Nazi Literature in the Americas. Readers confronted by the cover of Bolaño’s recently translated book might already find something incongruous between the title and the author. Those not new to his life story may wonder why he would commit himself to documenting the lives of fascist writers. After all, this is the man who was once a confirmed Trotskyite. This is the man who spied for the resistance against Pinochet. This is the man who was detained in Chile for suspected terrorism.
But isn’t this surprise and disorientation what Bolaño hoped for? He always enjoyed being different. Revolution flowed in his blood, not only in terms of politics, but in literature too. Born into a culture with a celebrated literary tradition, he was not content merely to seek to emulate other eminent South American authors like Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez. Indeed, he actively tried to distinguish himself from them, dismissing the latter as a ‘man terribly pleased to have hobnobbed with so many Presidents and Archbishops’ and claiming that magic realism in general ‘stinks’. Predictably, he made enemies, but his innovation also led to him being heralded as the saviour of Latin American literature.
For much of his life he lived in decadence; it was only when he was diagnosed with liver cancer, just over ten years before his death in 2003, that he was at last able to focus his talent, publishing in quick succession acclaimed works such as The Savage Detectives and By Night in Chile. Nazi Literature in the Americas was published in Spanish in 1996, but has only recently been able to reach, shock and entertain a global public.
So what is Bolaño playing at in Nazi Literature in the Americas? The first words we encounter claim that ‘the rich seam of Nazi literature has, until now, been sadly under-explored.’ When initially asked by friends which book I was reviewing, I mumbled the title, rather embarrassed and worried that it might be thought that I suddenly had turned to reading right-wing propaganda. But if we dare to look inside, we instantly realise that Bolaño has not suddenly decided to praise fascist literature. Instead, he has dedicated himself to creating one of the most novel, scary and scathing pieces of satire of recent time. He writes an encyclopaedia of the extreme right-wing artists of both Americas. They are vibrant characters. They are prolific writers. They are politically active. And they are completely fictional. Into a real historical landscape – he mentions Hitler, Franco and Perón – and against a literary backdrop which includes references to Ibsen, Dr Johnson and Césaire, amongst others, we see writers who existed in no world other than the fertile environment of Bolaño’s mind.
In a style of writing which shifts between the discourses of literary criticism, political propaganda, thrillers and gossip magazines, Bolaño forms genre difficult to place, to describe, or even fully to understand. The writers are mocked, from their ridiculous names – Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, for example – to their laughable legacies. The biting humour used to refer to poems like I was happy with Hitler – apparently ‘misunderstood’ by everyone – is equalled by the caustic dismissal of the writers’ characters; one of the supposedly great authors is summarised and dismissed as ‘a soccer player and a Futurist’.
Yet the book isn’t just a case of one laugh after another. Bolaño raises deeper political and philosophical questions. Indeed, the most formidable aspect of the book is perhaps the abyss between the words on the page, written by Bolaño – the enthusiastic, ignorant, and racist biographer who fails to see the inconsistencies in his own praise – and the words the true Bolaño intends us to read behind the text. This gap succeeds in condemning both these imaginary authors and those foolish enough to appreciate them and their views. Finally, a lingering concern is implicit in the text: literature is written and remembered by the victors. If fascism had triumphed, would this be the intellectual world which we admire and from which we are supposed to learn? Not a thought to be taken lightly.
This book, then, is a form of literary prank. But like the best of jokes, there is a seriousness behind it which stays with us perhaps even longer than the punch-line.
