What happened in McNally Jackson on June 22?

This is mighty late to be linking to a report about an event (Natasha Wimmer's conversation with The Nation literary editor John Palatella) that happened more than a month ago. But it's always our pleasure ...

Natasha spoke about Bolaño in both a casual and academic way—she mentioned writing things like “B is totally crazy” next to passages where he ranted about other authors (“He really works himself up”), but also shared deeper  insights, like that his manic energy stems from his idea that “Real writers are on the edge of an abyss, but instead of this depressing him it filled him with glee.”

She spoke of how strange it was to get to know Bolaño not through writings about his personal life or family, but rather through writings about what literature affected him at different points of his life (for example, while impoverished in Barcelona, he apparently read up on the Napoleonic wars). From this she had to take “biographical clues,” some of which were misleading. 

The full report here from Book Stalker. And see also Elka Reads.

Another excerpt from Tres

via Center for the Art of Translation blog and Three Percent

A bilingual excerpt from Tres in the very first issue of Aldus, a Journal of Translation from Brown University. The English excerpt came from the third poem "A Stroll Through Literature", in translation by Laura Healy.

The journal can be viewed on-screen or downloaded (PDF format) here: http://www.theartmovement.info/aldus/

See also earlier Tres excerpts in Words Without Borders (trans. Erica Mena) and BOMB (trans. Laura Healy).

A Bolaño walking tour, Blanes, Spain

He had just had a street named after him. Now, The Prague Post's blog Colophon followed his traces in several places - beach, library, apartment residences, barbershop. 

Bolano lived in several apartments just blocks from the beach. They are for the most part [nondescript], with no plaques yet to mark his erstwhile presence. The streets were empty by the time we found the apartments, as most were taking siesta. Yelps and laughter from the beach was audible as we snooped around, snapping photos of what might have been Bolano’s barber, just across the street from one of his apartments.

http://www.praguepost.com/blogs/books/2011/07/13/roberto-bolanos-blanes/

The "Distant Star / Estrella Distante" exhibition

Regen Projects and kurimanzutto have come together to compile another impressive exhibition at the formers highly coveted gallery. Entitled Distant Star / Estrella Distante, the exhibition is based on the writings of Chilean born writer Roberto Bolaño (b. 1953 – d. 2003).

...

Among others, the exhibition will include Carla Rippey, who supplied the cover artwork for Bolaño’s first published book and was a great friend of his in Mexico City when he lived there in the early 70s; Patti Smith ... went to his home in Blanes, Spain, seeking to photograph one object, which ended up being his writing chair; Abraham Cruzvillegas whose work La Barbie roughly references the murders in Sonora as depicted in 2666; Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari’s film Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright is a typewritten love story, referencing Eric Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert, as so much in Bolaño’s work references the vast canon of literature that came before it.

http://slamxhype.com/art-design/distant-star-estrella-distante-an-exhibition-organized-around-the-writings-of-roberto-bolano/ 

The Regen Projects website schedules the exhibition for July 14. It will run until August 20. The gallery is located in Los Angeles, CA.

 

(Patti Smith, Madrid, 2010)