Roberto Bolaño: poradnik użytkownika literatury

Abstract

Literary recycling seems to be the domain of Roberto Bolaño, currently one of the most famous Latin American writers. Texts, meanings and values are in constant circulation in his novels. Rewriting his own materials as well as reading-writing books of others, he manages to keep the interchange and discussion in perpetual movement. This essay analyzes the types of rewriting and different uses of literature present in the works of Bolaño, as well as the relationship between fiction and reality that emerges from them. Focusing mainly on his vastest novels, Savage detectives and 2666, it searches for new, individual ways to read them. Bolaño’s most significant uses of literature described in this essay are: dialogues, appropriation, substitution, reconstruction, catalysis, exploitation and starting points. The basic process underlying them all is diagnosed and described as a specific hypotheses development, which applies not only to the literary world, but to the real one as well. The reality of Bolaño’s world is also discussed, specifically in its relation to the Lacanian theory of the Real and to the concept of literature as experience. The idea of the hypothesis presented in this article stems from multiple re-readings of Bolaño, as well as from the inspiration provided by pataphysics, the imaginary science invented by Alfred Jarry, and the writings of Jacques Derrida, Hal Foster and Ryszard Nycz.