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Prusik: a Dead Artist in Motion: Review of Roberto Bolaño's The A Dead Artist in Motion: Review of Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich “Today’s events are still confused, but I’ll try drives in a way that infuses his presence with There are extraordinarily accomplished to set them down in orderly fashion so that I an ineffable sense of coldness. Through his moments in 2666 with respect to their formal can perhaps discover in them something that daily entries you witness the development properties. Take the following description of has thus far eluded me, a difficult and possibly of a friendship with a local man known as El a conversation from the first book of 2666 useless task, since there’s no remedy for Quemado. He is a burn victim and gradually as an example of the inventive way in which what’s happened and little point in nurturing acquires a role as Udo’s opponent in gaming. Bolaño fuses the strategies of compression false hopes. But I have to do something to El Quemado’s background is shrouded in and lyricism: pass the time.” This final sentiment appears mystery—are his burns the result of war? to be the singular “The first impulse driving conversation began Roberto Bolaño’s awkwardly, although posthumous novel, Espinoza had been The Third Reich, expecting Pelletier’s published this year call, as if both men by Farrar, Straus found it difficult to say and Giroux. In what sooner or later its unfortunately they would have to underdeveloped say. The first twenty and abandoned minutes were tragic in state, The Third tone, with the word fate Reich often reads used ten times and the like an unwilling word friendship twenty- e x e r c i s e — a four times. Liz Norton’s chronicle of name was spoken fifty s e l f - i m p o s e d times, nine of them in isolation. Given vain. The word Paris the remarkably was said seven times. prolific sequence Madrid, eight. The word of publications love was spoken twice, since Bolaño’s once by each man. The untimely death in word horror was spoken 2003 (posthumous six times and the word publications in happiness once (by English include Amulet, Monsieur Pain, By Night Bolaño refuses to provide an answer. Over Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve in Chile, Antwerp, and the forthcoming Woes of time Charly’s drunken antics escalate until he times. The word category, in the singular and the True Policeman), it is not entirely surprising disappears one night windsurfing. the plural, nine times. The word structuralism that this abandoned novel often refuses to Just as it is the case in his later work, Bolaño’s once (Pelletier). The term American literature develop its primary elements. Yet if you read mystery in The Third Reich is only a mystery three times. The words dinner or eating or retroactively with The Savage Detectives and in appearance. Indeed, Bolaño is reported breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words Bolaño’s masterful 2666 in mind, you can to have said that he would have “preferred eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. Then see the emergence of many of the motifs that to be a detective rather than a writer.” While the conversation proceeded more smoothly. structure his finest work: e.g., geographic it is transparently clear that his work plays Pelletier told Espinoza a joke in German and displacement, noir-inspired mystery, offstage with the traditional elements of mystery Espinoza laughed. In fact, they both laughed, violence, and journalistic documentation. (journalistic detachment, violence, infidelity, wrapped up in the waves or whatever it was Udo Berger, the protagonist of The Third missing persons), Bolaño only employs such that linked their voices and ears across the Reich, is a German war games champion tropes in order to complicate them. The Third dark fields and the wind and the snow of the vacationing on the beaches of Costa Brava Reich is interesting insofar as Udo Berger Pyrenees and the rivers and the lonely roads with his considerably more outgoing girlfriend backs away from the crisis that his life has and the separate and interminable suburbs Ingeborg. Together they befriend Charly and become. He retreats into the world of strategic surrounding Paris and Madrid.” Hanna, whose late-night excursions accelerate gaming, where historical violence is mediated from light inebriation to irrevocable chaos. through cheap, desensitized stimulation. As Such passages manage to short-circuit the By day, Udo Berger consumes his time as a the characters of his life drift back into their clichéd and nevertheless expand and develop WWII strategist, repeatedly fighting the major proper place Udo insists upon his literal and the minute particular in the same gesture. battles with dice and an oversized board. His emotional displacement. Unfortunately, The The seemingly limitless flexibility of Bolaño’s obsessive gaming is predominantly cryptic— Third Reich was probably abandoned in 1989 narrative voice as well as the heterogeneity of its Bolaño constructs his gaming passages as a because its formal success was predicated parts makes 2666 the immediately compelling stenographer might, which is to say without on the total withdrawal of its protagonist. and necessary book that it is. At his finest, his psychological embellishment or color. By Consequently, the narrative fails to elevate writing is fully in command of the disparate night, Udo parties with Ingeborg, Charly, and and synthesize its fragments into the densely literary traditions he draws on, and his powers Hanna as a loutish vacationer. His late outings textured mosaics that constitute Bolaño’s as an artist seem to transform his precursors— seem only to aggravate his existentialized more elaborate novels. namely, they are transformed into the figurative sense of isolation. That is why Giles Harvey is probably correct architecture which animates and supports the The Third Reich proceeds within three discursive when he writes in “The New Yorker” that landscape of his characters. It is unclear how spaces—in part it is a report of Udo’s The Third Reich should join the shelf marked the hurried frenzy of posthumous publications increasingly anxious nightlife, it is a direct “For Completists Only.” I am less convinced will ultimately affect Bolaño’s legacy, though record of his incessant war gaming, and it is however, in his assessment that you “have they are nevertheless contributing to a more also part diary and confession. It is within to go back to Balzac and Dostoevsky to find complete representation of his (apparently) the impressionistic entries of Udo’s diary that masters of the novel form who showed so immense and ongoing corpus. Bolaño achieves his most interesting literary little interest in the sentence.” Bolaño’s prose device. This mode of transmission supplies a attained rare heights—both in the complexity -Charles Prusik decisive layer of perspectival concealment— of its formal structure as well as through the Udo’s reflections often fail to identify his own haunting defamiliarization of his lyricism. .
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