Discovering Bolaño (again)
It’ll come as little surprise to readers of Roberto Bolaño’s mammoth final novel, 2666, that what appears to be a sixth section has been found amid the piles of papers and diaries left by the writer, who died in 2003. While the book is probably as structurally tight as anything that tips 900 pages can be, within its vast collection of disappearances plenty of tantalizing gaps certainly remain. Most obvious is the always mysterious title, a date that is briefly referred to in one of Bolaño’s earlier novellas (Amulet) though goes unmentioned in 2666. Perhaps Bolaño had some larger series of connections in mind? His notes claim that the book has a ‘hidden centre’ and that the narrator is intended to be Arturo Belano, a wandering poet who is central to The Savage Detectives (2007) and certainly not too dissimilar from Bolaño himself.
That the possibly missing section was found alongside two previously unseen manuscripts – titled ‘Diorama’ and ‘The Troubles of the Real Police Officer’ – raises a number of questions about the ethics and expediencies of posthumous publishing, sticky issues over the last few years. It is already known that 2666 was not published as Bolaño intended – he meant for the novel to be published as five separate volumes, partly so that they may be read in any order, and partly to provide a steady income for his son. (Bolaño died from complications with his liver that may have been been the result of his earlier heroin habit, and was well aware that the book would be his last.) In this case, his testaments were rightly betrayed, given that, between his death in 2003 and the publication of 2666, Bolaño’s lasting fame had been secured; his editors were surely justified in publishing the epic in its entirety as his son was adequately provided for.
The most notorious literary case of testaments betrayed was of course Max Brod’s decision to go against the will of his friend Franz Kafka. Despite Kafka’s final wishes – ‘Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me [...] is to be burned unread’ – Brod published diaries, manuscripts and correspondence after his death in 1924. It’s generally agreed that, as Brod claimed, Kafka knew that his friend would ignore his will, but what of Dmitri Nabokov’s decision last year to publish his father’s last manuscript, The Original of Laura, a collection of some 50 index cards he was ordered to burn in 1977? While I’m sure these fragments will be of considerable scholarly interest, if The Original of Laura is indeed worthy of a major publication it seems odd that Nabokov Jr. should have waited 30 years to make the call.
This is an argument that is bound to crop up again soon. Recently excerpted in The New Yorker, David Foster Wallace’s long, unfinished final novel – The Pale King – is scheduled for posthumous release next year, some 400 pages thinner than apparently intended. New York magazine uncharitably wondered whether the book, which is about the unfulfilled lives of several IRS agents, will be ‘the most boring book ever.’ Unfair perhaps, but it’s tough to imagine how a truncated version of a Wallace novel would read, given how overstuffed with facts and footnotes his first two novels and several short story collections were.
There is an important difference here though: unlike Nabokov and Wallace, news of the continuing finds chez Bolaño seems quite apt. 2666 is about, as much as anything, getting old, forgotten masterpieces and persistent fragments, obscure geniuses and minor scholars. Writers are omnipresent, but – fittingly – they are always slipping through the cracks. ‘Nothing is ever behind us’, notes the narrator in the first section of 2666, and these recent discoveries suggest that, as far as Bolaño’s legacy is concerned, this may well be the case.
It’ll come as little surprise to readers of Roberto Bolaño’s mammoth final novel, 2666, that what appears to be a sixth section has been found amid the piles of papers and diaries left by the writer, who died in 2003. While the book is probably as structurally tight as anything that tips 900 pages can be, within its vast collection of disappearances plenty of tantalizing gaps certainly remain. Most obvious is the always mysterious title, a date that is briefly referred to in one of Bolaño’s earlier novellas (Amulet) though goes unmentioned in 2666. Perhaps Bolaño had some larger series of connections in mind? His notes claim that the book has a ‘hidden centre’ and that the narrator is intended to be Arturo Belano, a wandering poet who is central to The Savage Detectives (2007) and certainly not too dissimilar from Bolaño himself.
That the possibly missing section was found alongside two previously unseen manuscripts – titled ‘Diorama’ and ‘The Troubles of the Real Police Officer’ – raises a number of questions about the ethics and expediencies of posthumous publishing, sticky issues over the last few years. It is already known that 2666 was not published as Bolaño intended – he meant for the novel to be published as five separate volumes, partly so that they may be read in any order, and partly to provide a steady income for his son. (Bolaño died from complications with his liver that may have been been the result of his earlier heroin habit, and was well aware that the book would be his last.) In this case, his testaments were rightly betrayed, given that, between his death in 2003 and the publication of 2666, Bolaño’s lasting fame had been secured; his editors were surely justified in publishing the epic in its entirety as his son was adequately provided for.
The most notorious literary case of testaments betrayed was of course Max Brod’s decision to go against the will of his friend Franz Kafka. Despite Kafka’s final wishes – ‘Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me [...] is to be burned unread’ – Brod published diaries, manuscripts and correspondence after his death in 1924. It’s generally agreed that, as Brod claimed, Kafka knew that his friend would ignore his will, but what of Dmitri Nabokov’s decision last year to publish his father’s last manuscript, The Original of Laura, a collection of some 50 index cards he was ordered to burn in 1977? While I’m sure these fragments will be of considerable scholarly interest, if The Original of Laura is indeed worthy of a major publication it seems odd that Nabokov Jr. should have waited 30 years to make the call.
This is an argument that is bound to crop up again soon. Recently excerpted in The New Yorker, David Foster Wallace’s long, unfinished final novel – The Pale King – is scheduled for posthumous release next year, some 400 pages thinner than apparently intended. New York magazine uncharitably wondered whether the book, which is about the unfulfilled lives of several IRS agents, will be ‘the most boring book ever.’ Unfair perhaps, but it’s tough to imagine how a truncated version of a Wallace novel would read, given how overstuffed with facts and footnotes his first two novels and several short story collections were.
There is an important difference here though: unlike Nabokov and Wallace, news of the continuing finds chez Bolaño seems quite apt. 2666 is about, as much as anything, getting old, forgotten masterpieces and persistent fragments, obscure geniuses and minor scholars. Writers are omnipresent, but – fittingly – they are always slipping through the cracks. ‘Nothing is ever behind us’, notes the narrator in the first section of 2666, and these recent discoveries suggest that, as far as Bolaño’s legacy is concerned, this may well be the case.
