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Antwerp
Written when he was only twenty-seven, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolaño’s fictional universe. This novel presents the genesis of Bolaño’s enterprise in prose; all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment when his talent explodes. From this springboard—which Bolaño chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he’d written it (“and even...more
Paperback, 78 pages
Published
May 23rd 2012
by New Directions
(first published January 1st 2003)
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Play the flute, O dear death,
Frantic solitude engraves,
In your mellow embrace,
Letters of a fleeting breath.
Sometimes, I just lay on the floor fearing of being drowned in the emotional mayhem conferred by a book for being loyal to its words. And, then at times when I have no answers to the myriad questionnaires I seek refuge in these written words as a lost soul finding its home. The desire for a transparent ceiling seems surreal like a fish praying for wings. The fatalities of trust, love, sex...more
Frantic solitude engraves,
In your mellow embrace,
Letters of a fleeting breath.
Sometimes, I just lay on the floor fearing of being drowned in the emotional mayhem conferred by a book for being loyal to its words. And, then at times when I have no answers to the myriad questionnaires I seek refuge in these written words as a lost soul finding its home. The desire for a transparent ceiling seems surreal like a fish praying for wings. The fatalities of trust, love, sex...more
The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp"-Roberto Bolaño
A quick look at the reviews for this book show some people who really don't like it. They are probably right
This is a young work. It's darkly romantic (without sentimentality). It wears it's belief in the power of literature and words right on it's sleeve (so to speak, because books don't have sleeves, and this one doesn't even have a dust jacket).
Of what is lost, irretrievebly lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availablit...more
A quick look at the reviews for this book show some people who really don't like it. They are probably right
This is a young work. It's darkly romantic (without sentimentality). It wears it's belief in the power of literature and words right on it's sleeve (so to speak, because books don't have sleeves, and this one doesn't even have a dust jacket).
Of what is lost, irretrievebly lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availablit...more
18 likes · like · see review
★★★½
This review is brought to you by the word "loose."
Antwerp — written in 1980 but not published in Spanish until 2002 — has been described as a loose prose-poem. 56 short, fragmentary, wonderfully-written vignettes/sketches (some barely taking up half a page [of a very small almost pocket-sized book]) tied together in a loose narrative structure. Storylines and characters are shared but there is no narrative throughline. Instead we have what are the beginnings, the origins, of Bolaño's other w...more
This review is brought to you by the word "loose."
Antwerp — written in 1980 but not published in Spanish until 2002 — has been described as a loose prose-poem. 56 short, fragmentary, wonderfully-written vignettes/sketches (some barely taking up half a page [of a very small almost pocket-sized book]) tied together in a loose narrative structure. Storylines and characters are shared but there is no narrative throughline. Instead we have what are the beginnings, the origins, of Bolaño's other w...more
7 likes · like · see review
Fragmented abstract notes (sometimes complete with cinematographic direction) for the most pretentious art film ever made? Representative phrase: "All I can come up with are stray sentences, he said, maybe because reality seems like a swarm of stray sentences. Desolation must be something like that, said the hunchback." Unattributed jags of dialogue/quotation. Occasional self-conscious commentary on the book's form. Quick cuts within paragraphs consistently derailed my attention (not necessarily...more
Sep 12, 2012
Jeff Jackson
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Fans of the erotic repetitions of Alain Robbe-Grillet and/or James Ellroy
At first this reads like a bunch of noir-inflected prose poems -- but as the characters begin to repeat, locations stubbornly reappear, and dead bodies pile up in familiar configurations, you realize this is a deeply fractured crime novel, of sorts. Or maybe a hallucinatory poetic sequence that's extracted its essence from a well-worn pile of detective fiction. However you care to classify this assortment of startling images, pulp scenarios, and aggressive displacements, there's an underlying-bu...more
6 likes · like · see review
A central series of events and themes, some of which are recognisable from The Savage Detectives, is recollected in a series of fragments that aim not to reveal the nature of those events but traverse them every which way in memory. The writing is often cinematic in the sense that we are told what point of view we are taking up on a scene, and directions are given concerning who is walking towards or away from the camera. Many of the fragments are oriented around a series of phrases the origin o...more
1 like · like · see review
Reading this is like being in a dream, or rather, someone else's dream, or rather, waking up and recounting your own dream, hence it doesn't make sense much, but I definitely feel it. I started reading this late at night and just couldn't stop; I wanted to go on and on and make sense of all these dreams.
This "novel"'s just short. I need to re-read it soon.
This "novel"'s just short. I need to re-read it soon.
From what I’ve read I can see that Bolaño is a writer worth reading, just perhaps not this novel, not until one has read most of his later work which, at this point, I have not. It’s called a novella but it’s really more a collection of loosely—and I use the term loosely—connected vignettes; they’re certainly not short stories. He says, "The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp" and yet he acknowledges, "I never brought this novel to any publishing house, of course. They would've slam...more
Antwerp is a difficult novel to summarise, given that it’s a formative work in Bolaño’s oeuvre and one that possibly bears more relation to his poetry than his later fiction. These are fifty-six vignettes that function in part like snatches of half-remembered films, concerning a possible murder on a campsite in Spain. But just who has been murdered, and is the killer perhaps a reflection of the author himself? This is not the familiar Bolaño of the long, discursive sentences that became a style...more
This short novel as Bolaño called it was confusing and bewildering to read. Written in 56 short vignettes or sketches, it was easy to read in a couple of hours. Digesting it and nailing down what happened and who was involved is another thing.
As far as I can tell there was a terrible crime committed at a campground, the subsequent crime investigation, a meandering and wandering author--probably Bolaño himself. There's also a nameless girl, a hunchback, and an Englishman. None of them are concre...more
As far as I can tell there was a terrible crime committed at a campground, the subsequent crime investigation, a meandering and wandering author--probably Bolaño himself. There's also a nameless girl, a hunchback, and an Englishman. None of them are concre...more
“I wrote this book for the ghosts” says the author, before adding that this “my only novel that doesn’t embarrass me…”
The thing is though that this book is not neither a novel, nor a novella; it’s not even a short story collection. If anyone asked me I would say that what we have here is a collection of clippings of life and of random thoughts that somehow manage to meet at one point or another and thus make sense.
The author is doing here what he does best; he’s playing. He’s playing with the...more
The thing is though that this book is not neither a novel, nor a novella; it’s not even a short story collection. If anyone asked me I would say that what we have here is a collection of clippings of life and of random thoughts that somehow manage to meet at one point or another and thus make sense.
The author is doing here what he does best; he’s playing. He’s playing with the...more
I got this book as a small hardback, and I am glad because it means I can carry it around to consult numerous time in the future, and I believe I will come to love it more. Right now, I find it bewildering, like something I tried out and could not get them all in one reading. It is unpolished but impressively raw, and I enjoyed it. I suspect I'll need to talk more about it in future.
----- FAVOURITE QUOTES -----
"The scorn I felt for so-called official literature was great, though only a little g...more
----- FAVOURITE QUOTES -----
"The scorn I felt for so-called official literature was great, though only a little g...more
This is a very short novel I picked up at the Strand bookstore while in NYC two weeks ago. I am sure there's a formal rhythm/ formula to this work, that, if I could read and study it at length I could figure out. For now, I have to be okay with connecting fragments of ideas, words, scenes, and nonsense. Ultimately, this work is a "crime novel" but I really only understand that in the loosest of definitions. Lots of crimes occur - in the way that humanity can be ugly. Picture a stroll through Las...more
I chanced upon this tiny new translation yesterday. It's the first book by Bolaño that's left me (mostly) unmoved. Maybe because it's his first "novel" - pages from a notebook, described by the publisher as "an experimental crime novel… radical and solitary."
Most of the chapters are staccato sentences, at times the kind of prose poetry Charles Simic used to write. Fragments of later, brilliant Bolaño are everywhere - the lonely eros, paranoia, police, tortured dreams of literature, the cinéma vé...more
Most of the chapters are staccato sentences, at times the kind of prose poetry Charles Simic used to write. Fragments of later, brilliant Bolaño are everywhere - the lonely eros, paranoia, police, tortured dreams of literature, the cinéma vé...more
"i wrote this book for myself, and even that i can't be sure of. for a long time these were just loose pages that i reread and maybe tinkered with, convinced i had no time. but time for what? i couldn't say exactly. i wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they're outside of time, are the only ones with time. after the last rereading (just now), i realize that time isn't the only thing that matters, time isn't the only source of terror. pleasure can be terrifying too, and so can courage......more
I've never quite bought the hype-machine of Bolano, but the few books I've read by him I've enjoyed. Multiple people, however, told me to check this one out, so I filed it in the back of my head, figuring that when it was the right time it would come to me. Yesterday I saw the paperback (what a lovely cover!) staring back at me at Dog Earred Books on Valencia and decided that it was the right time. I've read it over the last 24 hours, reading it while I smoke, while I shit, while I stand up in m...more
Antwerp is persuasive w/r/t the merits and possibilities of brevity.
You can read it in a few minutes. Should you? Have you ever taken those cylinders of orange juice concentrate bottoms up with much success? It doesn't matter, really.
Bolaño’s feverish vistas depict plenty of Worlds within the sparse descriptions he offers about them.
Magnified ado is given to R.B.'s own declarative of this work: "The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp."
Does non-embarrassment equal Best Work? Have...more
You can read it in a few minutes. Should you? Have you ever taken those cylinders of orange juice concentrate bottoms up with much success? It doesn't matter, really.
Bolaño’s feverish vistas depict plenty of Worlds within the sparse descriptions he offers about them.
Magnified ado is given to R.B.'s own declarative of this work: "The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp."
Does non-embarrassment equal Best Work? Have...more
There is clearly something going on here... but I don't know what it is exactly, and it is clear that the author doesn't care one way or the other. Being introduced to Bolano by way of "Antwerp" I realize now is a little perverse... but then again, the friend who gave it to me is a bit perverse (I'm looking in your direction Cebic!).
The quote on the back of this slim little text says "The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp"-Bolano. But that is nonsense, because this is not a novel....more
The quote on the back of this slim little text says "The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp"-Bolano. But that is nonsense, because this is not a novel....more
This is not a novel, but I judge it as one because that's what Bolano called it. (I assume he wrote it before giving up on being a poet?) ANTWERP is interesting because it tackles several questions better articulated in Bolano's later writing -- what few elements are necessary to a novel? How does an artist find their voice? Is there anyone worth finding it for?
That aside, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who's not a hardcore fan -- there's not really a plot or characters and there are many...more
That aside, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who's not a hardcore fan -- there's not really a plot or characters and there are many...more
actually read this one twice before sitting down to try and review this. wouldn't recommend this as a starting point for bolano -- while his voice is recognizable and his favorite tropes are visible, the fragmented meta-narrative forces the reader to keep a distance that i'm not used to occupying during a bolano novel. this short book is really about writing and living the life of a writer blocked, existentially distressed exile as much as it is ostensibly "about" murder and sodomy in barcelona....more
First, some fun facts:
1) This was the first novel written by Bolaño, but the last to be published during his lifetime (he didn't try to get it published when he wrote it because "they would have slammed the door in my face").
2) This particular (Italian) translation was done by a Masters class in Spanish translation, so it's a "group effort".
And now to the text itself:
It reads like a description of a David Lynch film. But it's not that.
It reads like a collage of hallucinatory snippets of thought....more
1) This was the first novel written by Bolaño, but the last to be published during his lifetime (he didn't try to get it published when he wrote it because "they would have slammed the door in my face").
2) This particular (Italian) translation was done by a Masters class in Spanish translation, so it's a "group effort".
And now to the text itself:
It reads like a description of a David Lynch film. But it's not that.
It reads like a collage of hallucinatory snippets of thought....more
Fragmented, disjointed, surreal, yet filled with the typically poetic prose of Roberto Bolano. The notes on this one call it "an experimental crime novel", but for me, much like The Savage Detectives, this short and concise novel seems to be much more about the power of the written word to create vivid images than it even is about a story. There is a thread of a story about an apparent murder that weave through the 56 short segments that make up this book (the longest is less than 3 pages, I thi...more
Apr 29, 2012
Jim
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
21st-century-lit,
latin-america
We are in a post-modernist time warp. Maybe in Barcelona, maybe in Mexico City, maybe in Antwerp. Probably in Barcelona. There's a hunchback, six dead bodies in a campground where naked orgies were held, a policeman making love to an 18-year-old redhead. Don't forget the medic, the writer Bolaño who flits in and out, a train at night. There are images that stick in the mind, but it's all like a puzzle whose pieces are not quite machined to fit exactly. No matter. This fit after a fashion in some...more
Antwerp can be seen as a series of prose-poems, but there is also an ongoing narrative with recurring characters. Yes, this is the type of book in which it takes some effort just to pin down the principal actors and events.
Writer to hunchback: “All I can come up with are stray sentences, maybe because reality seems to me like a swarm of stray sentences.” “Desolation must be something like that,” said the hunchback.
So if reality seems like a swarm of stray sentences, then Antwerp is a work of rea...more
Writer to hunchback: “All I can come up with are stray sentences, maybe because reality seems to me like a swarm of stray sentences.” “Desolation must be something like that,” said the hunchback.
So if reality seems like a swarm of stray sentences, then Antwerp is a work of rea...more
May 07, 2010
Jason Pettus
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary,
hipster
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
For those who don't know, in recent years the new poster-child for American intellectuals has become the late Chilean author Roberto Bolano, for a whole perfect storm of small reasons: a former leftist political radical who wrote manytimes impenetrably dense yet poetic manuscripts, his rough-and-tumble li...more
For those who don't know, in recent years the new poster-child for American intellectuals has become the late Chilean author Roberto Bolano, for a whole perfect storm of small reasons: a former leftist political radical who wrote manytimes impenetrably dense yet poetic manuscripts, his rough-and-tumble li...more
9 likes · like · see review
Odd book. It is quite obviously an early work, and the wonderful way he writes is still evident here. However, to be honest, I barely had any idea what was going on. At first I thought the book was a collection of unfinished, unrelated, and very, very short vignettes. (Most averaged only a page or less; the longest maxed out at a grand total of three pages.) Some of the early ones read like a slapdash collection of interesting but meaningless sentences smashed into one another, which sometimes e...more
The only other Bolano book I've read is 'The Savage Detectives', which I loved. However, I can't decide whether I like this book or not. It was tough trying to concentrate on it, though admittedly its shortness makes it easier to focus (spookily it took me exactly the same amount of time to read it as my washing machine took to complete a cycle). There's only the mereset shimmer of a plot, with some characters - a nameless girl, a bunch of waiters, a cop, a hunchback - drifting in and out of it....more
What is Antwerp? I don't know. Movies of a dream? Dreams of a movie? Or just prose? Poetry? Prose poetry? What it's, a bit preposterously, called: a novel?
Whatever it is, it's evidence of Bolaño's genius. A 78 page book, half of those pages half empty, a book about absences and nothingness, places, fleeting visions of people with maybe identities. A book about writing, about living, about language and its mediation of our life.
I understand why this might be regarded as avant-garde or experimen...more
Whatever it is, it's evidence of Bolaño's genius. A 78 page book, half of those pages half empty, a book about absences and nothingness, places, fleeting visions of people with maybe identities. A book about writing, about living, about language and its mediation of our life.
I understand why this might be regarded as avant-garde or experimen...more
this isn't exactly a "novel"-- it's more an experimental collection of poignantly expressed (in typical Bolano fashion) stray ideas and thoughts around common themes moving somewhat radially (it's not quite linear, and is rather disjointed, in 56 parts). i'll sum my thoughts up with a couple quotes representative of this entire work:
"All I can come up with are stray sentences, he said, maybe because reality seems to me like a swarm of stray sentences."
"Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I...more
"All I can come up with are stray sentences, he said, maybe because reality seems to me like a swarm of stray sentences."
"Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I...more
This book is an interesting prose poem that was Bolano's first foray into prose. It's not exactly linear- or even coherent, in places, but some of the images are very striking and you can see that Bolano is creating the world he would later spend most of his work exploring: lots of cops, mysterious murders, urban legends, black cars, aloof women, prostitutes, freakish side characters, lost writers, memories and dreams, sex, violence, poetry, religion and mythology, all are given their moment of...more
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For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.
Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.
H...more
More about Roberto Bolaño...
Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.
H...more
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“Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.”
—
5 people liked it
“There's a secret sickness called Lisa. Like all sicknesses, it's miserable and it comes on at night.”
—
2 people liked it
More quotes…
updated Mar 08, 2013 11:48am
The superlatives.
Mar 08, 2013 11:50am