“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, and only God understands and judges them, so one must be very careful with one’s silences.”
from By Night in Chile

"Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone."
From the Book of Common Prayer


In one long paragraph, Jesuit priest Father Urrutia works his way through a death bed confession, trying to make sense of his life while defending and making excuses for his actions and inactions. This is a mesmerizing look at Chile's history around the time of Pinochet and how Opus Dei lured one compliant clergyman into aiding the efforts of a military take-over. As in Germany during the the rise of Hitler, another case of a well-meaning ineffective population standing by and watching their history go south. ( )

The hallucinogenic confessions of a coward on his deathbed. That Father Urrutia is a stooge for Pinochet is just a symptom of the man's fundamental mediocrity: his cowardice extends to his very artistic soul. Urrutia is the academic elite who idolize the innovators of poetry and literature of the past but are too afraid to contribute to it. They neither challenge, change, adapt, innovate, or engage. In their inaction they are failures. They discuss politics in the abstract sense while prisoners are tortured literally underneath their feet. It's like Leni Riefenstahl who claimed ignorance of Hitler's agenda. How can a visionary play with the power art without understanding the consequences?

On his deathbed Urrutia realizes that he squandered his intellectual inheritance on the perceived safety of fascism. In his attempts to be above it all he is lowered beneath. A "wizened youth" looks on solemnly: perhaps this apparition is what Urrutia once was or perhaps it is what he was always too afraid to become. The man who wanted to be the next Neruda understands that the only thing he contributed to his country were birds of prey, imported from former dictatorships, intended to slaughter doves who shit on cathedrals. Now there is one hell of a metaphor. ( )

Perhaps what's more interesting about Bolaño is the world he sees, including what we may call the "mind", or "psychology". Nocturno de Chile is a portrait of himself and his love of literature and the arts in general (as is every single book by him), but it is also a diffuse picture of latinity - a property that makes the book all the more accurate for how difficult this so-called latinity is to describe. An unknown identity shaped by little pieces of a complex puzzle: ancestrality, religion, imperialism. And first and foremost, the failure of religion in its men, for this book in particular

That said, another thing Bolaño excels at is at writing. Because the thing is, he really does love reading. This dense monologue makes you wonder if he's read Bernhard, which probably didn't happen, because if it did, he would tell you. He tells you his influences like you're also part of his circle and knows these people casually, and it is because of his fascination for books that each one of his own is narratively unique. Nocturno de Chile invites you to read fast, to become the protagonist as he reminisces of his acquaintances - your familiars, and, if you're a catholic or latinamerican, to discuss with your own wizened youth. ( )

Things will never work out between Bolano and me. I do recognize his writing talent, his enormous erudition and his creative handling of literary legacies. This short story certainly proves that. It is a retrospective of a Chilean Opus Dei priest on his deathbed, a long, messy last breath so to speak, actually 1 paragraph written in stream-of-consciousness, mainly focusing on the literary world of Chile (Bolano's homeland). Bolano juggles with covert and overt references, in an endless stream of memories and stories, which mainly expose the hypocrisy of the Chilean elite (including literati), even dictator Pinochet appears briefly on the scene. Absolutely relevant, this satire. This is he kind of book that certainly can blow you away, but to me its trance-like narrative style and the messy accumulation of story elements are a bit too excessive to really stick.

At first glance this book, though short (130 pages), almost seems to overwhelm. The whole book is just one long paragraph (no breaks at all) and takes a bit to get into. I suggest reading it all in one sitting and it flows nicely. The story of a priest/literary critic on his deathbed trying to reconcile his life where, among other things, he aided in the installment of Augusto Pinochet as dictator of Chile in the 1970s (with the help, of course, of the United States). Is he ashamed or contrite? It is political, though not too overtly or overwhelmingly. Many of the incidents seem to have more than one meaning (the falcons?). And is Bolaño saying that the Chilean literary world seemed to hide their heads in the sand during this time period? Many of the characters appear to be that way. Another fine and interesting book by Bolaño. ( )