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.
Biblioklept 
I didn’t understand this short story. What themes is Bolano developing?
LikeLike
Romulatore, I’m guessing that the piece is probably part of one of the as-yet-unpublished works that will be coming out in the next few years. Works like The Savage Detectives and 2666 show that Bolaño often builds his major themes in spiraling layers, so perhaps this piece, although self-contained, would have greater thematic resonance against/with other sections. There’s also a large element of undecidability, of “not knowing” in his work, that I think evinces here. The story to me is actually typical of Bolaño–it’s more evocative of a distinct mood or tone (dread + comedy) than characterization, symbolism, or theme. I would say that there’s some significance to the fact that William Burns comes to identify with the man he eventually kills, and that the story in some way thematizes Darwinian ambivalence about murder and the fears/duties/needs that prompt killing another human.
LikeLike
[…] narratives into narratives into yet more narratives may lend credence to the hunch that this is part of something bigger, but again: maybe not. My gut is telling me to read the story as a bit of miscellany. Provocative, […]
LikeLike