the tortured poets department

Revisiting Roberto Bolaño in the age of online fascism

written on the air

Predictably, I love the work of Roberto Bolaño. Author who writes discursive, self-referential works about doomed poets and artists? Check, check, and check. As much as I love him, though, I rarely revisit him. I read through all his works over the course of a year or so, 2007-2008, when I was living in Chile, getting by with my serviceable Spanish. I became proficient enough to read Bolaño in the original Spanish, getting to the essential corazon of the work, even if I missed some vocabulary words. 

My Spanish has since rusted, to the point where, if I wanted to reread Bolaño, I would have to read him in English translation. Dislodge my pure memories of reading him in Valparaiso, the ocean visible from my window? Heaven forbid! But I have grown reflective as of late, revisiting some of my youthful enthusiasms, so I bit the bullet and returned to his work in the translation of the nimble of Christ Andrews. 

My timing was perfect, it turned out. Twenty years after his death, with a resurgent right wing wreaking havoc across the globe, Bolaño’s work is more relevant than ever.

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I started my reread of Bolaño in the same place I began my first read of him: Distant Star, or, as I read it back in Chile, Estrella Distante. This is the book I recommend to anyone who wants to dip their toe into Bolaño’s oevrue. It’s short, basically a novella at 150 pages, and covers the obsessions that recur throughout his work. If you dig it, it can serve as preparation to ascend the heights–or, to refine the metaphor more appropriately–to plunge into the depths of his monumental works, The Savage Detectives and 2666. 

Distant Star, read today, also holds surprising, even uncomfortable, relevance to the current moment. This story about the doings in an out-of-the-way South American country in the 1970s is also a story about what one could term the aesthetics of fascism. Which, have you taken a look at online lately? Perhaps even on this very platform? Cause that mess is everywhere. 

Distant Star is told by an unnamed narrator who bears a strong resemblance to Arturo Belano, Bolaño’s alter ego, who appears in mock-heroic fashion in The Savage Detectives. He recounts a curious incident during his days in Chile in the early 1970s, the lead-up to the golpe, the coup that took place on September 11, 1973, in which Augusto Pinochet, aided by the CIA, violently overthrew the socialist government, elected by popular vote, of Salvador Allende. The narrator attends a poetry workshop populated by would-be poets, including a pair of beautiful, talented sisters. Another workshop student stands out for his oddity, which is saying something, for a group of artistic youths. 

Carlos Wieder is quiet, serious, turning in poems that are hard to parse. When the golpe comes, and the narrator is imprisoned by the regime, the true nature of Wieder’s identity becomes clear. He is an officer in the Chilean Air Force. A pilot, in fact. His vehicle of choice is a German WWII airplane, a Messerschmitt, which he also deploys to poetic ends. He takes to skywriting, composing in smoke, above the Chilean landscape, verses that praise the bizarre aims of the regime. He soon becomes famous, a genuine poet of the regime, which is a cultural win. Poets are famous figures in Chile, from Neruda to Nicanor Parra to Gabriela Mistral, and they are generally on the left, politically. To have a poet on the right, producing such distinctive work, is a boon to the regime. Imagine, I don’t know, a world-famous rapper praising the work of a Republican president? Right down to wearing a distinctive hat that bears that president’s slogan? Or is that too outlandish? 

Inevitably, Wieder jumps the shark. He invites the creme de la creme of high Chilean society, ministers of culture and socialites with tenuous connections to European aristocracy. He wishes to unveil his latest work, which promises to bring his art to a new level. But his intended audience, which has previously thrilled to his provocations, now finds itself revolted. 

Wieder’s work is an exhibit of photographs, work that, one could say, approaches the genre of true crime. For the photographs depict people who have been killed by the regime, under his direction in some classes–including the twin sisters from that poetry workshop. Confronted with the handiwork of the regime, the photos of the bodies of its victims, the mavens of society are disgusted. Yet Wieder is confused. Why are they disgusted? He has alchemized these victims into art. Isn’t that what he was doing all along, with his skywriting poetry? Why, now, do they resist so violently?

Cast out of polite society, Wieder conducts the rest of his career in obscurity, sharing his work more conventionally, stories and poems and essays that are published in magazines and journals with only a handful of readers. A private investigator, hired by an unknown client, has the narrator read through these publications, to get a handle on Wieder, and hopefully track him down. At the end, the narrator finds Wieder in a cafe in Spain, but does not speak to him. As he leaves, the private investigator follows him, off to exact some obscure justice, or revenge, the details of which we don’t know. 

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The Velvet Underground, it is said, only sold a few thousand records, but everyone who bought a copy went on to start a band, thus making them one of the most influential acts in rock history. From the perspective of today, a figure like Carlos Wieder looks like the Velvet Underground of fascist aesthetics. 

I don’t know how familiar you are with the darker corners of online, but fascist aesthetics–indeed, fascist aesthetes, as in, actual people–populate those spaces with frightening intensity. They don’t stay in those corners, either. They creep out into the light, the larger world, and–it must be admitted–find that the present world more accommodating to their whims than one might think. 

The basic move of Wieder is that he takes what is supposed to be private, and makes it public. The photos of the victims of the regime, which are meant to remain in evidence boxes locked up in dim basements, are instead presented to the public, Wieder thinking that, of course, why wouldn’t the regime’s supporters wish to exult in the suffering of their enemies? Isn’t that what power is all about? Isn’t that what aesthetics are for?

The hangers-on of the Chilean regime in the 70s, may have been horrified, but the fascist aesthete of today, posting what are, in some cases, essentially war crimes to his or her (usually his, if we’re being honest) social media accounts finds an approving chorus of sycophants to cheer him on, no matter who else sees them. The reaction of horror has lost out. 

Well, in some cases. Get too well known, publicize your fantasies to too broad of an audience, and the aesthete may find he’s alienated the very people he hoped to win over. American normalcy remains a powerful force that should not be underestimated. But the fascist aesthete can do plenty of damage before he arrives at that point. Not so much that we can’t recover from it, hopefully.