Chapter 29 - Love and Friendship

Summary

The significance of love and friendship in Bolaño’s life and oeuvre cannot overstated. Many of his best friends were writers or editors, including Roberto Brodsky, Javier Cercas, Jorge Herralde, Ignacio Padilla, Antoni García “A. G.” Porta, and Juan Villoro. That love and friendship were among Bolaño’s central concerns is unmistakably reflected in his oeuvre. For instance, one of the ways the central character Carlos Weider is demonized in Distant Star is precisely by exposing his betrayal of people who were supposed to be his friends, such as the Garmendia sisters. Friendship is often a key topic, if not the main one, in many of his plots, at times the engine that moves the action. In fact, several of his novels could be considered novels about friendship, including The Savage Detectives and parts of 2666. Many of his drifting characters, in Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce, Monsieur Pain, Nazi Literature in the Americas,Distant Star, Amulet, By Night in Chile, Antwerp, The Third Reich, Woes of the True Policeman, and The Spirit of Science Fiction, along with several short stories, have long lost hope in utopian political projects and find solace only in true friendships.