Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
"Nazi Literature in the Americas" by Roberto Bolaño is a provocative exploration of writers from North and South America who exhibit fascist tendencies. Presented as a biographical encyclopedia, the work spans entries on thirty-one authors across various genres, spanning from the early twentieth century to projections into the future. The majority of the entries focus on Argentine writers, followed by those from the United States, each reflecting a reactionary vision characterized by themes of nationalism and autocracy. While the tone begins as scholarly and detached, it gradually reveals the author’s critical stance, showcasing the absurdity and contradictions within the lives and works of these writers who espouse conservative values but often lead tumultuous, violent lives. The book employs dark humor to highlight the disparity between the writers’ ideals and their realities. Notably, Bolaño himself becomes part of the narrative, adding a layer of complexity as he interacts with a fictional detective searching for a notorious figure among the authors. Overall, the work invites readers to contemplate the relationship between literature and personal morality, particularly within the context of extremist ideologies.
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:La literatura Nazi en América, 1996 (English translation, 2008)
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Nazi Literature in the Americas has the appearance of a biographical encyclopedia. The entries, varying in length from half a page to nearly thirty pages, discuss writers from throughout the two continents and from early in the twentieth century to as late as 2029, with Argentina receiving the most attention (eight entries) and the United States placing second (seven entries). There are writers of nearly all genres. Through most of the book the tone is detached, judicious, and scholarly. Gradually, however, as the author discusses thirty-one authors with fascist sensibilities under thirteen headings, it becomes clear to the reader that he is far from detached and that his purpose is ridicule. Moreover, he becomes involved in their world despite himself.
The headings provide a major clue to the author’s attitude. The first is benign, “The Mendiluce Clan,” about a wealthy poet and essayist who becomes a friend of Adolf Hitler, and, along with her daughter and son, are doyens of nationalistic, conservative literature in Argentina. As the book progresses, the headings turn increasingly sinister, for instance, “Poètes Maudits,” “The Aryan Brotherhood,” “The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman,” and finally the “Epilogue for Monsters,” which lists secondary writers, publishing houses, and books. The writers themselves, despite their varying styles and genres, reflect a reactionary vision of utopia, using such jingoist jargon as “golden age,” “new order,” “American awakening,” “will,” “new dawn,” “rebirth of the nation,” “resurrection,” and “the absolute.” Their underlying yearning is for autocracy based, variously, on race, creed, ideology, or class.
While espousing “family values” and other standards of conduct, few of the writers practice what they preach. Herein lies the book’s mordant humor. These writers are violent (soccer thugs, mercenaries, torturers, and murderers), sexually promiscuous and deviant, sometimes ignorant, and treacherous. As the author comments about one writer, “Real life can sometimes bear an unsettling resemblance to nightmares.” About Max Mirabilis, a writer who plagiarizes and lies shamelessly, the author observes that he learned two methods to achieve what he wanted—through violence and through literature, “which is a surreptitious form of violence, a passport of respectability, and can, in certain young and sensitive nations, disguise the social climber’s origins.” A coward, Mirabilis chooses literature. Others are lunatics, such as the Chilean Pedro González Carrera, who reports having been visited by “Merovingian extraterrestrials” and admires the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
The last writer is a figure of horror. A Chilean, Carlos Ramírez Hoffman is an air force pilot who creates poetic skywriting over Santiago. He is also a member of a death squad, murders a series of people, tortures others, then disappears. At this point the author, Bolaño, enters the novel as a character. Abel Romero, a private investigator on the trail of Ramírez Hoffman, asks for Bolaño’s help. Together they track him down, but Bolaño begs Romero not to kill Ramírez Hoffman: “He can’t hurt anyone now, I said. But I didn’t really believe it. Of course he could. We all could. I’ll be right back, said Romero.” The ending insists that literature, even literature written by the lunatic fringe, has a way of turning personal.
Review Sources
Entertainment Weekly, February 29, 2008, p. 65.
The Globe and Mail, March 8, 2008, p. D7.
The Nation 286, no. 12 (March 31, 2008): 29-32.
The New York Times Book Review, February 24, 2008, p. 9.
Publishers Weekly 254, no. 49 (December 10, 2007): 34-35.
Review of Contemporary Fiction 28, no. 2 (Summer, 2008): 166-167.
The Times Literary Supplement, February 22, 2008, p. 19.
The Village Voice 53, no. 50 (December 10, 2008): 44.
The Washington Post Book World, March 2, 2008, p. BW10.