Nazi Literature in the Americas

[Dave Monroe]

Excerpt: from Nazi Literature in the Americas

http://www.ndpublishing.com/books/bolanonaziliterature.html

On 4/6/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nazi Literature in the Americas
>
> by Roberto Bolaño; translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
>
> A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition.
>
> "It's the sort of clever idea an author like Borges might sketch out
> in the short space of one of his stories -- but what's so remarkable
> is that Bolano takes the idea and sees it through... Nazi Literature
> in the Americas is an astonishing work." -- The Complete Review
>
> Nazi Literature in the Americas was the first of Roberto Bolaño's
> books to reach a wide public. When it was published by Seix Barral in
> 1996, critics in Spain were quick to recognize the arrival of an
> important new talent. The book presents itself as a biographical
> dictionary of American writers who flirted with or espoused extreme
> right-wing ideologies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It
> is a tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition.
>
> Nazi Literature in the Americas is composed of short biographies,
> including descriptions of the writers' works, plus an epilogue ("for
> Monsters"), which includes even briefer biographies of persons
> mentioned in passing. All of the writers are imaginary, although they
> are all carefully and credibly situated in real literary worlds.
> Ernesto Pérez Masón, for example, in the sample included here, is an
> imaginary member of the real Orígenes group in Cuba, and his farcical
> clashes with José Lezama Lima recall stories about the spats between
> Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera, as recounted in Guillermo Cabrera
> Infante's Mea Cuba. The origins of the imaginary writers are diverse.
> Authors from twelve different countries are included.  The countries
> with the most representatives are Argentina (8) and the USA (7).
>
> http://www.ndpublishing.com/authors/bolano.html
>