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"Bolaäno has attained a mythical stature in a short time, often being considered the most influential Latin American writer of his generation. The first English-language volume of essays on the Chilean author, Roberto Bolaäno, a Less Distant Star: Critical Essays, includes ten critical essays covering many of his twenty publications, with a special emphasis on his masterpieces: 2666, The Savage Detectives, By Night in Chile, and Distant Star. The essays address Borges's influence and the role of repetition, social memory, allegory, and neoliberalism in Bolaäno's works, among many other topics. This book covers the need for a study that goes beyond the rather impressionistic journalistic writing that, until now, constitutes the core of the written English-language reception of Bolaäno"--
List of contents
Introduction; Ignacio López-Calvo. Preface: On Roberto Bolaño; Siddhartha Deb. PART I: GENERAL OVERVIEWS 1. Writing with The Ghost of Pierre Menard: Authorship, Responsibility and Justice in Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star; Rory O'Bryen 2. Roberto Bolaño's Flower War: Memory, Melancholy, and Pierre Menard; Ignacio López-Calvo PART II: TWO MAJOR NOVELS 3. 666 Twinned and Told Twice: Roberto Bolaño's Double Time Frame in 2666; Margaret Boe Birns 4. Ulysses' Last Voyage: Bolaño and the Allegorical Figuration of Hell; Raúl Rodríguez Freire 5. Con la cabeza en el abismo: Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes and 2666, Literary Guerrilla, Maquiladora of Death and the Search for the Masterpiece; Martín Camps PART III: SHORT NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES 6. Valjean in The Age of Javert: Roberto Bolaño in the Era of Neoliberalism; Nicholas Birns 7. Literature and Proportion in The Insufferable Gaucho; Brett Levinson PART IV: POETRY 8. Performing Disappearance: Heaven and Sky in Roberto Bolaño and Raúl Zurita; Luis Bagué Quílez 9. Bolaño's Big Bang: the Writer's Search of a Voice in Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño; Enrique Salas-Durazo
About the author
Ignacio López-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California, Merced, USA. He is the author of seven books including Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Tusán Literature and Knowledge in Peru, The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru, and Latino Los Angeles in Film and Fiction.
Summary
Roberto Bolaño has attained an almost mythical stature and is often considered the most influential Latin American writer of his generation. The first English-language volume of essays on the Chilean author, Roberto Bolaño, a Less Distant Star: Critical Essays, includes ten critical essays of his oeuvre. With a special emphasis on his masterpieces: 2666, The Savage Detectives, By Night in Chile, and Distant Star, the essays address topics such as Borges's influence and the role of repetition, social memory, allegory, and neoliberalism.
Additional text
“López-Calvo (Univ. of California, Merced) has gathered nine critical essays … intended to feed interest in Roberto Bolaño both as a formidable cultural critic and (as López-Calvo writes in his essay) as the ‘most influential Latin American writer of his generation’ (as he is touted to be). … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” (K. M. Sibbald, Choice, Vol. 53 (5), January, 2016)
"Roberto Bolaño, A Less Distant Star: Critical Essays is the first English-language book examining, from different perspectives, the oeuvre of the most important Latin American writer of the last two decades. Ignacio López-Calvo, a sophisticated scholar and author of seven important single-authored books and six edited volumes about Latin American literature, has once again been successful in rigorously selecting ten outstanding essays, some of which are brilliant. I am sure that this book will immediately become crucial in understanding the complex opus of Bolaño,a postmodern Che of the contemporary Latin American novel." - Fernando Valerio-Holguín, Professor of Latin American Literature, Colorado State University, USA and author of Presence of Trujillo in Contemporary Narrative
"In recent years Roberto Bolaño's body of work has become central to Latin American literature. In its depth and breadth, this collection helps explain why. Roberto Bolaño, A Less Distant Star: Critical Essays will quickly become a guiding light for serious scholarship on Bolaño." - Rudyard Alcocer, Shumway Chair of Excellence in Romance Languages, The University of Tennessee, Knoxvillle, USA
"A useful reference for specialized and non-specialized readers, this collection, the first of its kind available in English, is an effective introduction to Roberto Bolaño's literature that at the same time advances key debates among scholars of his works, such as the question of the intersection of literature and politics, identity, literary genealogies, and the general history of power and violence in the West. These critical essays offer together a revealing map for those seeking to navigate Bolaño's imaginary, and an engaging discussion for those who continue journeying through his rich literary universe." - Oswaldo Zavala, Associate Professor of English, College of Staten Island & The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA
Report
"López-Calvo (Univ. of California, Merced) has gathered nine critical essays ... intended to feed interest in Roberto Bolaño both as a formidable cultural critic and (as López-Calvo writes in his essay) as the 'most influential Latin American writer of his generation' (as he is touted to be). ... Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." (K. M. Sibbald, Choice, Vol. 53 (5), January, 2016)
"Roberto Bolaño, A Less Distant Star: Critical Essays is the first English-language book examining, from different perspectives, the oeuvre of the most important Latin American writer of the last two decades. Ignacio López-Calvo, a sophisticated scholar and author of seven important single-authored books and six edited volumes about Latin American literature, has once again been successful in rigorously selecting ten outstanding essays, some of which are brilliant. I am sure that this book will immediately become crucial in understanding the complex opus of Bolaño,a postmodern Che of the contemporary Latin American novel." - Fernando Valerio-Holguín, Professor of Latin American Literature, Colorado State University, USA and author of Presence of Trujillo in Contemporary Narrative
"In recent years Roberto Bolaño's body of work has become central to Latin American literature. In its depth and breadth, this collection helps explain why. Roberto Bolaño, A Less Distant Star: Critical Essays will quickly become a guiding light for serious scholarship on Bolaño." - Rudyard Alcocer, Shumway Chair of Excellence in Romance Languages, The University of Tennessee, Knoxvillle, USA
"A useful reference for specialized and non-specialized readers, this collection, the first of its kind available in English, is an effective introduction to Roberto Bolaño's literature that at the same time advances key debates among scholars of his works, such as the question of the intersection of literature and politics, identity, literary genealogies, and the general history of power and violence in the West. These critical essays offer together a revealing map for those seeking to navigate Bolaño's imaginary, and an engaging discussion for those who continue journeying through his rich literary universe." - Oswaldo Zavala, Associate Professor of English, College of Staten Island & The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA
