En efecto este cuarto libro de cuentos contiene varios relatos inconclusos que con certeza no habrían visto la luz, claro está en un sentido literario, sino fuese por el afán de exprimir la rentabilidad de la maestral narrativa de Bolaño. Fuera de lo anterior, hay otros que sorprenden una vez más, como "El hijo del coronel", una inocente reseña de una película de zombies (de esas que llaman de serie B) se convierte en una crónica del horror que te vuela la cabeza, así, sin caricias, despiadada en la acción y, en ciertas relaciones, piadosa como solo la enamorada y el enamorado saben comprender. Ojalá así fueran las películas, pero como sabemos que no lo serán jamás mejor pasemos a "Laberinto", un cuento que parte con la descripción de una fotografía, de nada más que de ocho personajes contenidos en ella, todos escritores o relativos al mundillo, ocho personajes que más tarde serán once (incorpora a los que no se ven pero que están ahí, en las orillas de la realidad fotográfica), a través de los cuales se va construyendo un drama de amores y traiciones, de encuentros y esperas, de secretos y verdades que mejor era callarlas: una joyita. En "Crímenes", predomina el suspenso y la tensión eróticos entre una reportera y un vendedor de calcetines, a propósito de un asesino en serie de mujeres que deambula por la ciudad. No, no me referiré a "Sabios de Sodoma", que lo encontré bueno pero con el que no puedo estar de acuerdo, como tampoco con "Músculos", cuyo héroe quizás merecía un final más respetable, quizás. Pero sí abundan, digamos, comentarios sobre la literatura argentina (otras vez Roberto Arlt referenciado como indispensable -quien también lo recomienda en imperativo es Cortázar), las disputas con el criollismo chileno, sus viajes por México y sus andanzas por Barcelona. Un libro que para los fans de Bolaño, entre los que me encuentro con certeza, es siempre una invitación al abismo, al abismo latinoamericano. ( )

My public library made the commendable choice to buy some books by Roberto Bolaño for their Spanish language section, and I was happy to take a couple off of their hands for a few weeks. El secreto del mal is a collection of short pieces that were culled from the author’s portfolio after his death. They are a series of situations that the author began and often left unfinished, or rather perhaps finished, perhaps not, and they give an idea of how he built up to his novels and short stories. At first, I questioned how much I would appreciate such a collection, because the preface to the edition, written by the editor, lays plain for the reader the incomplete nature of a lot of the stories included here. I found, though, that I did enjoy it, and many of the stories and narratives in this book were really compelling. The perspectives shift from Chilean to Mexican to Argentine to Spanish, and seem to incorporate a lot of the author’s experience as an expatriate in these places. Many seem autobiographical, or fictionalizations of the author and his experiences. Others are not, such as one story that recounts the plot of a zombie movie that the protagonist watched on TV the night before (I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie gets made someday, it wasn’t a bad idea). There’s also an analysis of Argentine literature included here that I really enjoyed reading. All in all, it is a hodgepodge, but it’s a fascinating one for someone who has read other and more complete books and stories by Bolaño.

There´s a story here called Playa (Beach) which begins, “I dropped heroin and returned to my hometown and started methodone treatments…” that has caused controversy over whether Bolaño was a heroin addict, or whether he made the story up. I read an article in the New York Times that mentioned this and other potential “artistic liberties,” or even rather serious lies, told by Bolaño, such as saying he was in Chile during the coup of 1973 when perhaps he wasn´t. I´m glad to have gotten to read the story about heroin, and I´m really not concerned with whether it´s autobiographical or fictitious. It was a good story and seemed to capture what it might feel like to stop using heroin, so maybe it was true, but who knows? Other stories that I found more fascinating seemed to represent preliminary stages of his larger novels: in one, Laberinto, a photograph and the people in it are analyzed and their day-to-day lives and dreams are expounded upon in a way that reminded me a whole lot of the first book of 2666; in another, the characters of Los Detectives Salvajes are present. I remember when I was in high school I got a kick out of reading Gabriel García Márquez´s early novels and seeing how he developed the world of Macondo in books like La hojarasca and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, along with the characters and themes that would be included in Cien años de soledad. I got a similar feeling here, that what I was reading was essentially practice for something else, and that some of these beginnings would eventually be completed in a different and expanded form.

So it was a good read for a Bolaño fan, and it reminded me how much I like him, and how much I have in common with him as a reader of Latin American fiction and a fan of Latin America in general. His article on Argentine literature was really neat, and showed his passion for books and their authors (he doesn´t exactly condemn anyone for being a bad writer, he actually seems to admire everyone he mentions, and the trick is that he pigeonholes them within the national tradition they are a part of without sounding mean), and his opinions, which I enjoyed. I don´t think I´d give this to someone as their first book by him, but it was definitely worth my time and I´m happy that my library is working to make their Spanish language collection more respectable. ( )

Even Bolaño's unfinished stories are better than most others. ( )