آخرین غروب‌های زمین

by Roberto Bolaño, پوپه میثاقی (Translator)

هیچ نشانه‌ای از پدرش نمی‌بینند و لحظه‌ای او را تصور می‌کند که در آب غوطه‌ور است. یا بدتر از آن، مثل سنگی غرق می‌شود. با چشمانی باز، در گودالی عمیق که بر فراز آن بر سطح آب، در قایقی چون گهواره‌ای تکان می‌خورد، پسرش دست از خندیدن برداشته و کم‌کم نگران شده است. آن وقت B سر جایش می‌نشیند و چون آن‌طرف قایق را نگاه کرده و آن‌جا هم هیچ نشانه‌ای از پدرش ندیده می‌پرد توی آب. و آن‌چه روی می‌دهد از این قرار است: مادامی که B با چشمان باز پائین می‌رود، پدرش، او هم با چشمانی باز، کیف پول در دست راست بالا می‌آید (کمابیش هم را لمس می‌کنند) وقتی از کنار هم می‌گذرند به هم نگاه می‌کنند، اما نمی‌توانند یا دست کم بلافاصله نمی‌توانند مسیرشان را تغییر دهند، بنابراین B به فرود خاموش خود ادامه می‌دهد و پدرش هم در سکوت به صعود خود.

بخشی از داستان

دوست شدن من و سنسینی حکایت غریبی داشت. آن‌ موقع من بیست و خرده‌‌ای‌ساله بودم و آه در بساط نداشتم. در حومه‌ی گیرونا در خانه‌ای خرابه زندگی می‌کردم که خواهرم و شوهرخواهرم موقع نقل ‌مکان به مکزیک برایم گذاشته بودند، تازه کارم را به‌عنوان نگهبان شب در کمپی در بارسلون از دست داده بودم، کاری که تمایلم را برای شب‌ نخوابیدن تشدید کرده بود.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Latin American, Literature, Spanish Literature, Latin American Literature, Contemporary

211 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

He continued with his poetry, before shifting to fiction in his early forties. In an interview Bolaño stated that he made this decision because he felt responsible for the future financial well-being of his family, which he knew he could never secure from the earnings of a poet. This was confirmed by Jorge Herralde, who explained that Bolaño "abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence" because the birth of his son in 1990 made him "decide that he was responsible for his family's future and that it would be easier to earn a living by writing fiction." However, he continued to think of himself primarily as a poet, and a collection of his verse, spanning 20 years, was published in 2000 under the title The Romantic Dogs.

Regarding his native country Chile, which he visited just once after going into voluntary exile, Bolaño had conflicted feelings. He was notorious in Chile for his fierce attacks on Isabel Allende and other members of the literary establishment.

In 2003, after a long period of declining health, Bolaño passed away. Bolaño was survived by his Spanish wife and their two children, whom he once called "my only motherland."

Although deep down he always felt like a poet, his reputation ultimately rests on his novels, novellas and short story collections. Although Bolaño espoused the lifestyle of a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible for all his adult life, he only began to produce substantial works of fiction in the 1990s. He almost immediately became a highly regarded figure in Spanish and Latin American letters.

In rapid succession, he published a series of critically acclaimed works, the most important of which are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the novella Nocturno de Chile (By Night In Chile), and, posthumously, the novel 2666. His two collections of short stories Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas were awarded literary prizes.

In 2009 a number of unpublished novels were discovered among the author's papers.

Reviews

[Adina ( not enough time ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in 2023 in Found In Translation Anthology. Last Evenings on Earth is story about a memorable visit in Acapulco of the narrator together with his father. Not much happens in the story. They do different stuff together, the narrator is quite reluctant to participate in anything his father proposes. They meet some strange people.There is a feeling of detachment in the story. I do not know why but it stuck to me.

I've failed to finish Bolano before, but I was more successful with one of his short stories. I received 2666 for Christmas so let's see how that goes.

[Garima · Rating 5 out of 5]

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

Roberto Bolaño *sigh*

I’m always at loss of words whenever I try to explain how Bolaño’s writing makes me feel and most of the times I only manage to come up with clichés like I’m at loss of words. I read him for purely selfish purpose, whenever I just want to get lost in some unfamiliar land of story-telling by my imaginary friend ‘B’, B for Bo-la-ño.

Last Evenings on Earth is a collection of 14 short stories comprising not of different topics but different emotions we experience in the process of living or merely surviving on earth. However, Bolaño have some favorite props, such as writing about struggling writers/poets and their wandering lives . While reading this collection, I usually started with finding Bolaño in his stories but eventually found a part of myself in his words. And that’s the most fascinating thing about his narrative ability that a reader very smoothly and effortlessly gets involved with the characters, which is also the main essence of most of the stories in this book, that they all are primarily character driven and not plot driven.

Although I liked all the stories, but my favorites among them are Anne Moore’s Life, Mauricio (“The Eye”) Silva and the title story. In Anne Moore’s life, the story follows the life of Anne, from her childhood days to her middle aged years, and whatever happened between them. Her family tensions, her love affairs, her sexual exploits, her bird of passage survival, her wayfaring struggles, in short, her living-on-the-edge life. I won't say that I could relate to her life but I could definitely felt a connection viscerally.

Mauricio (“The Eye”) Silva would be one story I have read in a long time that made me very emotional. I cried a lot; I cried like a small child, I cried for the unfairness exercised in the wretched parts of the world. In this story, Mauricio a.k.a Eye, a photo journalist, who visits India for one of his assignments lands up in an unnamed prostitutes’ district, where he ends up witnessing the ugly face of humans. The way Bolaño communicated the protagonist’s feelings is brilliant while maintaining the subtlety and compassion the situation demanded.

The title story revolves around a vacation took up by a father-son duo in Acapulco and their consequent adventures. The reason for my likeness of this piece is simple: the cliffhanger ending. A simple family time turned into a suspenseful struggle ready to be tackled, with life/lives at stake. At the end, it’s up to readers to interpret what would happen.

But who am I kidding here? Almost anything written by Bolaño would continue to be amongst my favorites. In all these stories, he has captured the poignancy of different situations and characters within, that steers different range of feelings in a reader. I love the uncertainties and FTW attitude in his sentences:

- I was too busy working and dealing with my own problems to do anything about Anne Moore. I think I even got married.

- Years went by. Many years. Some friends died. I got married, had a child, published some books.

And I love when out of nowhere he pulls off some deep thoughts such as this:

..two incomprehensible phenomena whose paths had just crossed at that point in the vast universe, making valiant but probably vain attempts to find a common language.

This book perfectly reflects the world from the ever observant eyes of Bolaño, a world one can almost wish to be part of despite its capriciousness. Apart from enjoying his restrained yet illuminating prose and inimitable style, I like reading his works for the emotional effect it has on me.

Highly Recommended with Five/5 Stars.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still have vivid memories of reading 'The savage Detectives' well over a year ago, in which I thought the first half had masterpiece status written all over it, featuring one of the best openings I have ever read, only to be let down by a second half which seemed to drive into a fog and never get anywhere. Style over substance, Bolaño showing off, to a degree. The longer the novel dragged on, the more distance came between me and the characters, reaching a point where I just didn't care anymore. This problem didn't exist here thankfully, as even though time spent with the characters was brief, they carried a flawed human nature that was realistic and easy to get into. Down, in principle, to a nice smooth narrative. I would even go as far as to say Bolaño here reads like a Latin American Richard Yates at times, in the way he handles problematic love, and the way life doesn't shape up into the dreams one once had.

There are fourteen stories that make up 'Last Evenings on Earth', only three of them I would class as longer short stories, the rest are roughly the same in length. Regardless of size, all made an impact. Some stories are linked through a character who simply goes by the name of 'B', a Chilean exile and writer who had a turbulent love life and an obsession with European and Latin American literature. He would spend time in Mexico, Spain and France. One thing in common with most of the other characters is they aimlessly wander, never sure quite where they fit in and belong. And as with Bolaño, Poets, pimps and prostitutes feature regularly, whilst an overlapping melancholy travels around with the lonely and jaded. Bolaño is not reticent about mixing his life story, or at least a mythologised version of it through his work. He pops up in various guises, principally as the Chilean Arturo Belano, who left Chile when young to live in Mexico, returning briefly to his home country just before the Pinochet coup, briefly detained but then reverted to a nomadic, bohemian, heroin-fuelled existence as a vagabond poet before settling in Spain. The most important test that Bolaño triumphantly sails through as a writer is that he makes you feel changed for having read him, he adjusts your angle of view on Latin America. His vision here can be disturbing and dark, but it is not cold at all, as humour and compassion are never far away.

Bolaño is both aware of and indulgent towards the futility of poetic rebellion, that one would say has become his forte. Which is why so many of his characters carry a sense of doom with them. But he also succeeds in injecting his lost and wandering poets with pathos, but also nobility and intelligence. He manages to convince us that the deceptively disparate topics and fixations are essentially the same subject. A number of the stories explore the mysterious, mystical way in which the thwarted finds the truest and deepest expression of ambition, and the ease with which an unhappy love affair can develop into an abhorrence for individual freedom, of life itself almost.
Like most of Bolaño's work, his definition of fiction is at once transparent and opaque, lucid and elusive, and yet we intuit what he means. Reading fabric of the particular is like watching the tracks of art and life merge at the horizon and linger there like a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at ourselves and the world around us.

From the haunting 'Dentist', set in India looking at the infatuation towards a dirt-poor boy, to the much travelled 'Anne Moore's life' which sees how life for some, can never seem to settle down in one place, to the father & son road trip title story 'Last Evenings on Earth' about a memorable stay in Acapulco, these, and the other European based stories were highly impressive, proof that confirms to me he can write the little stuff, as well as the big and the extra large.

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I prefer not to say anything, she wrote, there’s no point adding to the pain, or adding our own little mysteries to it. As if the pain itself were not enough of a mystery, as if the pain were not the (mysterious) answer to all mysteries."-Anne Moore’s Life

~

The short story is the perfect form for Bolaño’s talents, his two big novels being composed essentially of chained bursts of prose that might stand as stories on their own. He is the master of the resonant scene, the character who fades from the reader’s eyes, dissolves into the whiteness of the wordless page that follows the final sentence of all stories, but his images resound and echo and bounce and haunt the reader’s skull-space for a long time. If I wanted to be melodramatic I would say that finishing one of his stories or scenes is like waking up from a vivid dream and as you think of what the story was it is like recalling a retreating dream; or one could be tempted to say he is the most talented writer of ghost stories the late twentieth century was given, but that wouldn't be doing justice to the lives he conjures in his works that feel so utterly real and human and lived through. As other reviewers have remarked, there is this ineffable floating feeling, or a specific kind of weird buzz Bolaño’s prose induces, and he is one of those rare writers that, to me, not only makes me reflect on my own life but also excites me to write, to write fiction, to risk things in order to write beautiful and strange fictions that might affect others similarly. I’ve been using the term “empathy” a great deal recently, and the empathy that exists in Bolaño’s writings seems to me to be an empathy for the sad fading out of all life, the futility of our endeavors in the face of personal extinction and the often cruel terms with which we must engage with reality- the lament that our world is a suffering one where people survive as they can and must but are tread into dust despite our best efforts and intentions. We leave things behind for the ages- children, friends, family, writings, pictures, what we’ve accomplished in the world with the time we were given that has burrowed its way into the consciousnesses of others- and then we dissolve into the timeless field, leaving only the impact of our particularity. Bolaño is the poet of this dissolve, and of the abstract pain we all live through while attempting to fight it. Not to say he isn’t funny, because he’s very funny, but I associate Bolaño with a kind of wandering, lost-soul melancholy ornamented here and there with laughter at the absurd; and for once the blurb writers get it right when they are constantly mentioning “the melancholy folklore of exile” on the backs of his books, because that is what he evokes. I don’t need to go into his biography to speculate on why his books might be so infused with this specific type of journeyman’s sadness and wisdom, but anyone curious can easily find out.

The stories in Last Evenings On Earth are wonderful examples of everything I’ve attempted to say above. The narrator (often Bolaño’s ubiquitous literary double, Arturo Belano, or his nameless observing eye-a technique that unifies much of his oeuvre into one long variegated tale) recounts in a tough but lyrical prose- Bolaño’s trademark stark, strange style that always makes one feel that something is looming- the stories of lives he has encountered or heard told throughout his years of exile. The 1973 Chilean coup is crouching behind the narratives as always, as is World War II in some of these, and of course Bolaño’s five bittersweet obsessions are on full display- exile, poverty, violence (or death), sex, and art- and most often the “plot” of the stories is the place where these collide. Many of the characters are artists or writers, or used-up people, failures, and occasionally killers, criminals, pimps- general outcasts and lost souls; but the stories never approach judgement of the way a life was lived; the camera lens sits wide open, and it reads the unfolding of events at a distance. This sort of spectral vision is another reason Bolaño’s prose haunts; as if a deity were reciting humanity’s dark history to itself but can’t bring itself to intervene, only watch and recite. There are other moments where you feel Belano searching for his Lost Time in the lost time of others; the paragraphs are peppered with many “the years passed...” or “time went by...” or “I didn’t see him again for several years...” or “months elapsed, I moved to Girona, I might have gotten married...” or “now is my time to flee...” and someone disappears, or murkily returns from the recesses of oblivion, but the only real resolution of course is death or continual wandering, which is continual seeking, which is the only kind of practical resolution we mortals are given. My favorites were probably “Anne Moore’s Life”, about a woman’s desultory life throughout the middle of the twentieth century, which is pretty much a perfect example of immensity captured in a small amount of pages; “Enrique Martin”, about Belano’s disparate interactions with a hack writer throughout the years, who may or may not be pursued by dark forces, and which contains those bizarre happenings in the background of scenes (unexplained “boomings” from a quarry, cars that linger a bit too long in inappropriate places, mysterious visits in the middle of the night, anonymous coded missives, things that suggest something ominous but do not go as far as naming it) that Bolaño employs so well to set up an anticipation of catastrophe; and “Dentist”, an extended, increasingly drink-driven conversation piece, which gives us these lovely lines:

But here’s where art comes from, he said: life stories. Art history comes along only much later. That’s what art is, he said, the story of a life in all of its particularity. It’s the only thing that is really particular and personal. It’s the expression of, and at the same time, the fabric of the particular. And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular?... What I mean is the secret story.... So now you’re wondering what I mean by the secret story? asked my friend. Well, the secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter. But every single damn thing matters! It's just that we don't realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don't even realize that's a lie.

But all the stories here are well worth your time and thought, and curated as they are in this collection, give the feeling of a very moving, strongly unified whole.

~

”What were you dreaming about? he asks her. The girl replies that she was dreaming about her mother, who died not long ago. The dead are at peace, thinks B, stretching out in the bed. As if she had read his mind, the girl says that no one who has passed through this world is at peace. Not anymore, not ever, she says with total conviction."-Vagabond in France and Belgium

[Jenn(ifer) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hola señor. We meet again. I see you’ve cleaned up your act this time. I’m not going to lie, I missed the filth a bit in this one, but you’ve got enough grit to go around so I won’t fault you for it. Sigh.

Oh señor, why are all the good ones dead?

Bolaño gives us a glimpse into the life of the struggling artist with this collection of stories. Brilliantly, of course. “A poet can endure anything. Which amounts to saying that a human being can endure anything. But that’s not true: there are obviously limits to what a human being can endure. Really endure. A poet on the other hand, can endure anything. We grew up with this conviction. The opening assertion is true, but that way lie ruin, madness, and death.”

Through the smoky haze comes one of the most engaging, hypnotic, sorrowful collections of short stories I’ve been lucky enough to read. It’s soaked in foreboding, dripping with longing, and left me, as Bolaño often does, wanting more. More señor. More please. More.

****
Also, if I had my druthers, you'd read both this book AND 'The Return,' but if it's a choice between the two, 'The Return' would win by a nose.

[Nidhi Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in love with Bolano. I don't think I have come across anything as ingenious as Bolano’s Last Evenings on Earth, for quite some time. A collection of 14 short stories that mostly tell the tales of amateur authors, wandering lives, forgettable love episodes, randomly struck friendships. The narrative, in most stories, is infused with biographies of good writers, bad writers, failed writers, forgotten writers. Writing becomes a quest, an obsession, a life-force, a life-history. Something that is never given up on. Then there is the terrible need for validation of one's writing. The characters duel with anxiety, panic, impaired sensibility and deep frustration. Their stories are forgotten and remembered in the pages of neglected manuscripts. And amidst all this, Bolano entwines his magic by personalizing them in a way that some deep and sad truth about life and human nature is communicated. I love how he writes: with that simple force, that sense of immediacy. How his sentences end and start again with similar openings rendering a beautiful multiplicity and power to his writing, to the thoughts and feelings he attempts to weave into those words. It’s something like waiting for a wave to crash against the shore. You do not know how huge it could be and with what force it could strike you. Nothing tremendous would ever follow anything but nevertheless there is a charged anticipation. What next? Next what? The ending is often abrupt and then the entire story does not sum up into anything significant. A non-conclusiveness that is unrounded but not with that sense of incompletion. One cares more about the characters rather than how their stories fare in the end. And in their miscarried projects, their absurdities, their panic-stricken flights and returns, there are fragments of human fragility that have scattered out of what a brittle self can hold.

[صان · Rating 5 out of 5]

محشر و دل‌نشین.

از فضاهای آمریکای لاتین‌اش گرفته تا خط داستاني‌های مخصوص به خودش و شخصیت‌های منفعل‌اش.

بولانیو در بعضی از داستان‌هاش به‌جای اسم شخصیت از حروف الفبا استفاده می‌کنه. اول که شروع کردم با خودم گفتم که خب چه کاره، علی مي‌شه ع و انگار که علیه. ولی وقتی چندتا داستان خودندم تازه فهمیدم که این قضیه چی داره به سر ذهن من میاره.
بولانیو روی آدم‌ها و فکر‌هاشون و ارتباطات‌شون خیلی دقیق می‌شه. وقتی به‌جای اسم آدم از حروف استفاده می‌کنه ذهن ناخوداگاه کمتر با اون کاراکتر ارتباط حسی برقرار می‌‌کنه و هم‌ذات پنداری رو کم می‌کنه و باعث می‌شه داستان برات چیزی بشه مثل یک مقاله علمی که داره روابط و آدم‌ها رو تشریح می‌کنه و توی خواننده نشستی بالای تخت جراحی و اتفاقات رو مشاهده می‌‌کنی. البته لحن گزارش‌مانند این داستان‌ها هم به این قضیه کمک می‌کنه.

بی با خود فکر کرد فلان. در این صورت آ نمی‌تواند که فلان. پس بی فلان. انگار که قضیه فیزیک و ریاضیه و از نقطه آ شروع می‌‌کنه و به بی می‌رسه.

مجموعه خیلی عالی‌یی بود. چنتا داستان بود که کمتر جالب بود اما در کل محشر بود.

درود به روح دقیق‌بین و شکافنده‌ی آدم‌هات آقای بولانیو!

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last Evenings on Earth is a collection of what I think are Bolaño’s most soulful stories, which convey a level of fragility and vulnerability that isn’t often expressed in his writing. These also feel like his most personal stories, borrowing quite extensively from his own life.

“That’s where art comes from, he said: life stories. That’s what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It’s the only thing that really is particular and personal. It’s the expression of and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular.”

Nearly every story revolves around Bolaño’s literary alter ego, Arturo Belano, recounting episodes mainly from his life as a writer and, elsewhere, reflecting on fatherhood, love, and exile. Most of these stories are told from the perspective of an older man looking back, realizing how life has imperceptibly shifted under his feet, reflecting on his ruined youth and the price paid for devoting oneself to art and literature.

To that point, many of the stories are about literature itself and how the writer serves as a vessel of expression for the human soul. Bolaño admits that although the “little world of letters” can be terribly petty and ridiculous, he believes in it anyway, in the power and indispensability of literature.

The writing is, as always, stunning. He dreams up many vivid and unsettling moments of violence and despair, but just as often offers humorous episodes and small scenes of empathy and genuine human connection.

“Everyone was lost, so how could one lost person presume to show another the way? Especially since the way, as well as being hidden from everyone, probably didn’t even exist.”

I’m so glad I saved this collection for last in my reread through all of his work. It feels like one of the truest expressions of Bolaño’s conviction that art and life are inseparable.

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

What ties the fourteen stories in this collection together is melancholy. Obscure poets and writers, and exiles make up most of the people in this book, and Bolaño renders moments of transience with great delicacy. Events are narrated plainly, but in all of them there’s the great veil of sadness enshrouding everything. Parting: from people, from the places we know and love, from the times that are familiar, is at most times sad. It can also be the kind of sadness that bears longing; the kind of sadness that is spontaneous and innocuous enough to dwell in. Going for a drive with the windows pulled down and the breeze on our face or looking at the starry sky. English words don’t seem to fit into the shape of these feelings of yearning and so we look for those of other languages: the Amharic tizita; the Welsh hiraeth; the German sehnsucht; the Portuguese saudade. The indefiniteness itself being a part of the experience, and this collection of stories dredges up this feeling exquisitely. This was my first Bolaño and it turned out to be a very good book.

[brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

1) viva susan sontag! bolaño is the 'it' writer of the moment - and my rebellious, contrarian, and bratty self wanted to hate him. or just not read him. then i caught sontag's seal of approval and knew i hadda dive head-first into the 'ol zeitgeist. lucky me.

2) these tales aren't about all that much, but, holyshit brother!, is there all that much there. most of 'em owe a debt to borges in their ultra-obsession with books, writers, & reading; a few actually follow the master's game of tracking a life solely through one's written work... but, it's really bolaño's prose and structure which is the killer: rather than place us inside a scene as it happens, the narrator methodically recounts it from a later time... a muted, elegiac buildup that crashes louder in one's heart than the throwdown drama of most other books.

a great starting point for the bolañeophyte.

[Mostafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

هووف
ازون کتاباییه که باید نم نم بخونی، هر داستان رو سر فرصت بخونی بعد بذاری هضم بشه تا بری سراغ بعدی
داستانای عجیبی با روایت عجیب... روایتای گزارشی، خاطره ای، نوع روایت اصلا فرق داره با کتابای دیگه
داستانایی که شخصیت اصلیش نویسنده س و موضوع داستانا هم عمدتا حول و حوش نویسندگان تبعیدی و شعرا و کتاب میگرده
تجربه جالبیه خوندن این کتاب

"ما هرگز دست از خواندن برنمی‌داریم، اگرچه هرکتابی بالاخره به پایان می‌رسد، همان‌طور که هرگز از زندگی دست برنمی‌داریم، اگرچه مرگ مسلم است."
ص 198

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well this doesn't bode well for "2066" or "The Savage Detectives" unless someone tells me that this collection of short stories is very different from these two novels...
No one is more crushingly disappointed than me after reading my first book by Roberto Bolano this weekend.
I found this collection to be nothing but a vast, arid and lifeless desert without a single miraculous oasis to redeem it. The more I tried to get into these stories, the more alienated I felt. I found the style strikingly oppressive and repetitive, lacking the basic pulse of life that is essential to anything I read. I kept searching for a point of view - knowing that Roberto Bolano is an extremely brilliant person - but only found erudition instead of lively intelligence. I desperately wanted the characters to tell me something, teach me something, make me feel something, anything and in the end, I had to admit to myself that I was feeling nothing. And not only was I feeling nothing, the book was slowly, insidiously depleting my vital energy. It had been a long time since I had felt that empty at the end of a book.
I can take melancholy any day, I can take exile, I can take isolation, I can even take political torture but none of these themes were ever fully embodied in these pages for me. "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" by Anthony Marra made me feel more along these lines in a single paragraph than Bolano in all of these stories.
Literature is populated by many geniuses. Some go to Nabokov's volubility, some to Hemingway's spareness. Some revel in Henry James and others in David Foster Wallace. From Malcolm Lowry to Kafka, there lies a world of extraordinary voices. Sometimes a voice speaks more clearly to you than others.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh the melancholy. The longing. The detachment. The beautiful sorrow. Bolaño speaks my language. And it's all a dream and it's all slightly out of focus. And it's wonderful.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't care if Brazil beat the pants off of Chile today. The Chilean people are still winners to me!

Today I was thinking about the countries (damn them) who're still in the World Cup right now, and I realized I can't think of any Brazilian writers. The only Brazilian on my bookshelf is Paolo Friere, but he isn't a novelist.... I can't even name a single Uruguayan writer. Argentina of course has got some famous players, and is therefore an exception, but in general I think there's a trend of the weaker literary traditions beating the more writerly countries in this round. I mean, can you name a Dutch writer? Maybe you can, but I can't (okay, maybe I can't name many Slovakians either, but don't let's dwell). A Ghanaian? Ha. Right. As if! Of course it makes sense if you think about it: if your nation's out playing sports, it's much less likely to be locked up in a room writing. This theory explains England's defeat, and France's implosion. Yes, yes, this is all just based on my biased familiarity/woeful ignorance of each nation's literature. Nonetheless, using this perhaps somewhat subjective criteria, I predict victory tomorrow for Paraguay and Portugal (never read Pessoa).

Anyway. I digress.

When I'm in a rut with my running, sometimes I'll read an exercise book in order to reignite an interest in what I've forgotten how to love. If I haven't been doing much in the kitchen, getting a new cookbook from the library sometimes inspires me to get back into making food again. And when I become cynical about literature, I've found that Bolaño can really help there. I know this sounds like some gnarly dialed-in blurby bookcover sputum, but this guy's just got a totally infectious hard-on for writers and writing and words and the potential and power of fiction that comes across to this bored reader like a steroid-laden bag of farmer's market groceries might for the lazy take-out munching runner. Which is to try and say, in my even more than usually ungraceful mixed-metaphored way, that reading Bolaño makes me want to do the equivalent of training for a summer half-marathon while assembling some complicated tagine with exotic ingredients and multiple steps. Like, these short stories make me want to quit my job and move to Spain and become a starving poet. Or at least, less extreme, to take fiction seriously again. It is really a relief to settle back into something you love, after a period of being estranged from it. These short stories aren't the greatest I've ever read, but they really make me remember how I love fiction. It's an excellent feeling, and now that the US has been eliminated, I've got plenty of time to read.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

bolano is just flat out one of the best writers of the last fifty years. these stories compare to the nick adams stories except with strange hallucinogenic thoughts that course through the protagonist's brain. the stories follow b, who is most definitely arturo belano, bolano's alter ego who also shows up in "the savage detectives". the stories find him in spain, france, belgium, and mexico, landing in odd places for odd reasons, always with a desire to read and an inability to sleep. the stories are told in a clear and precise style, with b constantly revaluating his thoughts and trying to find the most perspicacious - if not metaphorically mixed - opinions, explanations, and terrors. b drifts in and out of people's lives experiencing baffling connections, and desultory omens. the abyss is ever-approaching as b attempts to stave it off through books, random sex, and alcohol. b also recounts several other character's stories: a photographer in india who stumbles upon a gruesome cult; an unstable woman who bounces from man to man, country to country; a paranoid schizophrenic who commits suicide. b also reounts some stories from his early twenties when he was becoming the vagabond poet which he sustained until the last years of his life. with these stories, bolano shows how simple stories told in simplistic language can synergize and become extraordinary and through their life-defeating plots they can paradoxically become life-affirming.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories, mostly about writers. What comes through for me most is a sense of separation and disconnectedness, though the effect is muted. The writing is subtle and intimate, yet somehow detached. It was perhaps this detachment that isolated me from the characters, and the subtlety which robbed the stories of impact. For the most part, I did not connect with them deeply.

[Pedro]

The thing I love most about Roberto Bolaño’s work is the way he makes all sorts of outlaws and weirdos the main characters of his books. Thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes, the mentally ill, homeless people — you name it.

It’s probably just a Pedro thing, but I find it incredibly refreshing to read about people who don’t live their lives thinking about going to work, picking up the kids from school, paying the mortgage, cooking dinner, and watching TV until bedtime.

So not only is this outstanding collection of short stories a literary feast for lovers of Bolaño, it’s also the perfect introduction to his work.

Wrapped in Bolaño’s unmistakable atmosphere of longing and infused with a powerful sense of place, I found each and every story a true delight.

For those who don’t know, Mr Bolaño was a poet at heart — and it shows. And the melancholy… oh, so much of it.

I read these stories here and there, in between other books, and it felt like the perfect way to do it.

What a treat.

[Saman · Rating 4 out of 5]

❑خاطره
‌

نامش
محمدشهاب
از تبارِ
امیران کوچ نشین،
خودکشی کرد
چراکه دیگر وطن نداشت
به فرانسه عشق می‌ورزید
نامش را مارسل گذاشت
اما فرانسوی نبود،
زیستن را
در خیمه‌ها نمی‌دانست
آن‌جا که می‌شد
با نوشیدن فنجانی قهوه
به نوای قرآن گوش سپرد
و رها نشد
از صوت قرآن در هجرتش

در پاریس
تابوتش را تشییع کردم
با مدیر هتلی که در آن اقامت داشتیم
شماره‌ی ۵ خیابان «دی کارم»
در سراشیب کوچه‌ای رنگ‌ورو رفته

در گورستان «ایوری» آرام گرفت
در حومه‌ی شهری که
به بازاری بسته می‌مانْد
در یک روز تعطیل

شاید تنها من می‌دانم
روزگاری می‌زیسته.


جوزپه اونگارتی | مهدیه رحمتی

__________________________________________
روبرتو بولانیو نویسنده و شاعر شیلیایی و از پیشگامان موج نوی داستان نویسی آمریکای جنوبی بود.
بولانیو که در سال 1953 در سانتیاگو به دنیا آمده بود , زندگی ای را از سر گذراند که مشخصه اصلی اش آوارگی بود. (به نقل از ویکی پدیا)

نویسنده در زمانی میزیسته که کشورش تحت تسلط حکومتی دیکتاتور بوده و بیشتر با افرادی مصاحبت داشته که اکثرشان مانند خود وی شاعر یا نویسنده بودند و در این بهبوهه ی مقاومت علیه دیکتاتوری  یا درکشور های دیگر آواره شده و یا روزی بی آنکه کسی متوجه قضیه شود برای همیشه از صفحه روزگار محو میشدند و نکته ی دیگر اینکه خود نویسنده هم در ابتدای سالهای زندگی اش به خاطر شغل پدرش طریقه ی زیستن اش مانند کولی ها و خانه به دوشان بوده و جریان های مقاومت و فعالیت های سیاسی موجب استمرار این حالت در سال های بعد شده است .


با توجه به زندگی بولانیو میشه حدس زد که به احتمال زیاد اکثر وقایع داستان ها یا همه ی آنها , تجربه ی شخصی خود نویسنده بوده است. ( خودتون بیشتر راجع بهش مطالعه کنید تا متوجه منظورم بشید)

داستان ها و رمان های بولانیو دو مشخصه دارند اصلی دارند :
1_وجود شخصیت های شاعر : در همه ی داستان های این مجموعه شخصیتی وجود داشت با خلق شاعرانه و طبعی لطیف.
2_محو شدن ناگهانی یکی از همین شخصیت های شاعر منش.


حال و هوای داستان :

به نظرم با مطالعه ی زندگی بولانیو و همون چند خطی که بالا نوشتم و اندکی تعمق در آن بتوانید تا حدودی حال و هوای داستان هاش رو حدس بزنید . شما شاعران گمنامی را تصور کنید با آرزوهای بسیار و سرزنده و مهم تر از آن خانه به دوش یا یکسره در حال جست و جو و گشت و گذار که مدتی جلوی چشمتان هستند و بعد برای همیشه ترکتان میکنند.
من یک نوع حس وحشت و استرس هم در سراسر داستان حس کردم حتی گاهی اوقات میشد که تنها بخاطر تپش قلب شدید از خواندن داستان دست میکشیدم , و به نظرم این بیش تر بخاطر نحوه ی روایت بولانیو بود که اولا بسیار سریع است (اتفاقات و کشمکش ها خیلی سریع شروع و تمام میشود  و به همین دلیل گذر روزها حالتی آزار دهنده به خود میگیرد) , ثانیا کمی حالت خشک دارد که حس بیرحمی را به خواننده القا میکند , یعنی نویسنده از تمام اتفاقات به گونه ای سخن میگوید انگار بی اهمیت است ومثلا شاید گم و گور شدن یا کشته شدن یک شاعر اصلا اتفاق خاصی نباشد( انگار نویسنده چشم هایش را بسته و وقایع جانسوزی را با کلماتش که به سریع ترین شکل ممکن از دهانش به بیرون تراوش میکند شرح میدهد و در عین حال کوچک ترین نمودی از احساسات بر روی صورتش به چشم نمیخورد.)


خلاصه کلام و احساسات خودم راجع به کتاب :

این کتابو خریدم چون میخواستم از خرید 2666 مطمئن بشم که شدم , این اثر واقعا بیشتر از توقعاتم ظاهر شد و من رو با یه جهان سراسر وحشت و گریز و شاعرانگی آشنا کرد که بسیار جذاب بود و میخوام باز هم تجربش کنم.

بولانیو رو باید خوند , حرف دیگری نیست .

[Ieva Andriuskeviciene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trumpos istorijos kurių dauguma apie rašytojus ir įvairius literatūrinius atsitikimus. Kai kurie mįslingi, kiti nemalonūs, dar kiti labai liūdni ar žiaurūs. Bet po visų veikėjai jau jau ne tokie kokie buvo prieš tai. Viskas taip taiklu, smagiai skaitosi. Kaip trumpi filmukai lyg blyksniai iš gyvenimo nuotrupų.
“Literary adventure” istorijoje net nėra vardų rašytojas B nori sutikti rašytoją A nes jis parašė knygos recenziją. B yra apsėstas ir bando visaip susisiekti su A, kad pakeistų jo nuomonę. Istorija pasibaigia jiems tik susitikus. Bolano net neapsunkina mūsų įvardindamas personažus. B grįžta keliose istorijose. Galima būtų sakyti, kad B yra knygos pagrindinis veikėjas. Bet knyga nėra apie B. Pvz sekančioje apie B meilės nuotykį ir mylimosios mirtį. Ar B tas pats kaip ir literatūrinėje istorijoje? Galime tik spėlioti. Dar kitoje B keliauja su tėvu Mustangu iš Meksiko į Akapulko atostogauti. Žaidžia kortomis ir eina į bordelius kol viename jų neprasideda nemalonumai. Jiems prasidėjus pasakojimas baigiasi.

Visos istorijos kuria atmosferą ir priešistorę kažkokiam svarbiam įvykiui ir pasibaigia prieš pat jį. Pasakotojas visada pasakoja pirmu asmeniu ir yra tarsi nuskaltimo liudininkas. Pagaliau sutinkama mylimas autorius, mylimoji pagaliau pakelia ragelį, bare prasideda muštynės
Čia sutiksime ir Rylkę ir Nerudą. Veiksmas vyksta Europoje, Meksikoje, Čilėje. Visi veikėjai iš Čilės, pabėgę ar ištremti dėl perversmo. Galima įžvelgti daug Bolano autobiografinių momentų ar įtarti, kad B yra jis pats. Knyga savotiškas prarastosios kartos dokumentas liudijantis įvairius atsitikimus.

Mane apžavėjo, įtraukė, įvyniojo. Norėtųsi googlinti kas gi atsitiko tiems aprašomiems veikėjams? Koks buvo A ir B susitikimas? Ar jie bendrauja? Kas atsitiko Anne Moore gyvenimui?
Labai rekomenduoju ir įdomu ar 2666 tokio pačio stiliaus.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last Evenings on Earth was my first encounter with Bolaño's writing. Like many short story collections, there were some that were just "meh" and others that were gripping and engaging. Overall, the stories were good and I'm encouraged to read more of his work.

Bolaño reminds me a bit of Borges. The stories are peculiar and tend to take place among fellow writers, artists, and thinkers. But with Borges, the sensibility is more 19th century scholarly with many deep thoughts and layered philosophies to ponder both during and after finishing the stories. By contrast, Bolaño writes in the milieu of 1960's and 70's radical Latin American politics with all the violence and struggles to survive of that era, where the dark shadows are not only menacing, but truly dangerous - death and violence not as abstract principles, but as very real possibilities. In this unstable and unpredictable world, Bolaño gives the reader little or nothing to cling to and instead places the reader in the same precarious world as his characters. Disturbing, unsettling, and a thrill to read. Highly recommended.

[Alborz Baghipour · Rating 5 out of 5]

پیشنهاد می کنم حتمن این کتاب رو بخونید. تقریبا تو همه‌ی کتابفروشی های خوب می تونید پیداش کنید، قیمتش هم خیلی مناسبه. یا حتا می تونید با قیمت خیلی پایینی پی دی اف کتاب رو بخرید. به هرحال، کتاب شامل 14 داستان کوتاه (در ترجمه ی فارسی یکی از داستان ها حذف شده) با حجم تقریبی هر داستان ده تا بیست صفحه‌ هستش. یک عنصر همه ی اون ها رو به طریقی به هم مرتبط می کنه و بعد از خوندن چند داستان، خواننده تازه می تونه متوجهش بشه؛ همه داستان ها مربوط به زندگی شخصی خود بولانیو هستند و هر کدوم رو می تونیم یک اتوبیگرافی بدومیم. حتا در برخی از داستان ها که نویسنده به جای اول شخص از روایت دانای کل استفاده کرده هم اسم کاراکتر اصلی، «ب»، یا همان خود بولانیوست. در نهایت آخرین داستانِ مجموعه با نام «فهرست»، با فرمی کاملا بدیع، رسما فهرستی است از لحظاتی از زندگی نویسنده. نکته ی دیگر اینکه بهتر است داستان‌ها را به ترتیب بخوانید، ظاهرا بولانیو بر روی ترتیب قرارگیریشون فکر کرده و بی ذلیل بدین صودت قرار نگرفتن

[সালমান হক · Rating 5 out of 5]

ছোটগল্প খুব একটা পড়ি না। কিন্তু বোলানিওর এই বইটা না পড়লে হয়তো কখনো জানতামও না যে এরকম লেখাগুলো না পড়াই থেকে যাচ্ছে। সবচেয়ে দারুণ বিষয় কি জানেন? প্রতিটা গল্পের ক্যারেক্টার ভিষণ রকম এনগেজিং। তাদের সাথে মিশে তাদের চোখ দিয়ে(বোলানিওর চোখ দিয়ে) পৃথিবীটাকে দেখলে অবাক বোধহয় হবেন না, কিন্তু একটু ধাক্কা ঠিকই লাগবে। মেলানকলির সঠিক বাংলা কি হয়? বিষণ্ণতা, অবসাদ? তার দেখা মিলবে বোলানিওর লেখার স্টাইলে। গল্পগুলোর মূল উপজীব্য হচ্ছে অনুভূতি, স্রেফ অনুভূতি। কিছু গল্প হয়তো শেষ হবে না, পাঠককে নিজে কল্পনা করে নিতে হবে, কিন্তু লেখক আপনাকে যে জায়গায় নিয়ে যাবে, একটা তৃপ্তির শ্বাস ফেলবেন। হিংসে হয় এই ধরণের লেখকদের আমার :)

[Ned Rifle · Rating 5 out of 5]

On Bolano in general


In the endless search for genuinely palatable vaguely contemporary literature, Bolano is an almost wholly nourishing find. My first exposure was 2666, which failed to fully convince until I began to talk about it, upon which discussion I realised that my quibbles pointed to their own solution. My main problem had been the rather too neat, for my tastes, ending of the first part on the one hand; on the other was the emptiness left from the lack of resolution elsewhere - not a problem I often have with books - but once clearly expressed this shows itself to be a simple act of charity on Bolano's part. The comforting conclusion of that first part is all you will be allowed but, unlike most everything else in the book, it will never be eroded - a simple token of good faith.

Bolano can lead you into obsessing over every detail he gives you, feeling convinced that with a thorough enough examination of the facts (be they physical, emotional or other such facts) you will be able to fully understand. Of course, it's a foolish task and Bolano is too kind to pretend for too long. The abiding sadness that I tend to find myself filled with after one of these books is best expressed with the ceaseless and unanswered echoing of the end of The Savage Detectives. What's outside the window? (Possibly paraphrased.)

And now, very briefly (and indistinctly), This Book

As you would expect from a man who works in fragments, these short stories are excellent. The characters are often writers, or they are shells represented by letters as if Bolano had been waiting to name them but decided against it, retaining a certain honesty. The stories are aware that they are written, with comments such as "rereading what I have just written…" and there are the blurred lines of reality and semi-autobiography that appears elsewhere in his work. This sets in motion an endless battle for primacy between life and art, each consuming and nourishing the other – all possibly born from the years of little success?
Parallels have been made between Borges and Bolano, and Bolano frequently mentions the influence, but do not go here expecting the neatness of Borges who, however much he talked about the pleasure in heterogeneous elements, always has perfectly balanced stories that are fully satisfying despite raising many possible questions. Bolano gives you the story, but he also gives you more and sometimes he gives you less; everything is forever threatening to crack, metaphysical horrors lurk – or at least things are often experienced in the shadow of a lurking metaphysical horror.
The only genuine piece of information about this book that I would impart is that the film described by B in the book is a real film (Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky, and it’s an incredible film). I would be curious to know how that story reads without having seen it: does Bolano seem an even more impressive writer or does it fail to ring (an accidental pun, if you’ve read the book or seen the film) true?

My original Bolano point is well illustrated by this excerpt, during a phone conversation with a woman he has never met: “During those seconds or minutes B imagines her face. The image is vague but haunting.”

I apologise sincerely for incoherence.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bolano at his best.

And Bolano at his best is a transvaluation of literature - here he achieves the rendering of a new aesthetic to the short story.

If the complaint is that nothing happens, ever, then nothing has been read closely enough. There is a lot that happens, there abound whirlpools of terror in the most mundane trivialities. And the way some of the stories connect to the larger Bolano narrative, one of 'The Savage Detectives' and 'Amulet,' is a delight in itself.

One doesn't just love Bolano, there is something that happens in the blood.

Along with DFW, perhaps the best writer of a generation that has now begun to die of its own hand, while the vivid shadows of those before them still linger in obstinate obsequiousness.

[Mohammad · Rating 4 out of 5]

وقتي همه ي داستان ها در مورد نويسندگان جوان و تبعيدي هاي شيلي است، مي توان نتيجه گرفت كه اين كتاب زندگي خود بولانيو است.هنوز دقيق نمي دانم چرا ولي فكر مي كنم نويسندگاني كه دوست دارند ديگران آنها را با كتاب هايي كه در آينده خواهند نوشت- و نه كتاب هايي كه تا به حال نوشته اند- قضاوت كنند از خواندن داستان هاي اين كتاب لذت بيشتري خواهند برد.
به دلايل كافكايي! به نظرم داستان سنسيني بهترين داستان كتاب و يكي از بهترين داستان هايي كه خوانده ام بود

[Mohsenam · Rating 4 out of 5]

مجموعه ی واقعا متفاوتی بود.

داستان های کتاب جوری بود که باید بهشون اجازه بدی آروم آروم تو وجودت ته نشین بشن(یا شاید هم در تو بالا بیایند?)تا اون طعم گس و تلخی که نویسنده بخاطرش داستان ها رو نوشته حس کنی..کتابی نبود که تمام کنی و بذاری گوشه ای و بهشون فکر نکنی بقول خود کتاب:
ما هرگز دست از خواندن برنمی داریم ، اگرچه هر کتابی بالاخره به پایان می رسد،همان طور که هرگز دست از زندگی کردن برنمی داریم، اگر چه مرگ مسلم است.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

when he died in 2003, at the age of fifty, roberto bolaño was all but unknown anywhere north of the rio grande, yet is now acclaimed internationally and considered amongst the most eminent figures in latin american letters. chilean by birth, but living in exile throughout much of his life, bolaño had always been a dedicated writer, yet began publishing with increasing fervor in the mid-1990's. like much of his work, including the incomparable epic the savage detectives, last evenings on earth is a bold, singular effort that defies easy classification. many of the fourteen stories contained in last evenings are incisive, yet existentially enigmatic, tales of writers longing to discover the elusive answers to questions of craft and self, some of which turn out to be ambiguous at best. often somber, even haunting, these short stories unfurl in the low-lit peripheries of prescience and immediacy that bolaño most likely knew all too well.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last Evenings on Earth was the first book I read by the late Roberto Bolaño, and it's still my favorite. (I really liked Distant Star, and I've started but not finished Amulet, By Night in Chile, and The Savage Detectives). Unlike those novels, Last Evenings is a collection of short stories.

For me, Bolaño's writing triggers some kind of endorphin. Reading him jazzes me up, has me floating a few inches above where I'm sitting — there's some kind of alchemy in his sentences that comes through even in translation (kudos to Chris Andrews), or to use a different image, he's a magician. The stories start with no fuss, you see exactly how they're taking shape on the page, they almost look like notes for a story instead of the story itself. But before you know it, the buzz kicks in. Here's the first paragraph of the title story:

"This is the situation: B and his father are going to Acapulco for a vacation. They are planning to leave very early, at six in the morning. B sleeps the night before at his father's house. He doesn't dream or if he does he forgets his dreams as soon as he opens his eyes. He hears his father in the bathroom. He looks out the window; it is still dark. He gets dressed without switching on the light. When he comes out of his room, his father is sitting at the table, reading yesterday's sports section, and breakfast is ready. Coffee and huevos rancheros. B says hello to his father and goes into the bathroom."

Doesn't sound like much right? But this turns into a fantastic story about a father and son, avoiding all sentimentality. The offhand remark about the dreams he doesn't remember is typical Bolaño. So is the heuvos rancheros. He snaps this simple stuff together and I swear, mundane, dark and melancholy as it is, it sparks.

[Hakan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robero Bolano’nun İspanyolca özgün metinleri 1997 ve 2001’de yayınlanan iki öykü kitabından yedişer öykünün yer aldığı bu kitap, Bolano sevenler için büyük bir keyif. Edebiyatçıların, şairlerin izi sürülüyor yine ve çarpıcı, melankonik hayat hikayeleri ortaya konuluyor. Son yedi öykü, daha önce Türkçe’ye de çevrilmiş olan Katil Orospular kitabından (ilk yedisi ise Llanadas Telefonicas’tan). Ben bunu farketmeden aldım ama, o müthiş öykülerin İngilizce çevirilerini, tekrar olsa da, yine zevkle okudum. Özellikle bu derlemeye adı verilen öykü (Türkçe’ye Yeryüzünde Son Günbatımları olarak çevrilmişti), ilk okuduğumda da çok etkilmişti, aynı heyecanla okudum.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is more than a little Hemingway in these stories, the Hemingway of the Sun Also Rises, esp in Last Evenings on Earth. There is magnificent writing in this book. And a magnificent heart.