Description
Book SynopsisNicholas Birns is Associate Professor at New York University, USA. His books include
The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel (co-edited, 2013) and
Theory After Theory (2010).
Juan E. De Castro is an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, New York, USA. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is
Mario Vargas Llosa: Public Intellectual in Neoliberal Latin America (2011). He is the co-editor of
The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel (2013).
Trade ReviewAfter a substantial introduction by Birns and De Castro,
Roberto Bolaño as World Literature proceeds with eleven refreshing critical readings of Bolaño’s works in light of the notion of world literature. … [M]any of the engaged essays it contains offer innovative perspectives. Reading the articles together provides significant insights into both Bolaño’s works and the very concept of world literature. One of the common strengths of the articles lies in their critical approach to some of the most well-known theories of world literature (e.g. those elaborated by Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova and David Damrosch) and their simultaneous exploration of new understandings of world literature construed as a literary category and a creative or critical practice. Thus, this book follows a chiastic pattern: it reads Bolaño through world literature and world literature through Bolaño. … Some of the best essays in this collection are ‘political,’ not in an ideological way but in the sense that they investigate the system underlying world literature. In this way, they strive to understand how an oeuvre like Roberto Bolaño’s both is world literature and constitutes a radical challenge to it. * Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Aarhus University, Denmark, Recherche littéraire/Literary Research (Fall 2020) *
Arguably,
Roberto Bolaño as World Literature is the most significant book in the series up to now. ... The Introduction, ‘Fractured Masterpieces’ not only sets up the subject of the book in all its complexity, it could also be seen as a model for how to articulate the individual subjects and the wider, theoretical interests of World Literature. ... More than in any other volume so far, this one shows how in every single chapter a questioning of World Literature through a consideration, even close reading, of Bolaño’s works, was made into a key directive and focus. Throughout the volume questions of politics, ethics and aesthetics constantly intersect, and even though each essay on its own is worth reading, the collected volume is certainly more than just the sum of its various parts. * Journal of European Studies *
Twelve chapters comprise the anthology, including the exemplary Introduction. It is the best Bolaño critical ensemble since
Bolaño Salvaje (2006). * Comparative Literature Studies *
Not
and world literature, but
as world literature, and here resides this volume's decisive and effective critical intervention. Not world literature (the tired substitute for a sociology of markets, prizes, and canonizing institutions), but rather
literature as world, or rather, literature as
non-world, the void that sits where the reassuring presence of the world used to be: Bolaño as the topological writer of the traumatic wound that splits totalizing imaginaries, unworlds a world turned against itself, and dislocates the very possibility of universal emancipation as the horizon for political and aesthetic agency. This urgent book is a crucial contribution to the collective process of redefining the critical and theoretical scope of world literature as a concept and a practice in need to be rescued from itself. * Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA *
This timely collection of essays on the place of Bolaño’s
oeuvre in world literature explores the Chilean author’s vision of history, his literary worlds, and the reception he has had worldwide. Essays by renowned experts analyze, through the analysis of some of Bolaño’s main works, his cosmopolitanism, the global framework in which his plots take place, and the reasons behind his impressive success as a writer that embodies Latin American literature after the Boom. Ultimately, the author emerges as a figure beyond one particular nation, political inclination, or cause. * Ignacio López-Calvo, Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California, Merced, USA *
Expertly assembled and introduced by the editors, this collection offers incisive explorations of Roberto Bolaño’s politics and of his place on the complex map of world literature. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in the great Chilean author’s work, and in the cosmopolitan dimension of Latin American literature. * Maarten van Delden, Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *
Birns (NYU) and De Castro (Eugene Lang College, New School) present the 11 essays in this collection in three parts: "Bolan~o and World History," "Bolan~o's Literary Worlds," and "Bolan~o's Global Readers." The contributors are from the US, Ireland, Germany, China, and Chile, a geographic range that reflects the title. In the introduction, "Fractured Masterpieces," the editors write that they find Bolan~o (1953–2003) difficult to characterize politically and artistically but not canonically—that is, as globally significant. In her essay, Oswaldo Zavala describes Bolan~o's work as taking "a subversive approach to Western literary modernity as it intersects the Latin American intellectual difference." Birns notes that Bolan~o shares affinities with Melville and, even more strikingly, Twain. Noting the irony of a writer whose posthumously commodified works explore "geometries of power and economy that shape capitalist modernity," Sharae Deckard explicates Bolan~o's "paradoxical relation to world literature." Bolan~o's distaste for marketing practices did not prevent the writer from becoming profitable for the marketers. These essays will encourage readers to visit Bolan~o again or for the first time. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *
Some of the best essays in this collection are “political,” not in an ideological way but in the sense that they investigate the system underlying world literature. * Recherche Littéraire *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Fractured Masterpieces
Nicholas Birns (College of New Rochelle, USA) and Juan E De Castro (Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, USA) I. Bolaño and World History 1. On Fascism, history and evil in Roberto Bolaño
Federico Finchelstein (The New School, USA) 2. “More Culture!”: The Rules of Art in Roberto Bolaño’s
By Night in Chile Thomas Beebee (Pennsylvania State University, USA) 3. Politics and Ethics in Latin America: On Roberto Bolaño
Juan E. De Castro (The New School,USA) 4. The Repolitization of the Latin American Shore: Roberto Bolaño and the Dispersion of “World Literature”
Oswaldo Zavala (City University of New York, USA) II. Bolaño’s Literary Worlds 5. Bolaño, Ethics, and the Experts
Will H. Corral (Independent Scholar) 6. Considerations on the Real and Reality in Juan Luis Martínez’s La nueva novela and in Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives
Patricia Espinosa H. (Instituto de Estética, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) 7. Global Bolaño: Reading, Writing and Publishing in a Neoliberal World
José Enrique Navarro (Wichita State University, USA) III. Bolaño’s Global Readers 8. Mocking World Literature and Canon Parodies in Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction
Benjamin Loy (University of Köln, Germany) 9. On Depoliticized Politics: Roberto Bolaño’s Reception in China
Teng Wei (South China Normal University, China) 10. Black Dawn: Roberto Bolaño as (North) American Writer
Nicholas Birns (College of New Rochelle, USA) 11. Roberto Bolaño and the Remapping of World-Literature
Sharae Deckard (University College Dublin,UK) Index
