December 17, 2009
Crib notes on “What Bolaño Read”
by Melville House
This is the last installment in the two-week series What Bolaño Read by former Shaman Drum Bookstore manager Tom McCartan. The series celebrates the publication of Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview & Other Conversations, which is just out from Melville House. Click here to read all posts in the series.
Over the past two weeks we have chronicled the reading habits of Roberto Bolaño. We discussed Bolaño’s tastes for French, Spanish, Argentine, and American literature. And we looked at his favorite literary forms: the novel, poetry, the short story, and, even, the fake encyclopedia. Yet we have yet to scratch the surface. There’s of course much more.
But to recap: Here is your homework, assigned by Bolaño himself and in no particular order:
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
The complete works of Jorge Luis Borges
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Invention of Morel – Adolfo Bioy Casares
Nadja – André Breton
Philosophical Dictionary – Voltaire
The Waste Books – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The Temple of Iconoclasts – Juan Rodolfo Wilcock
Imaginary Lives – Marcel Schwob
The Burning Plain – Juan Rulfo
Pedro Páramo – Juan Rulfo
Bartleby & Co. – Enrique Vila-Matas
Montaños Malady – Enrique Vila-Matas
Your Face Tomorrow (Series) – Javier Maras
The Speed of Light – Javier Cercas
The Soldiers of Salamis – Javier Cercas
Complete Works & Other Stories – Augusto Monterroso
Antipoems: How to Look Better & Feel Great – Nicanor Parra
Hopscotch – Julio Cortázar
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
Ubu Roi – Alfred Jarry
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Castle and The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Tractatus – Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Satyricon – Petronius
Pensées – Blaise Pascal