Jennifer Howard laughing

Jennifer Howard

Writer, editor, journalist.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Mastodon
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Writing
    • Journalism
    • Fiction
  • Editing
  • Contact

Bolano in Academe

December 17, 2008

I have read exactly one thing by Roberto Bolano so far, and that’s the short story in the Dec. 22 issue of The New Yorker. I should probably tackle The Savage Detectives or 2666, but I don’t think I can bear to until Bolano fever dies down a little. Meanwhile, scholars have joined litbloggers in the Bolano boom. From an essay (subscription only) by Ilan Stavans in the Dec. 19 Chronicle Review:

Witnessing Bolaño’s canonization in academe has been fascinating. Barely a few years ago, he was a don nadie, a supreme nobody; now The New Yorker puts its imprimatur on him with a review, he’s a household name at symposia, and he’s taught as a refreshing perspective, a kind of Jack Kerouac for the new millennium.

Alas, Bolaño’s work is rapidly becoming a factory for scholarly platitudes. More than a year ago, I had a student who wrote his senior thesis on the author. My student started early in his junior year with a handful of resources at his disposal. By the time he had finished, the plethora of tenure-granting studies was dumbfounding: Bolaño and illness, Bolaño and the whodunit, Bolaño and the beatniks, Bolaño and eschatology, etc. Since then, interviews, photographs, e-mail messages — everything by or about him — are perceived as discoveries (even though most of the material was never lost to a Spanish-language audience).

Filed Under: Lit Crit

Previous Post

All Whitman, All Digital

Next Post

Hoax Ahoy

Recent Writing

  • Schools of Thought Control
  • The Publishing Ecosystem in the Digital Era: On John B. Thompson’s BOOK WARS
  • A paler shade of white: HAVING AND BEING HAD by Eula Biss

Recent Posts

  • January newsletter: Making space
  • December newsletter: Routines vs. resolutions
  • November newsletter: Platform fatigue

Get my newsletter

Get updates on what I'm working on and what I'm thinking about. Sign up and spread the word. Thanks!

Subscribe

About Jen

Jen Howard sitting in front of a brick wall. She is smiling.

Writer, journalist, editor, gadabout. Book- and nature lover. Washingtonian. LLC. Read more »

Latest Posts

  • January newsletter: Making space
  • December newsletter: Routines vs. resolutions
  • November newsletter: Platform fatigue
  • October newsletter: Five little pumpkins
  • September newsletter: Two wheels good

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Mastodon
Tweets by JenHoward

Content is © Jennifer Howard or respective owners | Site by Rocketkoi