num_pages: 390
description: Between Parentheses collects most of the newspaper columns and articles Bolao wrote during the last five years of his life as well as the texts of some of his speeches and talks and a few scattered prologues. Taken together as the editor Ignacio Echevarra remarks in his introduction they provide a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing among all his writings to a kind of fragmented autobiography. Bolaos career as a nonfiction writer began in 1998 the year he became famous overnight for The Savage Detectives; he was suddenly in demand for articles and speeches and he took to this new vocation like a duck to water. Cantankerous irreverent and insufferably opinionated Bolao also could be tender (about his family and favorite places) as well as a fierce advocate for his heroes (Borges Cortzar Parra) and his favorite contemporaries whose books he read assiduously and promoted generously. A demanding critic he declares that in his ideal literary kitchen there lives a warrior: he argues for courage and especially for bravery in the face of failure. Between Parentheses fully lives up to his own demands: I ask for creativity from literary criticism creativity at all levels.
language: English
title: Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003
publisher: New Directions