And Yet

The annual frustration of taxation computation has been sated. It has been an odd day, N has worked for six hours on this job training module and i have dithered about, completing the taxes and screaming at the TV, at AI, at the cretins on Freedarko who find Scott Skiles and George Karl to be the true problem with the League.


Upon returning from New York N read the opening article in the Believer about late Roberto Bolano and then emabarked upon a conversation about recent, post-Boom, Iberian-American letters. I am interested in this, especially outside the circumscribed terrain of the McOndo movement. Personally I first heard of Bolano last fall when a number of his shorter works upon translation were reviewed in Bookforum. I recall asking N about him then. It appears one his major works, Savage Detectives, will be published here in April. I am going to buy it. He appears playful, akin to Borges or Kundera, but closer to Mutis in that regard for color and atmosphere: haven't we all seen some of the alleys in Oliver Twist and Dombey and Son? I thank my friend Roger for affording further tribute to Dickens in his latest posting.