Roberto Bolano

A Short Story About a Man Who Writes Novels

Experimental ones

Noah Blue · 30 min read

S writes a novel that can at best be described as experimental and at worst an abject failure. S doesn’t see this, not to begin with. As far as he is concerned it’s an authentic work of literature, maybe a little abstruse in places and perhaps parsimonious when it comes to the use of similes (although not metaphors strangely enough), but otherwise artistically sound. In other words, not a prize-winning novel (not that S is in it to win prizes, although he has no problem with them in principle, and would gladly accept one, were it ever to come his way, which it won’t) but solid, good enough, an eight out of ten let’s say, on a good day.