Although Bolaño was already 43 years old in 1996 and the author of several books of poetry and three short novels, his transformation from itinerant poet to Latin American superstar was astonishingly quick. So much so, that arriving in Chile in 1998 for the first time after 20 years of exile in Mexico and Spain, Bolaño proclaimed himself the best contemporary Chilean novelist, a boast that irritated many Chilean novelists but already mirrored the opinion of some literary critics.
Bolaño's comment says something about him and something about his relationship to the Latin American canon-particularly the Chilean literary tradition. A Chilean national who moved to Mexico with his parents at the age of 15 during the presidency of Eduardo Frei, Bolaño spent much of the seventies and eighties as a vagabond writer, wandering through Mexico, Europe and, for a short time, Africa-almost like a Beatnik writer who arrived 20 years too late.
In several brilliant essays and lectures, he deconstructed contemporary discourse on nationality (though without "theory"), claiming that the only thing that identified him as a Chilean-and not as a Mexican or Spaniard-was his passport. His relationship to Chilean literature was hardly more cordial: He once referred to Pablo Neruda as a great misguided poet.
His harshest vitriol, however, was reserved for the ultra-popular Chilean writer Isabel Allende. When asked about Allende's writing in an interview just before the writer's death in 2003, he said: "not even in my most drunken moments have I lost a certain minimum lucidity, a sense of prose and rhythm, a certain rejection when confronted with plagiarism, mediocrity, or silence." Even the giants of the "Boom" generation were subject to his criticism: He famously said of Gabriel García Márquez that he was a man who should be happy to have met so many world leaders.
These comments reveal a harsh literary code of conduct and, in fact, Bolaño frequently wrote of an ethic, as well as an aesthetic of writing. His criticisms of Neruda and García Márquez stem partially from what he considered the "compromised" political nature of their work. Ultimately, though, Bolaño will be remembered more for his fiction than his insults.
It has been said of Picasso that his originality lay in his ability to synthesize; I believe the same could be said of Bolaño. The unaffected, colloquial prose of his short stories belies a lifetime of voracious reading, in which one glimpses much of the history of 20th-century intellectual movements-not only the erudition of Borges, the humor of Cortázar and the melodic style of Vargas Llosa's early prose, but also the influence of the French surrealists, Camus, Carver, Joyce, Kafka, the Dadaists, Pizarnik, Parra and a host of minor poets whose names are easily forgotten.
Bolaño filled his stories and novels with meditations on contemporary literature, the legacy of avant-garde movements, and the lives of writers. The Beatniks were an important influence, particularly William Burroughs; but whereas the Beatniks dedicated their lives to writing about the bohemian existence, Bolaño lived a bohemian lifestyle in order to dedicate himself to writing.
Indeed, most of his characters-especially those in the stories of "Last Evenings on Earth"-seem to float on the fringes of capitalist society, working odd jobs or not working at all, constantly searching for something elusive and unknown, but something that is certainly "outside of the system."
Bolaño himself referred repeatedly to the extreme poverty of his early days, when he worked for a time at a secluded campground outside of Barcelona and later earned money solely by way of submissions to small municipal writing competitions throughout Spain, an experience he claims was the inspiration for the short story "Sensini." Perhaps the only message in Bolaño, if there is indeed a message, is that for writers and artists, it is art alone that matters. In his "Discurso de Caracas," Bolaño insisted that "there can be many fatherlands … but only one passport, and that passport is undoubtedly the quality of one's writing."
In terms of this passport, there is no question where Bolaño belongs.