Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.
– Paul Valéry, "The Yalu"
The blog Biblioklept has posted some excerpts from Between Parentheses, about Bolaño's take on American writers.
On Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian:
http://biblioklept.org/2011/04/20/roberto-bolano-on-blood-meridian/
On Philip K. Dick's experiments:
http://biblioklept.org/2011/04/09/dick-was-a-kind-of-kafka-steeped-in-lsd-and-rage-roberto-bolano-on-philip-k-dick/
On William S. Burroughs's 'sainthood':
http://biblioklept.org/2011/04/05/roberto-bolano-on-william-burroughs/
See also:
"Guest Post: What Bolaño Read: The Americans" by Tom McCartan
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/guest_post_what_bolano_read2/
'“Twain Is the Day, Melville the Night” — Roberto Bolaño on U.S. Writers' by Biblioklept
http://biblioklept.org/2011/01/13/twain-is-the-day-melville-the-night-roberto-bolano-on-u-s-writers/
The above Valéry quote is one of three epigraphs in Blood Meridian. But it wouldn't be out of place in 2666, no.
(Detail from Grayground by Ronald Ventura)
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