Last Evenings on Earth
Encyclopedia
Last Evenings on Earth is a collection of short stories, published in 2006, by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño
translated by Chris Andrews. The stories in this volume were selected from two Spanish language collections, Llamadas Telefonicas (1997), and Putas Asesinas (2001). The remaining stories in these two collections were later gathered in The Return
.
n identity and history. The narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and often unlucky) quests, speaking in the first person as if giving a deposition—like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living at the margins. Other stories find themselves narrated in the third person by the author "B.", which is one of many cases of Bolaño writing himself into his own fiction.
The volume can be interpreted as a politicized reconstitution of Julio Cortázar
's short stories.
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...
translated by Chris Andrews. The stories in this volume were selected from two Spanish language collections, Llamadas Telefonicas (1997), and Putas Asesinas (2001). The remaining stories in these two collections were later gathered in The Return
The Return (short story collection)
The Return is a collection of short stories by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, published in English in 2010, translated by Chris Andrews...
.
Summary
Set amid the diaspora of Chilean exiles in Latin America and Europe, the fourteen stories in Last Evenings on Earth are peopled by Bolaño's beloved "failed generation" and demonstrate the complexities of and Latin AmericaLatin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n identity and history. The narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and often unlucky) quests, speaking in the first person as if giving a deposition—like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living at the margins. Other stories find themselves narrated in the third person by the author "B.", which is one of many cases of Bolaño writing himself into his own fiction.
The volume can be interpreted as a politicized reconstitution of Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
's short stories.
The Stories
- "Sensini"
- "Henri Simon Leprince"
- "Enrique Martin"
- "A Literary Adventure"
- "Phone Calls"
- "The Grub"
- "Anne Moore's Life"
- "Mauricio ("The Eye") Silva"
- "Gómez Palacio" - a writing teacher comes to the town of Gómez PalacioGómez PalacioGómez Palacio is a city and its surrounding municipality in northeastern Durango, Mexico, located at 25°33′40″N 103°29′54"W adjacent to the border with the state of Coahuila...
and goes on a strange car-ride with the director of the writing programCreative writingCreative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
. - "Last Evenings On Earth" - a ChileChileChile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an father and his son vacation in AcapulcoAcapulcoAcapulco is a city, municipality and major sea port in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, southwest from Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semi-circular bay and has been a port since the early colonial period of Mexico’s history...
and visit a whorehouse bar, where they get into a fight. - "Days of 1978"
- "Vagabond in France and Belgium"
- "Dentist"
- "Dance Card"
External links
- "The Folklore of Exile" by Francine ProseFrancine ProseFrancine Prose is an American writer. Since March 2007 she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991....
, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, 9 July 2006 - "Book Review: Last Evenings on Earth" by Richard Marcus, Blogcritics Magazine, 24 May 2008
- "Book Review: Last Evenings on Earth" by Christopher P. Winner, The AmericanThe American (magazine)The American is an online magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. The magazine's primary focus is the intersection of economics and politics...
- "Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño" by Alex Wegner, Words Without BordersWords Without BordersWords Without Borders is an international magazine opened to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the world’s best writing and authors who are not easily accessible to English-speaking readers....
- "Gómez Palacio" - a story from the collection, published in The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, August 8, 2005.