SEVILLA KILLS ME
1. The title. In theory, and with no input from me whatsoever, the title of my talk was supposed to be “Where does the new Latin American novel come from?” If I stay on topic, my answer will be about three minutes long. We come from the middle classes or from a more or less settled proletariat or from families of low-level drug traffickers who’re tired of gunshots and want respectability instead. As Pere Gimferrer says: in the old days, writers came from the upper classes or the aristocracy, and by choosing literature they chose — at least for a certain period that might be a lifetime or four or five years — social censure, the destruction of learned values, mockery and constant criticism. Now, on the other hand, especially in Latin America, writers come from the lower middle classes or from the ranks of the proletariat and what they want, at the end of the day, is a light veneer of respectability. That is, writers today seek recognition, though not the recognition of their peers but of what are often called “political authorities,” the usurpers of power, whatever century it is (the young writers don’t care!), and thereby the recognition of the public, or book sales, which makes publishers happy but makes writers even happier, because these are writers who, as children at home, saw how hard it is to work eight hours a day, or nine or ten, which was how long their parents worked, and this was when there was work, because the only thing worse than working ten hours a day is not being able to work at all and having to drag oneself around looking for a job (paid, of course) in the labyrinth, or worse, in the hideous crossword puzzle of Latin America. So young writers have been burned, as they say, and they devote themselves body and soul to selling. Some rely more on their bodies, others on their souls, but in the end it’s all about selling. What doesn’t sell? Ah, that’s an important consideration. Disruption doesn’t sell. Writing that plumbs the depths with open eyes doesn’t sell. For example: Macedonio Fernández doesn’t sell. Macedonio may have been one of Borges’s three great teachers (and Borges is or should be at the center of our canon) but never mind that. Everything says that we should read him, but Macedonio doesn’t sell, so forget him. If Lamborghini doesn’t sell, so much for Lamborghini. Wilcock is only known in Argentina and only by a few lucky readers. Forget Wilcock, then. Where does the new Latin American literature come from? The answer is very simple. It comes from fear. It comes from the terrible (and in a certain way fairly understandable) fear of working in an office and selling cheap trash on the Paseo Ahumada. It comes from the desire for respectability, which is simply a cover for fear. To those who don’t know any better, we might seem like extras from a New York gangster movie, always talking about respect. Frankly, at first glance we’re a pitiful group of writers in our thirties and forties, along with the occasional fifty-year-old, waiting for Godot, which in this case is the Nobel, the Rulfo, the Cervantes, the Príncipe de Asturias, the Rómulo Gallegos.
2. The lecture must go on. I hope no one takes what I just said the wrong way. I was kidding. I didn’t mean what I wrote, or what I said. At this stage in my life I don’t want to make any more unnecessary enemies. I’m here because I want to teach you to be men. Not true. Just kidding. Actually, it makes me insanely envious to look at you. Not just you but all young Latin American writers. You have a future, I promise you. Sorry. Kidding again. Your future is as a gray as the dictatorship of Castro, of Stroessner, of Pinochet, as the countless corrupt governments that follow one after the other on our continent. I hope no one tries to challenge me to a fight. I can’t fight without medical authorization. In fact, when this talk is over I plan to lock myself in my room to watch pornography. You want me to visit the Cartuja? Fuck that. You want me to go see some flamenco? Wrong again. The only thing I’ll see is a rodeo, Mexican or Chilean or Argentine. And once I’m there, amid the smell of fresh horse shit and flowering Chile-bells, I’ll fall asleep and dream.
3. The lecture must plant its feet firmly on the ground. That’s right. Let’s plant our feet firmly on the ground. Some of the writers here are people I call friends. From them I expect nothing but perfect consideration. The rest of you I don’t know, but I’ve read some of you and heard excellent things about others. Of course, certain writers are missing, writers without whom there’s no understanding this entelechy that we call new Latin American literature. It’s only fair to list them. I’ll begin with the most difficult, a radical writer if there ever was one: Daniel Sada. And then I should mention César Aira, Juan Villoro, Alan Pauls, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Ibsen Martínez, Carmen Boullosa, the very young Antonio Ungar, the Chileans Gonzalo Contreras, Pedro Lemebel, Jaime Collyer, Alberto Fuguet, and María Moreno, and Mario Bellatin, who has the fortune or misfortune of being considered Mexican by the Mexicans and Peruvian by the Peruvians, and I could go on like this for at least another minute. It’s a promising scene, especially if viewed from a bridge. The river is wide and mighty and its surface is broken by the heads of at least twenty-five writers under fifty, under forty, under thirty. How many will drown? I’d say all of them.
4. The inheritance. The treasure left to us by our parents, or by those we thought were our putative parents, is pitiful. In fact, we’re like children trapped in the mansion of a pedophile. Some of you will say that it’s better to be at the mercy of a pedophile than a killer. You’re right. But our pedophiles are also killers.
Natasha Wimmer
THE DAYS OF CHAOS
Just when Arturo Belano thought that all his adventures were over and done with, his wife, the woman who had been his wife and still was and probably would be until the end of his days (legally speaking, at least), came to see him in his apartment by the sea and announced that their son, the handsome young Gerónimo, had disappeared in Berlin during the Days of Chaos.
This was in the year 2005.
Arturo packed his bags and that night he boarded a plane bound for Berlin. He arrived at three in the morning. From the window of the taxi he observed that the city was at least outwardly calm, although he glimpsed the vehicles of the riot police and fires burning here and there in the streets. But in general everything seemed calm; the city was under sedation.
This was in the year 2005.
Arturo Belano was over fifty and Gerónimo was fifteen. Géronimo had gone to Berlin with a group of friends; it was the first time he’d traveled without one of his parents. The morning Arturo’s wife came over, the group had just returned, minus Gerónimo and another boy called Félix, whom Arturo remembered as very tall and thin and pimply. Arturo had known Félix since the kid was five years old. Sometimes, when he went to pick up his son from school, Félix and Gerónimo would stay and play in the park for a while. In fact, they might even have met one another for the first time in preschool, before either of them was three, though Arturo couldn’t remember having seen Félix’s face back then. Félix wasn’t his son’s best friend, but there was a kind of familiarity between them.
This was in the year 2005.
Gerónimo Belano was fifteen. Arturo Belano was over fifty, and sometimes he could barely believe that he was still alive. Arturo had set off on his first long trip at the age of fifteen too. His parents had decided to leave Chile and start a new life in Mexico.
Copyright © 2007 by the Heirs of Roberto Bolaño
Copyright © 2007 by Editorial Anagrama
Translation copyright © 2012 by Chris Andrews
Translation copyright © 2011 by Natasha Wimmer
Originally published as El secreto del mal by Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona, Spain. Published by arrangement wit
h the Heirs of Roberto Bolaño and Carmen Balcells Agencia Literaria, Barcelona.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the magazines where some of these pieces originally appeared: Granta, Harpers, and The New Yorker.
Publisher’s Note: Three pieces, “Vagaries of the Literature of Doom,” “Beach,” and “Sevilla Kills Me,” appeared in Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses (New Directions, 2011), and are included here in Natasha Wimmer’s translations. These pieces appeared in the original Spanish editions of both El secreto del mal and Entre parentesis.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, Ltd.
First published as a New Directions Book in 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bolaño, Roberto, 1953–2003.
[Secreto del mal. English]
The secret of evil / Roberto Bolaño ; translated by Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer. — 1st American cloth ed.
p. cm.
“Originally published as El secreto del mal by Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona, Spain”—T.p. verso.
“A New Directions Book.”
Texts Bolano was working on before he died: completed stories, sketches for larger works, essays, and fragments.
eISBN 978-0-8112-2058-3
1. Bolaño, Roberto, 1953–2003—Translations into English. I. Andrews, Chris, 1962–
II. Wimmer, Natasha. III. Title.
PQ8098.12.O38S4313 2012
863.64—dc23
2011048681
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
ndbooks.com
Also by Roberto Bolaño
Available from New Directions
Amulet
Antwerp
Between Parentheses
By Night in Chile
Distant Star
The Insufferable Gaucho
Last Evenings on Earth
Monsieur Pain
Nazi Literature in the Americas
The Return
The Romantic Dogs
The Secret of Evil
The Skating Rink
Tres
Roberto Bolaño, The Secret of Evil
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