentions become tainted when he gives himself a pen name H. Ibacache (meaning: was hidden) so that he could praise his own books and criticize those of his colleagues, calling for a return to the classics and more culture. His pen name symbolizes the burial of the universal truths found in literature as well as the concealment of his new identity as an Opus Dei member.
Even though Fr. Sebastian becomes a successful literary critic, his spirit starts to rebel as he becomes bored with his book reviews and starts to write deep meaningful poems, which he quickly destroys. His Opus Dei superiors immediately step in to crush his dissenting spirit. In his struggle, the wizened youth appears, "The wizened youth is watching from a yellow street corner and yelling at me. I can hear some of his words. He is saying I belong to Opus Dei. I have never hidden that, I say. But of course, he's not even listening to me. I can see his jaws and his lips moving and I know he's shouting, but I cannot hear his words." Fr. Sebastian's superiors reward him with a "delicate mission in Europe" as a distraction and to bolster his fidelity to the organization. Raef and Etah hope Fr. Sebastian will feel as if he is part of something greater than himself, something with a divine purpose that he should feel privileged to belong to - Opus Dei, which means "The Work of God." Throughout his jaunt through Europe, Fr. Sebastian is treated with great affection. In Spain, he says, "they introduced me to "the Opus Dei publishers and the principals of the Opus schoo
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Great for Chilean Literature Enthusiasts Jul 13, 2004 (13 of 18 found this helpful)
I think I would have appreciated this book more if I was more into Chilean literature. Some characters, like Pablo Neruda, I could recognize right away, but most were unknown to me. Still I could follow the story, but I might not have understood all the nuances. If you aren't informed about Chile and have the will to look stuff up, this book could be a good starting point about Chile without being deliberate like a travel guide.
The novel also captures other aspects of Chilean history and society, such as the time leading up to Allende's downfall and Pinochet's dictatorship, the role of the Church in the mid- to late-twentieth century, the importance of politics, and other topics.
The voice and tone of the novel is unique. It flows as one stream of consciousness without paragraphs or chapters, and with many run-on sentences. At times the reader forgets that the page is the medium through which the voice is communicating, because it almost comes as direct as someone speaking. However, the narration is lacking for passion, which perfectly reflects Fr. Urrutia's low energy and apprehensiveness towards his vocation, but the book is not for those seeking an exciting narrative.
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small poems within larger stories May 7, 2008 (2 of 2 found this helpful)
What I have come to appreciate reading Bolaño's book is the fact that he takes you on several small journeys getting you from plot-point to plot-point. You almost don't realize that he is doing it until you finish one of these tangents and get led carefully back to the main storyline. That Bolaño trusts his talents enough to introduce characters that are only there to make a single point, that they exist in the novel just to die or to cease to exist just so some small nuance of Chile, the Church or his personal imagination can be revealed is truly something. For instance, a "Guatemalan Painter" is introduced and given depth and perspective before being assigned his lonely fate which is to fade away to nothingness despite having great talent just so that the author can depict the grim experiences of displaced foreigners and to introduce Don Salvador Reyes to Ernst Jünger. He introduces Salvador Reyes and rounds him out as a character, portrays him as a man of principles and position, an erudite pillar of society. The meeting of the three men only accomplishes one single thing, a book translated in French is passed from Reyes to Jünger providing the context for the only mention in the history of World War II of a Chilean ever taking part in the greatest conflict known to man. As if to say, one of us took part in this great endeavor, and although nothing of the man exists or of the painter who made possible the acquaintance with the German officer and writer, Ernst Jünger who documents the existence of our participant, but one of us was there and here is the proof and displaced and erased we may be in this gigantic, Western history, at least ONE of us was there. One Chilean. One man. One proof. And without further explanation, the whole tale falls under the title "Landscape: Mexico City an hour before dawn". It is a poem, not a story.
Bolaño does this to you again and again with such a light touch in these side-stories hidden among what is actually happening. And if you focus too closely on what is more obviously happening to Urrutia Lacroix as he becomes party to Mr. Fear and Mr. Hate, to the falconers and their destruction of spirit, to the Marxists he teaches and disowns, to the suppressed homosexuality of Farewell and the more literary circles, to the duality of his roles as liberal writer and conservative critic, and the old man denouncing and finally ceasing to renounce his wizened youth only at the end, etc...if you look at only these more blatant metaphors you will miss the really fine morsels hidden in the tedious little filler pages, poetry masquerading as fluff, revelation in the side-notes.