{"id":11853,"date":"2010-02-01T12:42:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T16:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11853"},"modified":"2016-06-07T14:54:31","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T18:54:31","slug":"roberto-bolano-william-burns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/02\/01\/roberto-bolano-william-burns\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Bola\u00f1o: \u201cWilliam Burns\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"William Burns\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the\u00a0February 8, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick <\/span>here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker <\/em>webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
This week I\u2019ve beat Colette to the punch!\u00a0My copy of The New Yorker <\/em>came on Monday (for two weeks in a row now) rather than the usual Tuesday.\u00a0That and the fact that it is a short Bola\u00f1o story allowed me to find time to indulge in it sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
Well, I just reviewed Monsieur Pain<\/em>, which, though strange, was fairly accessible (not to say clear).\u00a0And then there\u2019s this short little beast of a story . . .<\/p>\n
There are many conspicuous elements in the setup of the story\u00a0— but I am not sure where any of them take us.<\/p>\n
First, as is the case in\u00a0other pieces by\u00a0Bola\u00f1o, there are some levels to the narration.\u00a0Our unnamed narrator heard the story from Pancho Monge, a policeman in Santa Teresa, Sonora,\u00a0who heard it from William Burns, the North American who will be the first-person narrator for 99% of the text.<\/p>\n
There are some elements that seem to be set up for a specific purpose: there are two women, one old and one young; they have two dogs, one big and one small; they dwell in a house with two floors, though from the outside it looks like there are three; the house is full of windows.<\/p>\n
These women have hired William Burns (who is also their shared lover) to protect them from some \u201ckiller.\u201d\u00a0They don\u2019t give him more details than that.\u00a0\u201cWhen I asked what his motive was, they didn\u2019t have an answer, or maybe they preferred to keep me in the dark.\u00a0 So I tried to work it out for myself.\u201d\u00a0Eventually, some things comes out. First, they name him (though our narrator says, \u201cLet\u2019s say the guy was called Bedloe.\u201d).\u00a0Then they run a string of ambiguous motives: \u201cThey talked about high-school romances, money trouble, grudges. I couldn\u2019t get my head around how both of them could have had relationships with the same guy in high school, given the age difference between them.\u201d<\/p>\n
William goes in to the town to find the man they are scared of.\u00a0He runs a store, and he has a dog.\u00a0The dog starts to follow William back home.\u00a0The man, looking completely innocuous, tries to get William to help him get his dog back, but William keeps going, the dog eventually jumping into William\u2019s pickup truck.\u00a0When he returns to the strange home, the women and the strange dog seem to know each other.<\/p>\n
Where is this going?\u00a0I have read it a few times now, and I still have no idea.\u00a0It becomes violent, as it sometimes does with Bola\u00f1o, and as is often the case it never completely resolves itself.\u00a0I am almost never even sure if its supposed to, though usually I can find a reason why not.<\/p>\n
I definitely need some help with this story.\u00a0Shoot out your ideas.<\/p>\n
Some of you will understandably be completely turned off from Bola\u00f1o with this story.\u00a0What is he doing?\u00a0But I\u2019ve developed a trust in him \u2014 or at least, I\u2019ve been haunted by his stories enough to know that they at least bear the substance of a ghost.\u00a0To me, there is much to unravel here, which is part of the pleasure \u2014 but is there something underneath the raveling?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Roberto Bola\u00f1o’s “William Burns.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Roberto Bola\u00f1o: \u201cWilliam Burns\u201d","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,13],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-11853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-roberto-bolano","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/William-Burns.jpg?fit=320%2C240&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-35b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11853"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18438,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11853\/revisions\/18438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11853"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}