Sensini (Spoilers)

[Jim]

Discussion of the story "Sensini" in Last Evenings On Earth. Spoilers may appear.

[Jim]

Sesini follows the story of a young struggling writer who becomes acquainted with a much more famous writer who is also living in exile in Spain. The younger writer is surprised to find that fame has not eliminated the need for the older writer to continue in the daily grind of writing stories for competitions with small cash prizes, just as the younger man must do.

I wondered while reading this if Bolaño led a similar life early in his career, struggling to be noticed in obscure journals and writing competitions that few ever knew about. His first person narrative style gives the feel that we are reading autobiography rather than fiction, although at the end of the story, when the writers daughter visits the narrator some years later, there is a strange tension in the meeting which feels like there are things left unsaid that neither the narrator, nor the reader, can decipher. I hesitate to call it a cliffhanger, so much as just a missing something that seems disturbing and somewhat unsatisfying.