"….reality seems to me like a swarm of stray sentences”At 76 pocket-sized pages and retailing at £11.43 on Amazon I feel a bit of A(n)twerp for buying it but it’s by Roberto Bolano so it was, for me, an unavoidable purchase. Bolano’s statement “It’s the only novel that doesn’t embarrass me” has, I think, more to do with the form than the content - Antwerp initially reads more like a highly fragmentary prose poem than a novel. Given it’s length it’s incredibly spacious – corpses, dwarves, detectives, prostitutes, poets and Bolano jockey for position in 56 loosely connected pieces. Gradually, however, a semi-coherent narrative unfolds - It’s a piece of DIY detective fiction where the sleuthing is about stitching together rather than unravelling plot lines.
Whether you’ll warm to Antwerp will probably depend on what you believe fiction to be. Saul Bellow, for whom Finnegan’s Wake was the indecipherable chatter of voices in a distant room, thought that fiction should be a conversation with the reader. Martin Amis finessed this. Fine writers like Bellow, he said, would also invite you into their home and give you the most comfortable chair by the fire. On the strength of Antwerp Bolano would leave you outside in the biting cold with nose pressed against the window straining to read his lips.
Whether you’ll warm to Antwerp will probably depend on what you believe fiction to be. Saul Bellow, for whom Finnegan’s Wake was the indecipherable chatter of voices in a distant room, thought that fiction should be a conversation with the reader. Martin Amis finessed this. Fine writers like Bellow, he said, would also invite you into their home and give you the most comfortable chair by the fire. On the strength of Antwerp Bolano would leave you outside in the biting cold with nose pressed against the window straining to read his lips.
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