Roberto Bolao, a Less Distant Star

Lpez-Calvo (Univ. of California, Merced) has gathered nine critical essays intended to feed interest in Roberto Bolao both as a formidable cultural critic and (as Lpez-Calvo writes in his essay) as the most influential Latin American writer of his generation (as he is touted to be). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. (K. M. Sibbald, Choice, Vol. 53 (5), January, 2016) "Roberto Bolao, A Less Distant Star: Critical Essays is the first English-language book examining, from different perspectives, the oeuvre of the most important Latin American writer of the last two decades. Ignacio Lpez-Calvo, a sophisticated scholar and author of seven important single-authored books and six edited volumes about Latin American literature, has once again been successful in rigorously selecting ten outstanding essays, some of which are brilliant. I am sure that this book will immediately become crucial in understanding the complex opus of Bolao,a postmodern Che of the contemporary Latin American novel." - Fernando Valerio-Holgun, Professor of Latin American Literature, Colorado State University, USA and author of Presence of Trujillo in Contemporary Narrative "In recent years Roberto Bolao's body of work has become central to Latin American literature. In its depth and breadth, this collection helps explain why. Roberto Bolao, A Less Distant Star: Critical Essays will quickly become a guiding light for serious scholarship on Bolao." - Rudyard Alcocer, Shumway Chair of Excellence in Romance Languages, The University of Tennessee, Knoxvillle, USA "A useful reference for specialized and non-specialized readers, this collection, the first of its kind available in English, is an effective introduction to Roberto Bolao's literature that at the same time advances key debates among scholars of his works, such as the question of the intersection of literature and politics, identity, literary genealogies, and the general history of power and violence in the West. These critical essays offer together a revealing map for those seeking to navigate Bolao's imaginary, and an engaging discussion for those who continue journeying through his rich literary universe." - Oswaldo Zavala, Associate Professor of English, College of Staten Island & The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA

Ignacio Lpez-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California, Merced, USA. He is the author of seven books including Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Tusn Literature and Knowledge in Peru, The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru, and Latino Los Angeles in Film and Fiction.

Introduction; Ignacio Lpez-Calvo. Preface: On Roberto Bolao; Siddhartha Deb. PART I: GENERAL OVERVIEWS 1. Writing with The Ghost of Pierre Menard: Authorship, Responsibility and Justice in Roberto Bolao's Distant Star; Rory O'Bryen 2. Roberto Bolao's Flower War: Memory, Melancholy, and Pierre Menard; Ignacio Lpez-Calvo PART II: TWO MAJOR NOVELS 3. 666 Twinned and Told Twice: Roberto Bolao's Double Time Frame in 2666; Margaret Boe Birns 4. Ulysses' Last Voyage: Bolao and the Allegorical Figuration of Hell; Ral Rodrguez Freire 5. Con la cabeza en el abismo: Roberto Bolao's Los detectives salvajes and 2666, Literary Guerrilla, Maquiladora of Death and the Search for the Masterpiece; Martn Camps PART III: SHORT NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES 6. Valjean in The Age of Javert: Roberto Bolao in the Era of Neoliberalism; Nicholas Birns 7. Literature and Proportion in The Insufferable Gaucho; Brett Levinson PART IV: POETRY 8. Performing Disappearance: Heaven and Sky in Roberto Bolao and Ral Zurita; Luis Bagu Qulez 9. Bolao's Big Bang: the Writer's Search of a Voice in Antwerp by Roberto Bolao; Enrique Salas-Durazo