FICTION: AmuletBy Roberto Bolano, translated by Chris Andrews Picador, 184pp. £14.99
BEHIND EVERY great big book, there is often a great little book. Just as Günter Grass followed The Tin Drum(1959) with a brilliant short novel, Cat and Mouse(1961), so too does the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolano, have wonderful short novels to stand alongside leviathans such as The Savage Detectives(1998) and 2666 (2004) – both of which have appeared in recent years in well publicised English-language editions. That he was a writer in a hurry is all too tragically evident. He died in 2003 at the age of 50, and since the publication the following year of The Savage Detectiveshas been internationally acclaimed.
For most of his career he regarded himself as a poet. There is that now ironic comment made by one of his characters who announces: “Poet is more than enough for me although sooner or later I’m bound to commit the vulgarity of writing stories”. Well, Bolano the poet also committed that “vulgarity”, completing 11 volumes of short stories in addition to his novels. His approach to fiction, particularly his long novels, is ambivalent, and asks the question: where does the seriousness end and the in-jokes take over? Anyone who engages with digressions to the extent that he did, certainly saw the funny side of writing fiction.
In Distant Star(1996), the Chilean narrator remarks of a European poet: "Literature, for him, was a navigable river, hazardous admittedly, but a river, not a hurricane, seen far off in an immensity of open space". Poems are written in the sky and Pinochet's regime is defied. It is a little novel, but a good one, as is Amulet, which was originally published in Spain in 1999. In fact for readers who have yet to board the entertaining, at times irritating, but seldom boring roller-coaster that is Bolano, Amuletis an excellent platform from which to begin the journey.
Auxilio Lacouture is an Uruguayan who lives in Mexico City. She can’t really recall exactly when she first arrived: “I came to Mexico City in 1967, or maybe it was 1965, or 1962. I’ve got no memory for dates anymore, or exactly where my wanderings took me . . . ”. This is true but as she appears to remember everything that has happened, as well as everyone she met along the way, she is a good narrator and even better company.
She is an engaging, ordinary woman, not so young, missing most of her teeth, self-conscious when she smiles, and smitten by poetry to the point of seeing herself as “The Mother of Mexican Poetry”. Unemployed as such, aside from odd bits of work, she is always prepared to listen to poets. Her world is the Mexico City arts, specifically poetry, scene and, as she says, everything happens at night. But this is more than a stroll down memory lane. Auxilio asks for little from life. She has her dreams but she has had a terrifying experience. In fact, she appears to be telling her story, or rather recalling her life and re-inventing it, from the heart of that very experience.
Mexico 1968 lingers in some memories because of Bob Beamon's historic jump at the Olympic Games. History, however, gives more prominence to the clash between the government and the student movement. The army stormed the university. One woman hid in an upstairs lavatory and lived to tell the tale. Readers of The Savage Detectiveswill recall a woman trapped in a toilet and here that passing reference is developed by a sympathetic narrator who describes her experience. She is clever without being overbearing; poetic but not overly lyrical; brave but not heroic; lonely and desperately human. "History is like a horror story" she says and she's right.
From her hiding place in the woman’s bathroom, “on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature”, she thinks about her life, or perhaps she is not really still there, and is instead recalling those hours and days in which she had nothing to do except remember? Either way, her thoughts are a flood of people she met, such as the poet Remedios Varo, a woman who had died some years earlier, and whom Auxilio may or may not have met, but certainly remembers.
The narrator recalls, and her memories are vivid, evocative. She moves from one person’s hospitality to another, invariably outstaying her welcome. She leaves a trail of books and clothes, but retains the poems she had heard. She wanders in and out of stories. She is a witness, not really a player as such but then that is because Bolano is not telling her story; she is only a conduit. His concern is a memorial to the poets of Mexico and of all of Latin America.
Much of his life was devoted to protest, he saw the way South American literature had to be used as polemic and how often writers were compromised into writing to a formula. Some artists may have hid behind their works, more died, or killed their art, because of it.
In 2666 Bolano recruits history as another character. Literary scholars are on the trail of a writer, much as the two young literary detectives in The Savage Detectivestrack down an old poet who disappeared, taking great unpublished works with her. Somehow, at the heart of his huge heaving novels, the vulnerability of art is the theme. The same applies to this candid little book.
At one point Auxilio had been despatched by an ancient femme fatale, who has struck lucky for the night, to inform her middle- aged son, a failed painter, that she will be home sometime the next day.
Auxilio, self conscious about her ransacked mouth and its missing teeth, stands still and wonders at the face of art.
This is an honest book, but also a tender, kindly one. Roberto Bolano was caught in a race against time. But he allowed the vulnerable Auxilio a few moments in which to observe, recall and consider all that she saw, all whom she met.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
