Literary_fiction

I had bought this monstrosity of a book shortly before moving to Africa. I had heard an interview about it on NPR which piqued my interest. I had planned to read it in my down time and on flights but I was a beta reader back then and only got a couple hundred pages in before getting distracted. One of my pacts I’ve made with myself is not to have a book on my bookshelf that I haven’t read and this one had been staring at me for half a decade. I picked it back up and was surprised how interesting it was. It is actually 5 novels in one book that are tied together by common thematic elements. There is an obscure German author who goes by the pseudonym Archomboldi and the book opens with 4 literary professors from different parts of Europe who are obsessed by this obscure author. The author’s real name is unknown, but they spend many years trying to glean personal details about him from his publisher and anyone else who has ever heard of him. They end up in the small town of Santa Teresa Mexico where they had gotten a tip he was hiding. This small Mexican town plays as the second key thematic element and becomes a focal point that shows up again and again in the other novels. There is a rash of women being killed in Santa Teresa, over 200, and the police can’t seem to do anything about it. This is the backdrop for the lives of the next several novel’s main characters. We follow a washed-out professor, a detective, a journalist from Brooklyn, and many many more characters who are somehow all drawn to the town in one way or another. I guess Bolano was a good short story author, and this is his magnum opus where he writes his longest book. I didn’t realize this while reading, but it makes sense because really this book is group of short stories that are linked together loosely by various details. I definitely had to shift into low gear on this book, as you must be prepared to get sidetracked by anyone’s life story at any point. Also, there isn’t always a neat ending to the novels. Many are left feeling a little unfinished. If you are ok with that and are not in a rush, the book takes you many strange and interesting places. From Chile with a struggling film crew that is trying to make a raunchy B movie into the head of an aging black man who is the last member of his communist cell in Boston. The magnitude of detail in this book is mind boggling. Just thinking about the amount of imagination it took to create these many backstories is overwhelming. I started to become more and more worried as I came to the end that things would not be tied up, but in the last 30 pages he pulls it out a sort of No Country for Old Men ending. An ending that is not complete but is still satisfying in its own way.

So, in this surprising newsflash, we feature a story about how Ernest Hemingway is actually a really good writer. This story was set in the Spanish civil war where a mix of communists and republicans were fighting an established fascist government. The book follows an American named Robert Jordan who is fighting for the communist resistance. He is employed as a dynamiter and instructed to blow up a bridge behind enemy lines. There were two things that stuck out to me from this book. First is that Hemingway is probably the manliest man I’ve ever read. But in the best way possible. In my opinion this book is a great antidote to “toxic masculinity”. There is no machismo, chest thumping or other forms of “compensation”. Instead, there is a confident determination to carry out one’s responsibilities and to not be found wanting when the key moment arises. The main character is a blueprint of competency without arrogance. He managed to do that as well as write two female characters that seemed complex and layered. Hats off to you sir. The second thing was, it has been a while since I’ve read a book where I felt like I could see exactly what the main character was seeing. Hemingway manages to describe the setting and scenes so well I felt myself in the pine forests in the mountains of Spain. Or as an eyewitness to a massacre perpetrated by victorious rebels. This book makes you feel a full range of emotions.

This is a book I literally stumbled on because of the title. It ended up being probably my favorite book I have read all year long. It is a collection of short stories each based around a central theme. Stories range from Noah to astronauts. I must say after the first story I was only halfway on board, but by the end of the second story the author had won me over. I have not been as challenged mentally by a book in a long time. Delightfully dark and depressing with just enough humor and love to keep you from giving up. Which could be an allegory for life I suppose, either way I highly recommend this book. Get it in audio-book form, each story is about an hour long and will give you something to think about while you are stuck in traffic.

This is a collection of four short /ish stories by the king of Steve. It was all in all very entertaining. I can see why people like the guy. A little pedestrian at points but always in a diverting way. His characters are always believable and easy (for me at least) to relate to.