C[omp]ute

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 21:58:27 -0300 (CLST)

I just finished "El Bufalo de la Noche" by Guillermo Ariago - a
depressing, trite, self-concerned, piece of shit.  It describes the life
of a spoilt, rich, bored, stupid, macho, adolescent Mexican.  Maybe that's
the target market.  One story from Bolano - to raise my spirits I started
"Llamadas Telefonicas" and read "Sensini" - has more compassion, honesty,
love, hope and loss in 29 pages than Arriaga can fit in 236.

If you've seen "Babel" (the film) and thought you must have missed
something - that there had to be some deep coherence that was passing you
by - well, the news is that no, there really was nothing there.  That was
also by Arriaga.  If you think I am being hard on him, pick up Bufalo in a
store and read the author's autobiog.

Anyway... I found this place - http://www.critica.cl - which has some
interesting stuff on literature (mainly Chilean but also S American in
general).  Searching for Bolano turned up a bunch of interesting articles
- there's an interview at
http://www.critica.cl/html/garcia_santillan_05.htm

BTW, I bought Bufalo in Argentina while looking for something reasonably
priced to read by Bolano (in all of Mendoza, as far as I could tell, there
was just one book by him, and it was poetry).  "Llamadas Telefonicas" came
from Takk in Providencia (near the Tavelli, along the side of Drugstore) -
they stock quite a few of the books in Anagrama's Compactos range, which
are much better priced than Anagrama's normal overpriced (in Chile)
editions.

They also had some interesting books bound in cardboard from this project
- http://www.animita-cartonera.cl/

Andrew