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The Insufferable Gaucho (2003)

by Roberto Bolaño(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0811217167 (ISBN13: 9780811217163)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

New Directions

review 1: I've read 7 or 8 of Bolano's books--though neither of the doorstops--and find myself generally disappointed. This collection of stories and essays, however, is quite good, except for the tedious story "Police Rat." I would rank it second only to Monsieur Pain, which I found quite interesting. The title story here is almost a bourgeois version of Borges, and the essay Myths of Cthulhu is a fascinating commentary on authorship and celebrity, as pertinent to the US as to Latin America.
review 2: I zipped through this collection, my first exposure to Roberto Bolaño. Two of the stories, "Police Rat" and "Insufferable Gaucho", were excellent, and the rest were quite good. "Insufferable Gaucho" is of course a retelling of Borges' short story "The South", but in the c... moreontext of Argentina's economic collapse. In the original story, the escape to the pampas seems inexplicable; in the retold version, it is caused by economic circumstance. "Police Rat" is a strangely compelling Raymond Chandler-like murder mystery involving rats. The essay "Literature + Illness = Illness" is poignant because Bolaño was at the time on a waiting list for a new liver, but of course we know he didn't get one. I'm now planning to read as much Bolaño as I can. less

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