Alicia believe’s more of us should read Horacio Castellanos Moya. This is an author I’d never heard of before she replied to my reply. Although, not a lot of his work is translated into English, I could only really find Senselessness and The She-Devil in the Mirror both of which sound very interesting. I can’t help but agree with Alicia, I believe more of us should be reading him. Poking around a little more I found this article in Guernica he wrote on Roberto Bolano, which was a little eye opening to say the least. I have a serious love hate relationship with Bolano, after reading 2666. I think it’s time I give him another shot, to win me over completely. I think I’m going to read The Savage Detectives next. I believe it needs to be done.
Lastly, following Alicia would be good for you.
Look at me getting promoted after I had such a ‘tude! :)
“Bolaño Inc.” was a bit of TRUTH that got incredibly misconstrued all over the internet. It was an indictment of how he’s been marketed, not an indictment of people who read Bolaño. Dance With Snakes is another Moya book available in English, and perhaps where people should start. It is the most straight-forward of the three but is still mind-blowing. Senselessness has been the most praised and widely read, for good fucking reason. You won’t breathe the whole time. In each of the translated works, people’s minds are unraveling and it’s gripping and cinematic in the best sense.
Also: A love/hate relationship with Bolaño?! I can understand. 2666 frustrated me after I first finished it, but time has healed the wounds and I think about Amalfitano far too much. I’d suggest reading some of the shorter works? The Skating Rink, for example, is not investment-level and is very readable.
I’ve had Moya written down in my Moleskine for some time, meaning to find an English translation of him at a bookstore. Fat chance of that happening considering the bookstores around here do not carry any translations. Funny thing is, I carry my Moleskine with me everywhere, but when I buy books online (which is my primary book buying outlet) I only have my wishlist. I never thought to update my wishlist with all of the scribbles in my Moleskine, until recently.
I was at a yard sale not too long ago, my Moleskine in hand, and I came across some Moya, Bolaño, and some others. I was shocked and stood there holding them all in my hands, looking around to find the person running the yard sale. Turns out, these had been her daughter’s. She left them here when she was visiting her family and had moved back to Belize to be with the boyfriend that her parent’s didn’t approve of. From what her mother told me, he was the one that had given her these books and she left them here for her parent’s to read. They didn’t understand them, they had told me. After I bought a small pile of books, the mother wished me luck in reading them, hoping that I could get something out of them.
Turns out, the girl who left the books with her parent’s is a friend of N’s and on the last visit home, the visit she left these books with her parent’s, we had a decent conversation at a bar, sitting in the corner with our draft beers, about Bolaño. She gave me a list of books, authors to look into, and Moya was one of them. I scribbled it in my Moleskine and that is the scribble I was looking at when I picked up the books at the yard sale.
And sidenote, not really a sidenote: Follow Alicia.
