Recognition comes late
ROBERTO BOLANO was an explosive talent, yet for much of his life he endured in obscurity, railing against the system, drifting hand-to-mouth and needle-to-arm, vagabond-style, throughout the Americas and southern Europe. In the pantheon of Latino literary giants, hindsight might paint him as successor to the likes of Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes and Paz, or Borges, but recognition of his gifts came grudgingly, with critics acknowledging his greatness only at the end of his life.
Upon his death at aged 50, the media, which had so determinedly ignored him, decided that he was highly fashionable. The English-speaking press, tardy converts to his gutter gospel, have been even more mellifluous in their praise. The hyperbole seems apt. Though his reputation will rest largely on the twin suns of his oeuvre, The Savage Detectives, winner of the prestigious Romulo Gallegos Prize, and his gargantuan posthumous masterpiece, 2666, Bolano has left behind a body of work quite stunning in its breadth.
