Review: Nazi Literature In America

Roberto Bolano is one of my favorite contemporary authors. I am endlessly impressed by his ability to move one step beyond the "magical realism" style of his mentors by toying with and expanding the form and very definition of the novel. Nazi Literature In America is no exception. The book, while clearly fiction, does not act as a traditional novel. It is an encyclopedia of fascist American writers who have existed only in Bolano's imagination. The chapters are intricately divided into various schools of thought and an expansive bibliography fills the epilogue. The level of detail is nearly exhausting.

Many of the chapters are simple - dry biographies and lists of works or historical accounts of the conflict between fascist writers and the growing leftist movements in South America throughout the past century. Yet in these segments, readers will catch glimpses of how dark and twisted Bolano's fantasy world is. One author is photographed being held by Hitler as a baby and spends her life cherishing the picture and idolizing the dictator. In another chapter, a white-supremacist from Texas embarks on a poetry career from prison. The image of the Aryan-Brotherhood publishing literary magazines is a humorous one, as are many of the other snapshots offered up in the book. However, the overall message is one of the evil that quietly exists in society.

This idea comes forth most clearly in the story of "The Infamous Ramirez Hoffman" that closes the novel. In this chapter Bolano himself appears as narrator and a character in the story. Ramirez Hoffman is an artist, poet and serial killer that Bolano purports to meet in his youth. Many decades later, an ex-police officer recruits Bolano to help him track and kill Hoffman. When the aging Hoffman is found, Bolano begs the officer not to kill him: "He can't hurt anyone now, I said. But I didn't really believe it. Of course he could. We all could." In these lines Bolano suddenly brings the reader into the action of the novel with the painful realization that we are all capable of harm.

Bolano's novels often point a magnifying glass at the literary world, whether is be the "visceral realists" of The Savage Detectives or the right-wing movement throughout the Americas. By dissecting these marginalized fictional groups, Bolano is able to make a commentary on the larger concept of human nature. Nazi Literature In America exposes what is indisputably an evil society, but it is an evil that exists only in the pages of the book and which which the reader will never be exposed to. Yet, by inserting himself into the tale and drawing the reader in alongside, Bolano is able to show us that the ideas on these pages are not entirely fantasy. It is this final realization that makes the book so frightening.