{"id":11949,"date":"2010-04-12T10:23:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T14:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11949"},"modified":"2016-06-09T15:22:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T19:22:45","slug":"roberto-bolano-the-prefiguration-of-lalo-cura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/04\/12\/roberto-bolano-the-prefiguration-of-lalo-cura\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Bola\u00f1o: “The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the April 19, 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
I can already hear several of you gritting your teeth at seeing another Roberto Bola\u00f1o story in these pages.\u00a0I have to admit, I still get very excited at the prospect of reading him.\u00a0A little bit ago I finished the most recent release, Antwerp<\/em>, and it left me confused and elated, as usual.<\/p>\n
“The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura,” on the other hand, left me incredibly disturbed.\u00a0Let’s start this with a warning: this is a very explicit piece.\u00a0Lalo Cura is the son of a renegade priest (who has run away, leaving Lalo, like so many of Bola\u00f1o’s characters, fatherless) and a\u00a0porn actress, starring in films by the “multi-talented” German Bittrich, who is always seeking poetry and foreboding in his films. Religion and sex: I realize that that sums up much of the subcurrent I remember feeling when I was roaming in the poor areas of Latin America.<\/p>\n
Much of the story is a recounting of the various films his mother, her little sister, and their friend acted in in the 1970s and 1980s. Lalo watches as his mother,\u00a0pregnant with him, is exploited on screen. The name of the town is Los Emplanados: “The Impaled.”\u00a0These are the progenitors of the next generation.\u00a0One particular actor is the man named Pajarito G\u00f3mez; he is described as “hieratic.”\u00a0There is a reverence to this man who doesn’t look like much but who captivates.\u00a0It turns out he is the only one still alive at the end of the story, after the passing decades.\u00a0Lalo seeks him out.<\/p>\n
I’m hoping that’s fair warning to many of you.\u00a0If not, let me go further and say that the images are meant to disturb deeply.\u00a0This is not glorification of pornography, but neither is it clinically detached.\u00a0There is an emotional response inherent in the language which also describes death and decay and severe perversion.\u00a0There are two\u00a0redeeming factors (if I can call them that):\u00a0(1) this does succeed in digging beneath the pornography and the awful film gimmicks to look at the peoples’ lives; (2) this is also describing Latin America during this period.\u00a0Recall what the title indicates: that this is the prefiguration of this child who, we learn from the first paragraph and are reminded at the end, is a killer.<\/p>\n
For those of you who haven’t gotten on with Bola\u00f1o, I think this highlights his style and yet retains a narrative and code that can be followed.\u00a0I don’t think this is the story that will change your mind, though.\u00a0You may want to skip this week’s offering.<\/p>\n
Which leads me to my bottom line: though I see value here, and there is some real virtuosity going on, I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone. That said, I wouldn’t dissuade someone interested in reading it and trying to figure out the layers of meaning.<\/p>\n
Please feel free to vent<\/del> to leave comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Roberto Bola\u00f1o’s “The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18563,"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: \"The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura\"","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-11949","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\/04\/The-Prefiguration-of-Lalo-Cura.jpg?fit=1055%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-36J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11949","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=11949"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18566,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11949\/revisions\/18566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11949"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}