Bola񯧳 untranslated novel "La Pista de Hielo" (The Ice Rink)
is probably the closest he ever came to properly crime/noir.
Set in an unnnamed Spanish coastal town, it's the story of a
crime as seen through the eyes of three different characters.
I heartily recommend it, even if it's not up there with
"2666" and "Los Detectives Salvajes".
-Gonzalo. saddlebums.blogspot.com
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Saler"
<mtsaler@...> wrote:
>
> I'm a long-time lurker (and long-time appreciator)
of this group,
but
> as a Bolano fan have to strongly second mrt's
endorsement of _The
> Savage Detectives_. It's a brilliant novel on its
own, sort of an
_On
> The Road_ with paragraph breaks, and while it is not
wholy
concerned
> with criminals (though there are plenty of them),
Bolano himself
> appreciated crime fiction and said in his last
interview that if he
> could be anything other than a writer, he'd be a
detective.
>
> The following description of _2666_, which is
currently being
> translated into English for Farrar, Straus &
Giraux, indicates that
> it falls directly into noirish territory:
>
> "Divided into five sections that Bolano first
envisioned as
separate
> novels, to be published one a year, "2666" begins
with the hunt for
a
> writer who has disappeared. But the search for the
writer converges
> with the efforts of police confronting a serial
killer who preys on
> female factory workers in a Mexican border
town."
>
> A shorter novel about the search for a serial killer
is his
_Distant
> Star_, which is an extended version of the final
story that appears
> in his latest "novel," _Nazi Literatures in the
Americas_.
>
> Mike
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 19 Feb 2008 EST