A Night in Chile / Roberto Bolano

For me in our reading so far, “A Night in Chile” is most resonant with Azuela’s “The Underdogs” in its overt and complex statements about a particular historical situation and its participants, real and fictional (though certainly, Borges’ “Deutsches Requiem” and Carpentier’s “The Chase” must be included).

In some sense a hero—any hero—is, by definition to his or her enemy, a villain, and vice versa. That individual (or group) may have particular characteristics, such as being more or less formidable for various reasons of, say, intellect or charisma, but they are essentially the “other” solely by contrast—whether that is defined by ideology, physiology, or which side of the street one lives on, and independent of whether those differences are perceived as real or known to be imagined.

“A Night in Chile” is especially compelling in the directness with which it addresses not so much (though neither so little) who is a hero or villain, but how the world goes so utterly and quickly astray. To pick only one small yet vital piece from the story, the section on Fr Antonio and falconry seems a perfect example. Problem solving, devoid of the time-consuming and difficult consideration of context (in its broadest, ever-changing, yet simplest implications), is inherently amoral, for it suggests an obscene equality among all possible responses and all possible situations. (An editorial in the N Y Times on Friday, 7 May 2010, about a young man who ran onto the field during a major-league baseball game and was stopped—instantly—by the police with a stun gun/Taser, asks the same questions about the relation of force and action.) The possible next step into immorality can be so transparent as to be invisible, and inevitable, and to appear, as the narrator at one point says of his own action, necessary—justifiable.

To kill all the pigeons and doves in the world if they threaten the physical well-being of the architectural structures of the Church (historic and aesthetic considerations included, as well as the recollection that “the Church” is, in its own definition, its adherents, not its buildings), is to vacate any understanding of the sacred aspect of life, and, if one so believes, in God’s creation. Fr Antonio’s doubt, fear, and pain at this expedient measure rings through the whole book, as does recognition of the value of the creation of art, of which the churches mentioned and the novel itself are exquisite examples.

The narrator has tried to avoid any real or meaningful probing of his own life and actions not so much by residing in a realm of culture apart, or because he too is a limited and flawed individual, but by being ever willing and ready to look no further than a solution to the next “problem.” He cannot even recognize that Mr Raef and Mr Etah are Fear and Hate in their most banal modern guise, at once backward and efficiently all business.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold / G Garcia Marquez

Many of the stories we have read have the notion of reality—or, what is real—as a central question. In this story the concern expands to include also the idea of inevitability. Though vastly different in the details of its story and how that story plays out, there seems to me a resonance with Borges’ “Circular Ruins.”

Santiago Nasar is dead before dying; on the last page he “speaks” of himself (correctly) in the past tense. Fate and fatality seem constantly alternating, and the idea expressed so differently in “Circular Ruins” remains central: is man the agent of his fate, or the helpless pawn of that fate (perhaps not even existing, except as smoke to a fire, or memory to incident). Is fate emblematic of character or is character determined by fate. Further, with these remarkable descriptions of place that are quite alive in their own way, is environment (psychic and physical) the actual active force that no one can over-ride? The notion of complicity on the part of everyone in the town—even the victim’s unwitting mother—complicates and enriches the ideas of culpability and eventuality.

Santiago may also have already fulfilled the small portion of life that was his part to play, contributing to a larger, boundless mystery. He is not allowed to re-create his parents’ loveless marriage with Flora Miguel, as he would if he could—that cycle is broken. Everyone who contributed to his death also, in a magical sense, contributes to the amazing love-awakening of Bayardo and Angela. In the end the aged bride and groom have become fulfilled, or reconciled, and are re-untied in some mystical fashion that necessitated, or that at least includes, the murder of an man who was probably innocent of the crime for which he was killed though not innocent per se.