On Roberto Bolaño's "By Night in Chile"

There's no comfort in the resonance struck by Roberto Bolaño's experimental, 120-page, one-paragraph (yes) novella "By Night in Chile," which unspools as a confessional from a dying Chilean priest confronting his guilt for the role he played in failing to fight—and at times succeeding to allow in—the fascist regime creeping through his country.

Take the priest's European assignment to document the works of cardinals-turned-falconers who have launched a wild plot to save their churches from mounting shit—literal shit—dropped by pigeons, for example. The acidic pigeon droppings are corroding the stonework, and the church's high keepers have turned immediately to violence, training falcons to kill the birds but also, in the frenzy, their genetically similar holy image, the dove. It's a stark vignette with obvious consequence, but the framework also calls to mind our own Administration's obsession with architecture.

I wish there were fewer dots to connect between the US and Chile's prior dictatorial rule, but alas, it makes for good reading when you see it on the page.

Mind you, "By Night in Chile" does require a bit of knowledge about Chile's briefly-in-power Marxist president Salvador Allende and the coup, led by General Augusto Pinochet, that later ousted him. (Unfun fact: The CIA supported this coup! Fun fact: My fraternity had a mural of Allende in our weightlifting room.)

I've wanted to read Bolaño for some time now, but I will admit, this entry gave me pause before continuing onto other entries. Much like every Faulkner novel exhumes the curse of The South, and every Morrison novel revives the consequences of that curse, it appears much of Bolaño's oeuvre explores dictatorship in Latin America and beyond. That's an enormous and nuanced topic, but right about now, however ignorant this sounds, I feel like I know quite a bit about fascism's pernicious and sly contamination against a people.