Woes of the True Policeman
Yet another posthumous, unfinished novel by literary giant Bolaño has surfaced, though it’s said this will be the last. While it is no Savage Detectives (1998; tr. 2007), 2666 (2004; tr. 2008), nor many others, Bolaño fans, and there are many, will have no trouble delving right in to once again devour the master linguist’s every word. The story, about a Chilean professor, Amalfitano, forced to flee Barcelona with his daughter to Mexico due to scandal, uses character names and themes from Bolaño’s previous novels and therefore feels somewhat familiar. Still, this is far from table scraps. The work may be incomplete, but Bolaño, periodically tinkering on the novel from the 1980s until his death, in 2003, had nearly created a fully realized world, one begging to be further fleshed out. But even in an unpolished manuscript, his capacity for spinning out pages-long sentences using language in new and surprising ways shows that this is quintessential Bolaño. For writers, the various stages of completion wonderfully illustrate Bolaño’s creative process. With more time alive, Bolaño could have made this another treasure of world literature. --Casey Bayer