Nazi Literature in the Americas
Encyclopedia
Nazi Literature in the Americas is a work of fiction by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño
. It was published in 1996. Chris Andrews’ English translation was published in 2008 by New Directions which was shortlisted for the 2008 Best Translated Book Award
.
Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully situated in real literary worlds: Bolaño's characters rebuff Allen Ginsberg
’s advances in Greenwich Village
, encounter Octavio Paz
in Mexico City, and quarrel with José Lezama Lima
in Cuba.
Forerunners to this type of fictional writer biographies can be seen in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges
, particularly "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
".
Presents the Argentinian poetess Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, her son Juan Mendiluce Thompson, and her daughter Luz Mendiluce Thompson. Edelmira, among other ventures, attempts to create a room based on Edgar Allan Poe
's essay "Philosophy of Furniture" and founds The Fourth Reich in Argentina, a literary magazine and publishing house which publish works by several of the writers appearing later in the book. Juan is a novelist and politician while Luz is a talented but troubled poet who suffers failed marriages, struggles with alcoholism and overweight, and is eventually doomed by her love for a much younger woman.
This section differs in tone from the rest of the book, rather than being delivered as a dry encyclopedic entry it is narrated by a character, named Bolaño, who was a witness to some of the events. The story was later expanded into the novella Distant Star
, with the name of the protagonist changed to Alberto Ruiz-Tagle. this is explained in the introduction to the novel thus:
, in a review for The New York Times
, describes Nazi Literature in the Americas as:
Michael Dirdra, of The Washington Post
states that the novel, "very much deserves reading: It is imaginative, full of a love for literature, and, unlikely as it may seem, exceptionally entertaining." John Brenkman of The Village Voice
sees the book as both a satire
and an elegy
, stating,
In a dissenting opinion Alberto Manguel
, writing for The Guardian
, finds the novel is,
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...
. It was published in 1996. Chris Andrews’ English translation was published in 2008 by New Directions which was shortlisted for the 2008 Best Translated Book Award
Best Translated Book Award
Best Translated Book Award is an annual literature award given by Three Percent, the online literature magazine of Open Letter Books, which is the book translation press of the University of Rochester. It is awarded to the best original translation published that year. A long list and short list...
.
Summary
Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as an encyclopedia of right-wing writers. The book is composed of short biographies of imaginary Pan-American authors. The literary Nazis—fascists and ultra-right sympathizers and zealots, most from South America, a few from North America, portrayed in that book are a gallery of self-deluded mediocrities, snobs, opportunists, narcissists, and criminals. About Nazi Literature in the Americas, Bolaño told an interviewer: focus is on the world of the ultra right, but much of the time, in reality, I'm talking about the left.... When I'm talking about Nazi writers in the Americas, in reality I'm talking about the world, sometimes heroic but much more often despicable, of literature in general.Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully situated in real literary worlds: Bolaño's characters rebuff Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
’s advances in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, encounter Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
in Mexico City, and quarrel with José Lezama Lima
José Lezama Lima
José Lezama Lima was a Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature....
in Cuba.
Forerunners to this type of fictional writer biographies can be seen in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, particularly "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
"An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" is a 1941 short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was included in the anthology Ficciones, part one...
".
Contents
- The Mendiluce Clan
Presents the Argentinian poetess Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, her son Juan Mendiluce Thompson, and her daughter Luz Mendiluce Thompson. Edelmira, among other ventures, attempts to create a room based on Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's essay "Philosophy of Furniture" and founds The Fourth Reich in Argentina, a literary magazine and publishing house which publish works by several of the writers appearing later in the book. Juan is a novelist and politician while Luz is a talented but troubled poet who suffers failed marriages, struggles with alcoholism and overweight, and is eventually doomed by her love for a much younger woman.
- Itinerant Heroes or the Fragility of Mirrors
- Ignacio Zubieta
- Jesús Fernández-Gómez
- Forerunners and Figures of the Anti-Enlightenment
- Mateo Aguirre Bengoechea
- Silvio Salvático
- Luiz Fontaine Da Souza
- Ernesto Pérez Masón
- Poètes Maudits
- Pedro González Carrera
- Andres Cepeda Cepeda, known as The Page
- Wandering Women of Letters
- Irma Carrasco
- Daniela de Montecristo
- Two Germans at the Ends of the Earth
- Franz Zwickau
- Willy Schürholz
- Speculative and Science Fiction
- J.M.S. Hill
- Zach Sodenstern
- Gustavo Borda
- Magicians, Mercernaries and Miserable Creatures
- Segundo José Heredia
- Amado Couto
- Carlos Hevia
- Harry Sibelius
- The Many Masks of Max Mirebalais
- Max Mirebalais, alias Max Kasimir, Max von Hauptman, Max Le Gueule, Jacques Artibonito
- North American Poets
- Jim O'Bannon
- Rory Long
- The Aryan Brotherhood
- Thomas R. Murchison, alias The Texan
- John Lee Brook
- The Fabulous Schiaffino Boys
- Italo Schiaffino
- Argentino Schiaffino, alias Fatso
- The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman
This section differs in tone from the rest of the book, rather than being delivered as a dry encyclopedic entry it is narrated by a character, named Bolaño, who was a witness to some of the events. The story was later expanded into the novella Distant Star
Distant Star
Distant Star is a novella by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, first published in Spanish in 1996. Chris Andrews’s English translation was published by New Directions in 2004...
, with the name of the protagonist changed to Alberto Ruiz-Tagle. this is explained in the introduction to the novel thus:
- In the final chapter of my novel ‘’Nazi Literature in the Americas’’ I recounted, in less than twenty pages and perhaps too schematically, the story of Lieutenant Ramirez Hoffman of the Chilean Air Force, which I heard from a fellow Chilean, Arturo B.Arturo BelanoArturo Belano is the alter ego of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. The character's first appearance was in the novella Distant Star, where he was the narrator, while his most prominent role was in The Savage Detectives where he and fellow writer Ulises Lima are the central characters...
[…] He was not satisfied with my version […] So we took that final chapter and shut ourselves up for a month and a half in my house in Blanes, where, guided by his dreams and nightmares, we composed the present novel.- Epilogue for Monsters
- Secondary Figures
- Publishing Houses, Magazines, Places...
- Books
- Epilogue for Monsters
Quotes
- "That was not to be Pérez Masón’s last visit to the jails of socialist Cuba. In 1965 he published Poor Man’s Soup, which related — in an irreproachable style, worthy of Sholokov — the hardships of a large family living in HavanaHavanaHavana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
in 1950. The novel comprised fourteen chapters. The first began: “Lucia was a black woman from...”; the second: “Only after serving her father...”; the third: “Nothing had come easily for Juan...”; the fourth: “Gradually, tenderly, she drew him towards her...” The censor quickly smelled a rat. The first letters of each chapter made up the acrosticAcrosticAn acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
LONG LIVE HITLERAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. A major scandal broke out. Pérez Masón defended himself haughtily: it was a simple coincidence. The censors set to work in earnest, and made a fresh discovery: the first letters of each chapter’s second paragraph made up another acrostic—THIS PLACE SUCKS. And those of the third paragraph spelled: USA WHERE ARE YOU. And the fourth paragraph: KISS MY CUBAN ASS. And so, since each chapter, without exception, contained twenty-five paragraphs, the censors and the general public soon discovered twenty-five acrostics. I screwed up, Pérez Masón would say later: They were too obvious, but if I’d made it much harder, no one would have realized."
Critical reception
Stacey D'ErasmoStacey D'Erasmo
-Biography:D'Erasmo was born in 1961 in New York City. She received a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University in English and American Literature. From 1988 to 1995, she was a senior Editor at the Voice Literary Supplement. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford...
, in a review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The 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...
, describes Nazi Literature in the Americas as:
“a wicked, invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges’s wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right littérateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth and great lost hope."
Michael Dirdra, of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
states that the novel, "very much deserves reading: It is imaginative, full of a love for literature, and, unlikely as it may seem, exceptionally entertaining." John Brenkman of The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
sees the book as both a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and an elegy
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
, stating,
"Nazi Literature in the Americas is first of all a prank, an act of genius wasting its time in parodic attacks on a hated sort of writer. But beyond that, it produces an unsettling mix of overt satire and covert elegy. The reductive force of summary after summary starts to have an effect that transcends the satire; the book begins to convey a sense of the vanity of human endeavor and the ease with which a lifetime's work might be flicked into oblivion by a witty remark."
In a dissenting opinion Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguel is a Canadian Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places , A History of Reading , The Library at Night and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography ; and novels such as News...
, writing for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, finds the novel is,
"at first mildly amusing but quickly becomes a tedious pastichePasticheA pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
of itself. Like a joke whose punchline is given in the title, the humour is undermined, and all that is left is a series of names, dates and titles that, since they don't come across as funny, become merely irritating [...] It is not enough to invent a character and lend it a name and a bibliography and a few circumstantial details; something must justify its existence on the page, which otherwise risks resembling an annotated phonebook."
External links
- "The Sound and the Führer" by Stacey D'ErasmoStacey D'Erasmo-Biography:D'Erasmo was born in 1961 in New York City. She received a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University in English and American Literature. From 1988 to 1995, she was a senior Editor at the Voice Literary Supplement. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford...
, New York Times, February 24, 2008. - Nazi Literature in the Americas at Complete ReviewComplete reviewcomplete review is a literary website founded in March 1999. It is best known for reviews of novels in English translation, in particular drawing attention to otherwise neglected contemporary works from around the world, but there are also reviews of classics, non-fiction, drama and poetry...
. Includes links to many reviews.