Roberto Bolaño is one of those writers that I have always wanted to read but have never really picked up. His books are not readily available in secondhand bookshops or bargain bins. He is that elusive writer, that’s always in the fringe, not as famous as his Latin American contemporaries like Marquez, or Llosa, but he’s always been thereabouts. And though his later works would be more uncompromising, more violent, his earliest work in The Skating Rink gives us traces of the greatness to come.
And in all honesty, I have no grounds to compare this Bolaño’s work to any other ones, as this is the first book by the author that I’ve picked up, by chance. Clocking in at under 200 pages, it is a relatively quick read and an engaging one. However, I couldn’t say that I picked up a lot of depth in this work, as much as I tried to. Political corruption? Obsession of a short man syndrome? The consequences of human jealousy? If there is a profound human observation that Bolaño wanted the reader to consider, it must have gone through my head.
But that’s not to say that the book is not an enchanting work. There is a somewhat surreal vibe exuding from each page. A kind of hidden magic that comes naturally for Latin American writers. No, it is not magical realism, but there is something about it. Just something.
The skating rink in the ruins of Palacio Bevangut
The story is told from three different angles: Reno, Gaspar and Enric — respectively a not-too-shabby and reputable business owner, a poet working menial jobs (now employed by Reno as a sort of stand by security guard) and a dirty politician in the city of Z, where all the events took place. Each men has a slightly different temperament: Reno is street smart, Gaspar is elegiac and passionate, while Enric who’s dirty as your uncle’s dirty laundry is conniving and vain.
The focal point of the three men is the skating rink dedicated for Nuria, a national skater down on her luck. Enric, who fell desperately in love with her worked up a scheme where he could embezzle funds to build her a skating rink in the Palacio Bevingut, a broken palace by Gaudi at the bottom of a cliff. It is a remote place with not many visitors, and Enric was smart enough to hide everything under covers so that Nuria can practice every day and she can go back on form to retain her place with the national team.
All this while, Enric can be that simp dude who’d enjoy the pleasure of the girl’s company in a strictly platonic sense, though of course, being a dirty cunt that he is, he’d always wanted more. When Nuria hooks up with Reno, Enric becomes insanely jealous. His relationship with Nuria went from totally supportive to overly critical.
Meanwhile, Gaspar is having a good time not doing much at all as the campsite groundsman. He met a couple of interesting women who squats in the camp, one much older than the other. The older one is a singing aria who’d peddle her talents in the streets and the bars. The younger girl is sickly, but beautiful and Gaspar quickly fell for her, and started following her around.
But ultimately, these interweaving relationships took its toll as relationships become strained and one of them ended up dead right in the middle of the skating rink.
Young Bolaño still finding his gliding strikes in the slippery ice
Not everybody can be Zadie Smith, Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey, et cetera, et cetera. These authors somehow hit the nail right on the head on their first attempt on writing a novel and rode the success of their first novel to their successive works. I don’t blame them, I’d probably do the same. Some mature as writers and write their best later, like Bolaño.
Now I’m not even going to pretend that I’ve read The Savage Detectives or 2666, but they’ve been in my to-do list for a long time, right after I finish the 500 books that I’ve got in my TBR shelf. But here’s what I like so far about Bolaño’s writing:
- He has a unique voice unlike other Latin American writers. His prose flows freely and well-balanced. Not too much poetry, but enough to make the writing beautiful. His endless page-long paragraphs reminded me of Saramago.
- He was able to balance the voices of the three characters without losing the reader. It wasn’t difficult for me to identify who’s speaking at any given time.
- There are moments of tenderness and moments of violence. There are times when we are cruising through and there are times when we’re unsettled.
I think the key word here is balance. In every aspect of the novel, there is a potential brutality but there is also restraint. Yet, this balance also cost the novel in some way. Perhaps the novel lacks that punch, even at its most violent, that tipping the scale off-balance sometimes is not a bad thing. But like I mentioned, I failed to see the depth beneath the prose. If Bolaño was trying to say anything significant, I must’ve missed it.
But that fault is perhaps on me. My job as a reader first and foremost is to enjoy the damn book, and bitching about it second.
