This is probably my favorite Bolaño book. A satirical encyclopedia of what it sounds like, charting a timeline of several completely made up –but sometimes very believable– profiles of authors in South, Central, and North America from the late 19th century through the 21 century. In a review of one of his other books, I mentioned that Bolaño is an exceptional setting-author (which implicitly does not credit his character work). The sprawling, cold, and violent environments in which his stories unfold are oftentimes as significant as the characters themselves. This book demonstrates his ability to do some really enjoyable character work.

Knowing that Bolaño, like John Milton in this regard, was a radical leftwing writer who fancied himself a poet, I was expecting ... I don't know, non-fiction at first, then maybe some crude caricatures of his imagined literary opponents, but he himself said (about this book):

Its) focus is on the world of the ultra right, but much of the time, in reality, I'm talking about the left... When I'm talking about Nazi writers in the Americas, in reality I'm talking about the world, sometimes heroic but much more often despicable, of literature in general.

Shining the fictitious spotlight upon the foibles and evils of the ultra right in many ways winds up accomplishing the effect of holding a mirror up to the literary left. The catalog is as hilarious as it is darkly horrific at points.

Silvio Salvático of Buenos Aires, for example "practiced the art of the novel which failed to reveal its secrets to him," is a hilarious way to describe someone who sucks at writing.

Luiz Fontaine Da Souza of Rio de Janeiro established himself as one of the most preeminent philosophers of Brazil in the 20th century, publishing thousands and thousands of pages across several lengthy books targeting various intellectual contemporaries in an attempt to assert himself (and his ideologies) atop the philosophical hierarchy – nevertheless keeps being institutionalized by his family every few years because he is crazy.

The Cuban author and aspiring steganographer Ernesto Perez Mason hid in the first 25 paragraphs of all his novels several acrostics which spell out secret message praising Hitler, condemning Cuba and Communism, praying for American intervention, etc. He was jailed for three years after his messages were discovered by Cuban censors before escaping to NY to publish his memoirs which boasted of an unrecoverable manuscript containing cryptological messages of significance "rivaling the enigma" which was not picked up by any Cuban firms, probably never existed, and likely would have just consisted of fourteen words rot13 anyways.

The Argentine Schiaffino brothers who get involved in Football gangs, defend their brawling and hatred of blacks, jews, homosexuals, and their football rivals.

Max Mirebalais and the series of pseudonyms he concocted in his web of plagiaristic poems (alias Max Kasimir, Max von Hauptman, Max Le Gueule, Jacques Artibonito) which led to –in the most roundabout and contrived way thinkable– a somehow organic, fresh, and wholly original style.

And finally the actually horrifying Ramírez Hoffman account delivered by the author self-insert who was an avante garde aeronautical stuntman who would spell out bold messages for the Chilean officials and advanced to increasingly shocking modes of radical art (recognizing his presence via the steady hands of the camera man of a snuff film was ... haunting¿)

Overall reminded me of @BeanyTuesday's Nonficciones

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