Hey! Check it out: new (well, new as these things go) fiction from Roberto Bolaño. The New Yorker has published a selection called “William Burns,” which may or may not be (but we’re thinking probably is) an excerpt from a longer work, one that will probably come out in the nearish future. Chris Andrews translates. “William Burns” tells the story of the eponymous Californian, a “laid-back guy who never lost his cool,” who seems to be a private investigator entrusted to protect two women from a killer. The story builds in typical Bolaño fashion: plenty of sinister, Lynchian ambiance punctuated by strange humor, with a good shot of banality to smooth things out. Our favorite passage:
If I were a dog, I thought resentfully, these women would show me a bit more consideration. Later, after I realized that none of us were feeling sleepy, they started talking about children, and their voices made my heart recoil. I have seen terrible, evil things, sights to make a hard man flinch, but, listening to the women that night, my heart recoiled so violently it almost disappeared. I tried to butt in, I tried to find out if they were recalling scenes from childhood or talking about real children in the present, but I couldn’t. My throat felt as if it were packed with bandages and cotton swabs.
