Roberto Bolao, a Less Distant Star Critical Essays [Hardcover]

Roberto Bola?o has attained an almost mythical stature and is often considered the most influential Latin American writer of his generation. The first English-language volume of essays on the Chilean author, Roberto Bola?o, a Less Distant Star: Critical Essays, includes ten critical essays of his oeuvre. With a special emphasis on his masterpieces: 2666, The Savage Detectives, By Night in Chile, and Distant Star, the essays address topics such as Borges's influence and the role of repetition, social memory, allegory, and neoliberalism.

Introduction; Ignacio L?pez-Calvo. Preface: On Roberto Bola?o; Siddhartha Deb. PART I: GENERAL OVERVIEWS 1. Writing with The Ghost of Pierre Menard: Authorship, Responsibility and Justice in Roberto Bola?o's Distant Star; Rory O'Bryen 2. Roberto Bola?o's Flower War: Memory, Melancholy, and Pierre Menard; Ignacio L?pez-Calvo PART II: TWO MAJOR NOVELS 3. 666 Twinned and Told Twice: Roberto Bola?o's Double Time Frame in 2666; Margaret Boe Birns 4. Ulysses' Last Voyage: Bola?o and the Allegorical Figuration of Hell; Ra?l Rodr?guez Freire 5. Con la cabeza en el abismo: Roberto Bola?o's Los detectives salvajes and 2666, Literary Guerrilla, Maquiladora of Death and the Search for the Masterpiece; Mart?n Camps PART III: SHORT NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES 6. Valjean in The Age of Javert: Roberto Bola?o 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 Bola?o and Ra?l Zurita; Luis Bagu? Qu?lez 9. Bola?o's Big Bang: the Writer's Search of a Voice in Antwerp by Roberto Bola?o; Enrique Salas-Durazo

L?pez-Calvo (Univ. of California, Merced) has gathered nine critical essays & intended to feed interest in Roberto Bola?o both as a formidable cultural critic and (as L?pez-Calvo writes in his essay) as the most influential Latin American writer of his generation (as he is touted to be).lsª