Roberto Bolaño has attained an almost mythical stature and is often considered the most influential Latin American writer of his generation. The first English-language volume of essays on the Chilean author, Roberto Bolaño, a Less Distant Star: Critical Essays, includes ten critical essays of his oeuvre. With a special emphasis on his masterpieces: 2666, The Savage Detectives, By Night in Chile, and Distant Star, the essays address topics such as Borges's influence and the role of repetition, social memory, allegory, and neoliberalism.

Autorentext

Ignacio López-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California, Merced, USA. He is the author of seven books including Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Tusán Literature and Knowledge in Peru, The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru, and Latino Los Angeles in Film and Fiction.

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Introduction; Ignacio López-Calvo. Preface: On Roberto Bolaño; Siddhartha Deb. PART I: GENERAL OVERVIEWS 1. Writing with The Ghost of Pierre Menard: Authorship, Responsibility and Justice in Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star; Rory O'Bryen 2. Roberto Bolaño's Flower War: Memory, Melancholy, and Pierre Menard; Ignacio López-Calvo PART II: TWO MAJOR NOVELS 3. 666 Twinned and Told Twice: Roberto Bolaño's Double Time Frame in 2666; Margaret Boe Birns 4. Ulysses' Last Voyage: Bolaño and the Allegorical Figuration of Hell; Raúl Rodríguez Freire 5. Con la cabeza en el abismo: Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes and 2666, Literary Guerrilla, Maquiladora of Death and the Search for the Masterpiece; Martín Camps PART III: SHORT NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES 6. Valjean in The Age of Javert: Roberto Bolaño in the Era of Neoliberalism; Nicholas Birns 7. Literature and Proportion in The Insufferable Gaucho; Brett Levinson PART IV: POETRY 8. Performing Disappearance: Heaven and Sky in Roberto Bolaño and Raúl Zurita; Luis Bagué Quílez 9. Bolaño's Big Bang: the Writer's Search of a Voice in Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño; Enrique Salas-Durazo