Guillermo Toscano > Recent Status Updates

I struggle to see myself finishing Wuthering Heights, though I can recognize a well crafted story beneath the exhaustive prose so characteristic of Victorian writing I am beggining to wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze for what appears from my reading so far an unambiguous narrative.

Today was exhausting.

Sadly I can never finish short story anthologies.
Overall I enjoyed the short stories I read.

"Why not fall under the spell of tlon and submit to the minute and vast evidence of an ordered planet? Useless to reply that reality, too, is ordered. It may be so, but in accordance with divine laws - I translate: inhuman laws which we will never completely perceive. Tlon may be a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth plotted by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men" - pg 34

Kundera fleshes out Jaromil's character, his psyche. You get a sense of distaste but also some pity. Jaromil is on the one hand a victim of circumstance, yet everytime he is given opportunity for growth he finds his way back to comfortable complacency.

Gas

I'm already loving this. The prose is soooo good.

I cant describe why I like this book so much. The prose fits the story well, sort of detached but storyteller-like. It feels as if someone is telling you a story they really believe happened. A story where every character goes mad and you're left wondering how much is an invention and how much is actually happening.

I love this.

Friend's book

I think its important to stress that bolaño believed that living this way was virtuous. He often turns down opportunities in order to be less "tied down" . I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Its essentially an autobiographical story about Bolaño who was essentially homeless until his 50s.
Arturo Bolaño, the stand in for the author lives day to day working as a dishwasher one week and on a fishing boat, or as a park ranger the next. Sometimes he'd work for room and board and others he'd work for cash.
Its a story about transience, change and what it means to be an author or poet. (Pg 531 of 648)

"I never forget anything, that's my trouble, they say I'm the mother of all Mexican poets. I'm the only one stuck it out at the university in 1968, when the riot police and the army came in. I stayed in the faculty all alone, shut up in the bathroom, with nothing to eat for ten days, fifteen days. I don't remember anymore"

The book is filled with little jokes like this one and clever callbacks.

I just thought of the way to describe it!
Painting in negative

I think its a book that utilizes dialectics/contrasts very well. The prologue is around 100 or so pages from the perspective of a kid who's perception of reality is so obviously exaggerated. After the prologue it's a shifting narrative from a bunch of different views that are all contrasts. You get a sense for how each character sees another and how people's views about one person are often times contradictions.

I'm not sure where it's going but it has captivated me.

Robert Bolano is horny posting.
In all seriousness though I'd been meaning to get around to Bolano for some time and it wasn't until some encouragement from an acquaintance that I did so. Bolano being Chilean born having moved to Mexico city made me feel obligated to pick him up and so far I have not regretted it.
The perspective of a hormonal pretentious17 year old boy who cant stop fucking up is quite funny .

It reminds me of a children's book.