By Night in Chile

A previous reviewer, Signor Bruno, has warned readers not to jump to conclusions with this text. I would like to add another warning: do not, as one might, rush through this text, do not read it in one go, as one might. Do not at all read it as fast as you can, or as fast as the morning papers. It can be done, but you would waste something.
It is a short novel, or a long story, comparable in size to some of the best short pieces by some of the best writers. Think of Heart of Darkness, just as an example, and by the way not a bad choice for an example, I think.

For me, this little book is my first encounter with Mr. Bolano, but I have a hunch, it will not be my last.
Mr. B. tells this story in plain, if unusual language: we learn from the horse's mouth about the life of a priest, poet, literary critic, homosexual, Opus Dei member, traveler, teacher, spy... There is a lot of name dropping, the personnel of a Chilean poetry anthology is assembled, and I have never heard of 95% of the names that are dropped. And, you know, that does not matter.
There is a surface story, and there are various substrata, most of which I am not at all sure to get. And here we have one of the strengths of the text: it does not leave you in the cold, even when you have an odd feeling that you are missing something, there is still enough here that keeps you engaged, and that, maybe, makes you come back.

Several reviewers have commented on the surrealistic phases of the narration of the dying man. These chapters are extraterrestrial. We meet a series of falcons with expressive names, like Ta Gueule, who are specialized in killing pigeons, because the pigeons' sh.. destroys churches. One must be aware that the pigeon is the symbol of the Holy Spirit... So, what is the narrator telling us here? He makes the absurd observation about the harmony of nature when he tells us how the falcon destroys a flight of starlings.

What does it mean?
(said the fish in The Meaning of Life)

What does it mean when we learn about a past encounter of one of the poets, whom the narrator meets, with Ernst Juenger? The Chilean diplomat and hobby poet meets Juenger during WW2 in Paris. Juenger is in the uniform of a German officer and he loves to discuss the arts with all kinds of people. (If you are not familiar with Juenger, you are probably not alone. I know him middlish well, he was maybe the best right-wing writer that Germany produced before the Nazis came to power. He sympathized and then became disillusioned because he was a civilized barbarian. Think of Hans Landa, if you want to visualize Ernst Juenger in Paris in Wehrmacht uniform!)
Now back to my question: what does it mean? I may have to read the book once more. Do I need to read Juenger again? (by the way, he was a renowned coleopterist, in a similar way as Nabokov was a lepidopterist, only he did not need to live off it).

Of course, life is mainly a succession of misunderstandings. The narrator hugely misunderstood himself. Or is it that he couldn't unseal the deep wells of memory?

The main question of the whole book: who is the `wizened youth'?
As I said, don't jump to conclusions!

The basic description given for this novel is the death bed confessions of a dying priest, but that in no way begins to describe this novel.
This was the first Bolano novel I read, and I thought it was weird but good. After I got more into him, I read it again and was blown away by it. While I couldn't praise this novel enough, it wouldn't be the first of his books I read. I'd read Last Evenings or Amulet first. However, this novel does deserve to be read. It's beautiful and strange, and not at all what people will expect.
It's not a novel I can guarantee you will like: he has a style that will frustrate some people. It doesn't exactly have characterization, and the characterization is does have is different than most.
What I love about this novel, as with all of his work, is the emotional levels. It goes from being hilarious (the part with the falcons) to being incredibly sad (the part with the painter) and it is so unpredictable it's mind boggling. I beg you to try Bolano. He deserves to be read.

... to judgement! Don't think you know where this novella is going until you get there! It's not very long - only 130 pages - so you might try to read it all in one sitting, letting it take over, coming to believe the voice of the narrator, the celibate homosexual priest/poet/critic who announces in his first words that he is "dying now." It's the credibility of that voice that elevates this rambling, stumbling 'confession' to enormous emotional power. (If you're a potential book buyer who NEEDS a summary of the action first, take a look at the very ample review here in the amazone by "Rhoda".)

Father Urrutia, the priest narrator, has his own timetable for exposing himself. He's all the way to page 56 - or should we admit that there's an 'author' controlling his pace? - before he cautiously reveals his affiliation with Opus Dei and his entanglement with the portions of Chilean society that reveled in the CIA-assisted assault on democracy which placed Pinochet on his throne of torture. If you have no formed opinion of Opus Dei, if you've never even heard of the conspiratorial right-wing cadre, you might as well skip this review and this book. Nothing in it will matter to you. But the assignment that Opus Dei gives Father Urrutia, to investigate the methods that the clergy of Europe are using to prevent the dilapidation of church buildings, results in a breath-taking feat of surrealism by author Roberto Bolaño, in which the membrane between the priest's dreams and awakenings is dissolved.


The first 55 pages, I admit, will be hard going for English readers. The culture of writers and intellectuals in Chile, and in the Hispanic world at large, is peculiar and unfamiliar, and "we" will have difficulty recognizing what's at stake for the young Urrutia, who aspires to be both a poet and a literary critic of lasting influence. But forge on! The betrayal of those aspirations -the collapse of belief in literature - is thematic, and the reader needs to know who Urrutia thought he was in order to experience the horror of Urrutia's realization of who he has become.

There's a word in Spanish - 'tertulio' - meaning an extended social occasion at which the guests discuss literature, read their works, hold forth in competitive intellectuality. The word is translated here as 'soirée' but such an event is closer to the brazenly immodest conversation one hears in an Ivy League dining hall. The culminating scene remembered by the dying priest was at a tertulio, attended by cautious intellectuals despite the curfew against such events during the Pinochet horror-era. The hostess, a Chilean, aspires to be a Writer and needs the 'nourishment' of intellectual company; her husband is an American hit-man, a torturer who conducts interrogations in the basement of their mansion. It's his secret identity that ensures that the wife's tertulio will not be raided by Pinochet's thugs. Is it possible that the guests are totally unaware? Is their ignorance a survival tactic, a hypocrisy, an indifference? Bolaño seems to be suggesting that even to survive during the Pinochet era required one to become sordid and complicit.


The crimes of Pinochet and his henchmen, Chilean and American, weigh as heavily on the writers of Chile as the burden of Hitlerism on German post-war thinkers. Any other theme would seem trivial.

Bolaño is not an easy stylist. His run-on parenthetical stream-of-attention structure is similar to that of Vladimir Nabokov or Thomas Bernhard, though less humorous than the former and graciously less depressive than the latter. This is not a book for escapist readers. It's a psychological tragedy, but one that will, ironically, reinforce the value of literature for coping with the shame of humanity.

My english teacher would have a hayday with the two page sentences. Overall a good book and a quick read.

The New Your Times Book Review has said nice things about Bolano's two newest novels, but I decided to step back and start with an earlier novella, By Night in Chile. I was disappointed. The narrative rambles among various conversations about literature and cultural history with nothing much at stake for the characters. It is oddly without plot.

Moreover, Bolano formats his story into only two paragraphs, the last one consisting of only a seven word sentence at the end, on page 130. All dialogue is embedded in the one paragraph without quotation marks. Paragraph breaks and quotation marks are courtesies to the reader, and departures from these conventions should be artistically justified. In this book, the departures are merely rude.

Bolano's great theme, according to The New York Times, is the sorry state of literature in his native land. I wonder if I'm the only reader to think that By Night in Chile is part of the problem.