{"id":1946,"date":"2009-07-24T00:01:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T04:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=1946"},"modified":"2018-02-12T17:03:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T21:03:09","slug":"roberto-bolanos-by-night-in-chile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2009\/07\/24\/roberto-bolanos-by-night-in-chile\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Bola\u00f1o: By Night in Chile<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

By Night in Chile<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/em> by Roberto Bola\u00f1o (Nocturno de Chile<\/em>, 2000) <\/span>
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (2003) <\/span>
\nNew Directions (2003) <\/span>
\n130 pp<\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"By-Night-in-Chile\"I'm getting on better with Roberto Bola\u00f1o now than I was before.\u00a0By that I mean that I am\u00a0converted.\u00a0After finding 2666<\/a><\/em> a brilliantly written mess and Nazi Literature in the Americas<\/em> <\/a>a horrific human mess (again, brilliantly written), I wanted to go back and read the first of his books translated into English: By Night in Chile<\/em>.\u00a0What I found here was\u00a0a clearer vision of\u00a0the savage politics of the last century, particularly of Latin America.\u00a0Bola\u00f1o has a way of presenting the politics in an almost farcical way . . . for a while\u00a0\u2014 and then it becomes a horrific climax (sadly missing in 2666<\/em>; but there the horror was throughout in clinical understatement).<\/p>\n

In a way,\u00a0By Night in Chile<\/em>\u00a0is the first conventional novel I've read by Bola\u00f1o.\u00a0It has a beginning and an end and narrative cohesion.\u00a0Still it is not that <\/em>conventional.\u00a0On a first look, stylistically\u00a0it reminded me of\u00a0Imre Kert\u00e9sz's Kaddish for an Unborn Child <\/a><\/em>\u2014 both are powerfully stated first person narratives\u00a0laid out in a virtually unbroken style.\u00a0B<\/em>y Night in Chile <\/em>is a 130-page single paragraph (Kaddish\u00a0<\/em>is around the same length but was mostly one long sentence \u2014 but it did have a few paragraph breaks!).\u00a0This might be offputting, or at least intimidating,\u00a0to some people.\u00a0It is both to me because somehow you have to navigate through all that text. What I've found time and again, however, is that the authors who attempt this style are usually very good at utilizing it for purpose, and somehow they pull it off without making it a cumbersome mass.<\/p>\n

Here, the style is definitely not cumbersome. It produces a\u00a0narrative pace that\u00a0gives the reader little time to breath, let alone think, an effective device in this context where the speaker doesn't want you to have time to consider his words to see\u00a0what he is and is not saying.\u00a0Our narrator is Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a priest who has served the church, even entering the ranks of Opus Dei, and who has served the Chilean government. Sometimes he has served one through the other.\u00a0He's pulled himself up on his death bed, \"propped up on one elbow\" and lifting his \"noble, trembling head,\"\u00a0to offer a final confession.<\/p>\n

\n

I am dying now, but I still have many things to say.\u00a0I used to be at peace with myself. Quiet and at peace. But it all blew up unexpectedly. That wizened youth is to blame. I was at peace. I am no longer at peace.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The\u00a0confessional tone, however, is misleading because ultimately he\u00a0admits to no wrong, and we know\u00a0he'll be ellusive\u00a0from the start.\u00a0In the middle of the first page we see that we are dealing with someone who is weighed down by something he is unwilling to name and therefore unwilling to accept.<\/p>\n

\n

One has to be responsible, as I have always said.\u00a0One has a moral obligation to take responsibility for one's actions, and that includes one's words and silences, yes, one's silences, because silences rise to heaven too, and God hears them, and only God understands and judges them, so one must be very careful with one's silences.\u00a0I am responsible in every way.\u00a0My silences are immaculate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Father Urrutia Lacroix then narrates his youth, and we know that he recognizes he was a more innocent person then, indeed he constantly feels chastized by his memories of his youth.\u00a0But even at this point of his narrative he avoids responsibility for what was to follow:<\/p>\n

\n

And a year later, at the age of fourteen,\u00a0I entered the seminary, and when I came out again, much later on, my mother kissed my hand and called me Father or I thought I heard her say Father, and when, in my astonishment, I protested, saying Don't call me Father, mother, I am your son, or maybe I didn't say Your son but The son, she began to cry or weep and then I thought, or maybe the thought has only occurred to me now, that life is a succession of misunderstandings, leading us on to the final truth, the only truth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While attending seminary and after, our narrator wanted to be a literary critic.\u00a0He had enough talen to become attractive (mentally and physically) to the prominent critic\u00a0Farewell. Through Farewell he meets the other prominent figures of the arts and politics of his youth, including Pablo Nerruda.\u00a0There is something compelling in these people, and it affects how he feels about his responsibilities flowing from his station in the church.<\/p>\n

\n

And I heard one of the women saying Father, won't you try some of this or that. And someone was talking to me about a sick child, but with such poor diction I couldn't tell if the child was sick or dead already.\u00a0What did they need me for?\u00a0If the child was dying, they should have called a doctor.\u00a0If the child had already been dead for some time, they should have been saying novenas.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This back story eventually leads our narrator to a special assignment to help preserve the European cathedrals, which are being\u00a0soiled by pigeon droppings.\u00a0When he arrives in Europe, Father Urrutia Lacroix is surprised but\u00a0unaffected by the manner\u00a0the custodians of the cathedrals have chosen to\u00a0fix the problem: they\u00a0have become falconers, and they send\u00a0their hawks up to violently purge the area of the pigeons (the irony of\u00a0the church's\u00a0killing doves is not lost in the text).<\/p>\n

This episode leads directly to the next episode both literally and figuratively. In a way, Father Urrutia Lacroix's assignment can be seen as a primer for more important political work that is no less violent and disturbing. It\u00a0ultimately leads\u00a0him to Maria Canales, whom he now says was merely an acquaintance, no one he knew\u00a0well, no one who knew him well.\u00a0(Maria Canales is a stand-in for Mariana Callejas<\/a>.)\u00a0This is the horrific climax. This is the complicity our narrator seeks to strip from himself.\u00a0However, though we never know just how complicit our narrator was, whether he had an active role in the horrors is a side note for Bola\u00f1o. Much more important to him here (and in Nazi Literature in the Americas<\/em>) is his and others' passive role in the horrors, particularly those who can hide under aesthetics.\u00a0Our narrator\u00a0sums it up nicely in one line:<\/p>\n

\n

That's how literature is made in Chile.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>

\"\"\n \n