NP - Bolano's Fictional Past

David Morris fqmorris at gmail.com
Wed Jan 28 09:48:45 CST 2009


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28bola.html?ref=books&pagewanted=all

A Chilean Writer's Fictions Might Include His Own Colorful Past

Few writers are more acclaimed right now than the Chilean novelist
Roberto Bolaño, who died of an unspecified liver ailment in 2003, at
the age of 50. His posthumous novel, "2666," appeared on many lists of
the best books of 2008, and interest in him and his work has been
further kindled by his growing reputation as a hard-living literary
outlaw.

But his widow, from whom he was separated at the time of his death,
and Andrew Wylie, the American agent she recently hired after
distancing herself from Mr. Bolaño's friends, editors and publisher,
are now challenging part of that image. They dispute the idea,
originally suggested by Mr. Bolaño himself, endorsed by his American
translator and mentioned in several of the rapturous recent reviews of
"2666" in the United States, that he ever "had a heroin habit," that
his death was "traceable to heroin use" or even that he had "an
acquaintance with heroin."




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