By Night in Chile

The narrator of Roberto Bolaño's surreal novella By Night in Chile is an Opus Dei priest, Fr. Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix. Using the image of "the wizened youth," Bolaño brilliantly portrays the struggle for the survival of the human spirit trapped in Opus Dei for many years. His imagery is so vivid and provocative that the reader feels as if he or she is lifted up into his dream. "The wizened youth," or Fr. Sebastian's true self is being slowly destroyed by Fr. Sebastian's new Opus Dei identity. This interior battle captures the essence of the Opus Dei experience, as if Bolaño himself had been a celibate member. Initially, it appears as if Fr. Sebastian's newly-formed spirit is soaring toward the heavens; for example, he says "my prayers rising up and up through the clouds to the realm of pure music, to what for want of a better name we call the choir of angels, a non-human space but undoubtedly the only imaginable space we humans can truly inhabit, an uninhabitable space but the only one worth inhabiting, a space in which we shall cease to be but the only space in which we can be what we truly are." In reality, however, Fr. Sebastian's spirit, manipulated by his Opus Dei superiors, Raef and Etah (Fear and Hate spelled backwards) is slowly crushed over a period of many years because he denies the truth and his former self, "the wizened youth."

Fr. Sebastian is ordained an Opus Dei priest at the age of 14, at which time there isn't much of a struggle at all. In fact, Fr. Sebastian is happy to bury the memories of his unpleasant childhood; and is filled with "immaculate hopes" about his future as the protégé of the finest literary critic in Santiago, Farewell. Like so many others who join Opus Dei at an impressionable age, Fr. Sebastian is lured by the promise of an appealing and exciting adventure. The fourteen-year-old is impressed by Farewell's attire, his grand estate, and the prestigious company of the literary elite with whom he shares an exquisite meal. The name "Farewell" symbolizes Fr. Sebastian's bidding his former self farewell. When Fr. Sebastian meets Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet at Farewell's house, he says, "I bet the wizened youth has no stories like this to tell. He didn't meet Neruda." His new identity enthusiastically and blindly submits to the calling higher than himself - to change the tone of literature in society. As he matures in his career, his intentions become tainted when he gives himself a pen name H. Ibacache (meaning: was hidden) so that he could praise his own books and criticize those of his colleagues, calling for a return to the classics and more culture. His pen name symbolizes the burial of the universal truths found in literature as well as the concealment of his new identity as an Opus Dei member.

Even though Fr. Sebastian becomes a successful literary critic, his spirit starts to rebel as he becomes bored with his book reviews and starts to write deep meaningful poems, which he quickly destroys. His Opus Dei superiors immediately step in to crush his dissenting spirit. In his struggle, the wizened youth appears, "The wizened youth is watching from a yellow street corner and yelling at me. I can hear some of his words. He is saying I belong to Opus Dei. I have never hidden that, I say. But of course, he's not even listening to me. I can see his jaws and his lips moving and I know he's shouting, but I cannot hear his words." Fr. Sebastian's superiors reward him with a "delicate mission in Europe" as a distraction and to bolster his fidelity to the organization. Raef and Etah hope Fr. Sebastian will feel as if he is part of something greater than himself, something with a divine purpose that he should feel privileged to belong to - Opus Dei, which means "The Work of God." Throughout his jaunt through Europe, Fr. Sebastian is treated with great affection. In Spain, he says, "they introduced me to "the Opus Dei publishers and the principals of the Opus schools and the Rector of the University, which is also run by Opus Dei, and all of them showed an interest in my work as a literary critic, poet and teacher, and they invited me to publish a book with them . . . and then they gave me a letter addressed to me and written by Mr. Raef, in which he asked How's Europe going, what's the weather like and the food and the sites of historical interest, a ridiculous letter but somehow it seemed to conceal another, invisible letter, more serious in content, and this hidden letter, although I couldn't tell what it said or even be sure it really existed, worried me deeply." Even though Fr. Sebastian has let his guard down and the wizened youth is absent in Europe, he still feels that something is not quite right. But, how can his spirit protest now that everything is going so well for him?

The actual mission in Europe is a portent of the death of Fr. Sebastian's spirit. He learns that the cause of the dilapidation of the exteriors of the European churches is pigeon droppings. The pastors throughout Europe solve this problem by becoming falconers, whose pet falcons murder the pigeons. As Fr. Sebastian travels through Europe, he is not troubled by the blood until he meets Fr. Antonio, who thinks it is a grave error for the predators to kill God's creatures since pigeons and doves are the symbol of the Holy Spirit, "who is far more important than most lay people suspect, more important than the Son who died on the cross, more important than the Father who made the stars and the earth and all the universe." His words haunt Fr. Sebastian who dreams of "falcons, thousands of falcons flying high over the Atlantic ocean, headed for America." The falcons represent predators of the spirits and Fr. Sebastian subconsciously fears for the deaths of many more spirits in the church.

When Fr. Sebastian returns to Chile, he and his spirit have a second, more tumultuous battle. As the country flares up in political turmoil, he starts having doubts again and his personal writing becomes so shocking and disturbing, that even he does not recognize it as his own. This time, however, Raef and Etah do not reward him; rather, they give him a punishment. They manipulate Fr. Sebastian into agreeing to give private lessons on Marxism to Pinochet and his generals. After they cleverly get him to admit that he has some books on Marxism in his personal library, Fr. Sebastian feels as if he must defend himself, saying "You know me, I'm not a Marxist." He describes himself in the scene as "trembling from head to toe and feeling more than ever as if it were all a dream." Raef and Etah try to reassure him "You'll be serving your country. . . Serving in silence and obscurity, far from the glitter of medals. . . you're going to have to keep your mouth shut." Soon after he gives the classes, he is confused about the moral ambiguity of what he has done. However, after some time has passed, Fr. Sebastian justifies his actions, "At the end of the day, we were all reasonable (except for the wizened youth, who at that stage was wandering around God knows where, lost in some black hole or other), we were all Chileans, we were all normal, discreet, logical, balanced, careful, sensible people, we all knew that something had to be done, that certain things were necessary, there's a time for sacrifice and a time for thinking reasonably." He has convinced himself that if there had been any unpleasant consequences from his lessons, they were necessary, and the wizened youth has lost another battle.

Toward the end of the novella, Fr. Sebastian's spirit no longer fights. During the literary soirées in the home of María Canales, whose husband was using their basement as a torture chamber, the wizened youth is invisible. Fr. Sebastian says "I can picture the wizened youth's face. I cannot actually see him, but he is there in my mind's eye." Because curfews were in effect, Fr. Sebastian admits that he sensed that something was not quite right at those lovely literary gatherings, "I thought how odd it was that, with all the racket and the lights, the house was never visited by a military or police patrol." But his ignoring of his conscience had now become such an entrenched habit, that the wizened youth appears to have died. Finally, Fr. Sebastian realizes that he no longer sees the wizened youth. "Where is the wizened youth? Why has he gone away? And little by little the truth begins to rise like a dead body. A dead body rising from the bottom of the sea or from the bottom of a gully. I can see its shadow rising. Its flickering shadow. Its shadow rising as if it were climbing a hill on a fossil planet. And then, in the half-light of my sickness, I see his fierce, his gentle face and I ask myself: Am I that wizened youth?" He realizes that he has spent his entire life fleeing from the wizened youth. He has denied his own eyes, memories, thoughts, and even his own writing. If he had not been a sleepwalker through his life, perhaps he would have come to the truth much sooner; instead, he was in a battle with his own spirit and almost killed it, as the falconers had killed so many of the pigeons or doves in order to save the churches from the pigeon droppings. It is sad that Fr. Sebastian doesn't see the truth until he is almost dead, but by having liberated his trapped spirit, he can finally be at peace with himself.

It is tempting when reading this volume, to check Chilean literary history or the politics of the Allende era ... but it is better to simply read the novel as a good read - at least for the first time. This is a novel that almost invites a study of its references and techniques, to the point one may gloss over the universal aspects of the story. While the novel is deliberately Chilean, the motifs of professional and ethical social climbing and compromising are universal. A young priest is "seduced" by the opportunity to be in the best literary circles - seduced into support of the right wing side of the Church and of politics. This volume is his own telling of his story, near the end of his life, in an attempt to excuse/explain/confess his choices throughout his life. The author's brilliance is in his compact telling of a universal condition in the very specific details of a particular life in a particular time.

I was told that this short novel is a good introduction to Bolano. Perhaps it is, but it doesn't increase my desire to read more of him. My complaint is that the dying priest is an unrealized character, more of an idea than a real person.

This is one of the major short comings, imho, of South American literature in general. While well written in a stylistic sense (the translation seems quite good--it flows very smoothly and poetically at times), this book portrays ideas more than lives. Surely anyone who lived through the Pinochet regime would find this book of interest, but I would have much rather read about the effect of this oppressive regime on the lives of real Chileans, than on the life of a literary critic. Writers have lives too, and Bolano may have realized the shortcomings of his one character when he says toward the end of this short novel than there are other things in life beyond reading and writing.

There were good moments. I enjoyed the padre's trip to Europe, studying the effect of centuries of pigeons lodging on the churches of Europe. A nice bit of surrealistic criticism of the preoccupations of the Catholic church in the face of regimes like Pinochet's. The literary salon run by Maria Canales, housed over her husband's torture chamber was equally piquant. I believe that Fr. Urrutia was the "father" of Maria's elder son, who looks like him and is also named Sebastian, rather than homosexual. Here I saw the germs of a real novelistic talent. Perhaps Bolano goes into such real human situations in greater depth in his later and longer works.

For political attitude, I give this writer not five but six stars. I could not have agreed with his outlook more. For craft he gets five stars. The short work is well written. But for artistic achievement--a whole vision of life as lived by Chileans in a very difficult time, I found it a pallid exercise indeed.

A word on the format. I suppose it is too much to hope that the current penchant for book long paragraphs, indulged in by this writer as so many others (Thomas Bernhard comes immediately to mind) will soon pass, but I view it as an unnecessary and even harmful excrescence. It is not the way people speak and it is not the way people absorb the speech of others. It is more than lack of courtesy, which it is, chiefly it is a detriment to understanding.

... to judgement! Don't think you know where this novella is going until you get there! It's not very long - only 130 pages - so you might try to read it all in one sitting, letting it take over, coming to believe the voice of the narrator, the celibate homosexual priest/poet/critic who announces in his first words that he is "dying now." It's the credibility of that voice that elevates this rambling, stumbling 'confession' to enormous emotional power. (If you're a potential book buyer who NEEDS a summary of the action first, take a look at the very ample review here in the amazone by "Rhoda".)

Father Urrutia, the priest narrator, has his own timetable for exposing himself. He's all the way to page 56 - or should we admit that there's an 'author' controlling his pace? - before he cautiously reveals his affiliation with Opus Dei and his entanglement with the portions of Chilean society that reveled in the CIA-assisted assault on democracy which placed Pinochet on his throne of torture. If you have no formed opinion of Opus Dei, if you've never even heard of the conspiratorial right-wing cadre, you might as well skip this review and this book. Nothing in it will matter to you. But the assignment that Opus Dei gives Father Urrutia, to investigate the methods that the clergy of Europe are using to prevent the dilapidation of church buildings, results in a breath-taking feat of surrealism by author Roberto Bolaño, in which the membrane between the priest's dreams and awakenings is dissolved.

The first 55 pages, I admit, will be hard going for English readers. The culture of writers and intellectuals in Chile, and in the Hispanic world at large, is peculiar and unfamiliar, and "we" will have difficulty recognizing what's at stake for the young Urrutia, who aspires to be both a poet and a literary critic of lasting influence. But forge on! The betrayal of those aspirations -the collapse of belief in literature - is thematic, and the reader needs to know who Urrutia thought he was in order to experience the horror of Urrutia's realization of who he has become.

There's a word in Spanish - 'tertulio' - meaning an extended social occasion at which the guests discuss literature, read their works, hold forth in competitive intellectuality. The word is translated here as 'soirée' but such an event is closer to the brazenly immodest conversation one hears in an Ivy League dining hall. The culminating scene remembered by the dying priest was at a tertulio, attended by cautious intellectuals despite the curfew against such events during the Pinochet horror-era. The hostess, a Chilean, aspires to be a Writer and needs the 'nourishment' of intellectual company; her husband is an American hit-man, a torturer who conducts interrogations in the basement of their mansion. It's his secret identity that ensures that the wife's tertulio will not be raided by Pinochet's thugs. Is it possible that the guests are totally unaware? Is their ignorance a survival tactic, a hypocrisy, an indifference? Bolaño seems to be suggesting that even to survive during the Pinochet era required one to become sordid and complicit.

The crimes of Pinochet and his henchmen, Chilean and American, weigh as heavily on the writers of Chile as the burden of Hitlerism on German post-war thinkers. Any other theme would seem trivial.

Bolaño is not an easy stylist. His run-on parenthetical stream-of-attention structure is similar to that of Vladimir Nabokov or Thomas Bernhard, though less humorous than the former and graciously less depressive than the latter. This is not a book for escapist readers. It's a psychological tragedy, but one that will, ironically, reinforce the value of literature for coping with the shame of humanity.

I think I would have appreciated this book more if I was more into Chilean literature. Some characters, like Pablo Neruda, I could recognize right away, but most were unknown to me. Still I could follow the story, but I might not have understood all the nuances. If you aren't informed about Chile and have the will to look stuff up, this book could be a good starting point about Chile without being deliberate like a travel guide.
The novel also captures other aspects of Chilean history and society, such as the time leading up to Allende's downfall and Pinochet's dictatorship, the role of the Church in the mid- to late-twentieth century, the importance of politics, and other topics.
The voice and tone of the novel is unique. It flows as one stream of consciousness without paragraphs or chapters, and with many run-on sentences. At times the reader forgets that the page is the medium through which the voice is communicating, because it almost comes as direct as someone speaking. However, the narration is lacking for passion, which perfectly reflects Fr. Urrutia's low energy and apprehensiveness towards his vocation, but the book is not for those seeking an exciting narrative.

The New Your Times Book Review has said nice things about Bolano's two newest novels, but I decided to step back and start with an earlier novella, By Night in Chile. I was disappointed. The narrative rambles among various conversations about literature and cultural history with nothing much at stake for the characters. It is oddly without plot.

Moreover, Bolano formats his story into only two paragraphs, the last one consisting of only a seven word sentence at the end, on page 130. All dialogue is embedded in the one paragraph without quotation marks. Paragraph breaks and quotation marks are courtesies to the reader, and departures from these conventions should be artistically justified. In this book, the departures are merely rude.

Bolano's great theme, according to The New York Times, is the sorry state of literature in his native land. I wonder if I'm the only reader to think that By Night in Chile is part of the problem.

Over several years dozens of readers have posted to Amazon their thoughts about "By Night in Chile." Collectively, those reviews convey a sense of the difficulties and pleasures of this short novel.

"By Night in Chile" takes the form of a deathbed confession delivered by a Chilean priest, poet and conservative literary critic, Fr. Urrutia. The book's principal challenge to the uninitiated reader is that it is set in a time, place, culture and political atmosphere unknown to all but a few American readers. If you've read the positive reviews of readers who were enthralled by the novel, you understand their urge to place its challenges in context. For example, one reviewer, Rhoda, felt compelled to shed light on just one of the esoteric aspects of the book -- namely, how Opus Dei, an organization within the Catholic Church, misguides the fictional priest and bends the arc of his life toward fatal choices. An understanding of all the foreign details of this sort, and a familiarity with the real life figures who pop up in the priest's stream of memories (Pablo Neruda, Ernst Junger, Marta Harnecker) are useful, without doubt. But I believe such foreknowledge is not essential to an immediate enjoyment of the book, so long as you are the kind of reader who takes great delight in experiencing a literary tour de force that draws you toward a readily understandable moral, a simple truth.

"By Night in Chile" is a bravura performance by Bolaño in which the author has found a distinct way to enwrap and deliver each recollection, each story within a story, each aside, each shift in time, each gruesome discovery, and each blow to the soul, that passes through the dying priest's sometimes clear, sometimes feverish, mind. The Amazon reviewer named Lost High Guey cites as a defining characteristic of the book, this constant outpouring of side-stories, little morsels, poetry masked by prose. Two or three reviewers found this "meandering" style off-putting, but others of us appreciate the strategy as Bolaño's signature mode. For us it is an ever-surprising joy. The reviewer Giordano Bruno describes a social occasion the Spanish refer to as a "tertulio" at which guests discuss literature, read their works, and hold forth in competitive intellectuality. He likens it to boastful conversations heard in an Ivy League dining hall. Even closer to the mark -- and closer to what I think is the generative force of Bolaño's communicative charm -- is the practice and spirit of an all-night "bull session" conducted in college dorms or in fact anywhere the young are assembled in strange new quarters as they undergo mind-altering training. If you typically avoided invitations to join in such sessions, you should avoid "By Night in Chile."

Bolaño's life was bohemian -- peripatetic and immersed in the social lives of other poets, painters, musicians, actors. One imagines him as a great talker and a great listener. (In a moment of fantasy -- never to be fulfilled, alas -- I imagine a chance meeting of Roberto Bolaño and the painter/collagist Robert Rauschenberg. What amazing things would have flowed forth had those two spent an afternoon interviewing each other. In my dream I imagine hidden microphones and cameras capturing the sparkling flow of dialog, an outpouring which turns heavenward after I bring to the gentlemen a bottle of Jack Daniels, for RR, and a drug of his choice, for RB.)

Literature has been enriched by the confessional form. Think of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Browning's "My Last Duchess," and Camus' "The Fall." The confession is a hospitable device for an author interested in psychological exploration and revelation. A man unspools a story of some evil he witnessed or participated in, a sin that weighs upon him, a sin he now owns up to or, alternatively, seeks to justify. His speech ends with a request, express or implied, for the listener (you the reader) to understand, to expiate. The framework of "By Night in Chile" borrows from this tradition, and yet the book is frustrating as a confession. Perhaps it is as close to a confession as the present era allows. The state of Fr. Urrutia's soul at the close of his tale is, at least to me, uncertain. That uncertainty led me to trace my steps back to the beginning of the book, where I found the priest's initial remarks, his opening statement of purpose.

Then I understood how much this book is a deeply religious tale, a profoundly moral story. The dying priest, who hoped he could convince himself he had committed no crimes, is by his own reckoning guilty of sins of omission. It is on page one that he reveals a simple credo. The reader, when first encountering these words, may dismiss them as a bromidic utterance, jejune and self-congratulatory. But when read a second time, after curling back from the novel's end, the words shine clear:

"One has a moral obligation to take responsibility for one's actions, and that includes one's words and silences, yes, one's silences, because silences rise to heaven too, and God hears them . . . so one must be very careful with one's silences."

(Mike Ettner)

I had heard so many positive things about Roberto Bolano that I decided to give this short read a go as my first entry into his work. Unfortunately, this work never captivated me with its meandering writing. I felt the first half of the book was too slow and took too long to get into the story. The story never really found its rhythm until Fr. Urrutia returned from his trip to Europe and was enlisted to help Pinochet and his cadre of leaders better understand Marxism. Given all the favorable feedback Bolano receives, I'll give him another try even though this work left me extremely disappointed.

Everyone raves about this book, but it's awful. The prose is stilted, unimaginative, cliche-ridden, and self-indulgent. It could have been 1/3 as long (and it's short) and would have been twice as good.

I think this book was way beyond my knowledge of Chile and its literature. It is only about 180 pages but I had to give up. That doesn't mean it isn't a good book, I just didn't get it.