(Roberto Bolaño in his essay, “Exiles” from Between Parentheses, which I’ve been sporadically blogging about, out of order, because I’m reading pieces of it out of order while I code the index.)
Sometimes, I remember different pieces of Moby-Dick more than others. Depending on mood or weather, maybe. After the first time I read it, I couldn’t get that mountain lake out of my mind: “… the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface)…”
Lately, it’s been the sperm whale skeleton in Tranque (“To and fro I paced before this skeleton––brushed the vines aside––broke through the ribs––and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many winding, shaded connades and arbours. But soon my line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.”) and that final paragraph in the Cetology chapter:
“God keep me from ever completing anything.”
When there’s an author that I love, really really I-will-talk-so-much-about-them-while-drunk love, I do the best I can to anticipate my tendency to get sucked-in/addicted/tunnel-visiony with them. I buy all of their books and then try to hide them from my line of sight so I half-forget about them until a rainy day when I remember them, and it’s like finding funfetti cake in the fridge made just for you (I also do this with snacks in my office drawer at work). Occasionally, this means that there is that one book I haven’t read that everyone talks about but I can’t, because I’m stalwartly refusing to read it until sometime in the future. Like, say, Moby-Dick by Melville (no ha ha kidding).
The most egregious example of this is The Savage Detectives by Bolaño. Yesterday, I was feeling grumpy and I read an article from The New Yorker online, a ‘guide to Bolaño’ of sorts. It claimed that books like Antwerp and Between Parentheses and Monsieur Pain are really only for completists, which I do consider myself on some level because there are three of his books that are published that I haven’t read and I could rattle them off, but I won’t because I’ve already named one and that’d be boring. Anyway though, I got mad at the article because I was grumpy and thought the assertion dumb. Okay, maybe (maybe! not probably!) I could see how Monsieur Pain is best enjoyed by someone with a “fuller understanding” of Bolaño’s books, but I’ve talked to so many people who started with Antwerp––probably thanks to that beautiful gold-foil cover––and I’d like to think that Between Parentheses appeals to more than just us “completists” because it is brilliant and deserves to be read. But anyway, that said. I got all grumpy and then realized that I’m probably not a true completist, because, due to this weird readerly tic of mine, I have not read The Savage Detectives, which many people consider to be his best work and which makes me kind of pathetic and pale next to all the over Bolaño-ians (Bolañophiles? Bolañoifics?). But, it is what it is. Rainy day, etc.
This is really all to let you know that last night I had to put myself in the other room in order to not pick up Gob’s Grief, which is the last of Chris Adrian’s that I haven’t read and which I’m planning to save until I hear that he has another book coming out, and then I’ll gobble it up in a couple days and wait impatiently for the next.
That’s my plan, anyway. No word yet on how it turns out.
Look what came in the mail for me today!
It’s the hardback edition and it’s gorgeous. My brother is the sweetest.
I keep this copy at my parents’ house. Just in case.
“What is it attacking?” “A sperm whale! Moby Dick!” “I don’t think that’s right.” “Yes it is.” — a 7 yr old schools his mom at the Museum of Natural History.
Found a morse code translator, did what came natural.
I like to think my post-it usage helps my productivity.
