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Awesome! I haven't read Third Reich yet. What makes it your favorite? I'm genuinely interested.
In some ways it's a lot more even than his other books, set in a specific place, with a single narrator, and even a set literary device to carry the story (it is presented in the form of journal entries). The intangible, poetic and disturbing qualities are still all there, as well as the esoteric and exhaustive lists, they just seem more smoothly incorporated somehow. I feel like with this book, maybe Bolano had a clearer idea of the overall shape and details before he started it, and probably banged it out over a shorter period. Third Reich is not his most unique work (it reminds me a bit of Camus or Paul Bowles), but it's really tight. Even just the subtlety of the narrator's German-ness is a treat.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I'm currently finishing
Amulet and got a similar feel, although dream and reality are sometimes blurred. That being said, jumping back and forth between different narrative perspectives and blurring dream and reality is one of the characteristics I love about Bolano's fiction. To be clear, a lot of writers have similar approaches, but he really perfected these techniques in my eyes.
The Savage Detectives is the perfect example for that I think. Still, it's nice to read a more straightforward piece of Bolano that still incorporates a lot of his themes.
The Third Reich sounds really interesting! This will probably the book I'll pick up after
Nazi Literature in the Americas. To be honest, so far I was sticking more to writings that were set mostly in Latin America, as I'm somehow going through a "Hispanic period," but, especially being German myself, your account of
The Third Reich sounds really interesting.
One thing that struck me though... where do you see esotericism in Bolano? I'm not disagreeing with you here; I just find this notion interesting, because this escaped my attention so far.