A few things. First, The New Republic tries to wrap it's head around the work of Roberto Bolano:
Well, it's not dead yet. The modernist idea, which is really a Romantic idea, that the truest art comes from the margins, from the social depths, from revolt and disgust and dispossession, from endless cigarettes and a single worn overcoat, is still, in this age of MFA's and faculty appointments, when Pound's "make it new" long ago became Podhoretz's "making it"--is still, still, however improbably alive. A young man can still get up in a Mexico City bookstore and declare war on the literary establishment, give the finger to coffeehouses and Octavio Paz, plunge like a burning wreck into willed obscurity, toil in poverty for twenty years, and wind up forging, at the cost of youth and health and finally life, works that mark a time and point a new way forward.
I'd say that the review is all style over substance, but it goes on from there examining how Bolano's work destroys itself through the paradox of art and death. To me what draws one into his work is our own sympathy for all of his weaknesses and failures. There is something vulnerable and wide open about his writing and our readerly sympathies step in to help him fill in the blanks and shore up the structure. We sense that he's writing in good faith and resting transparently in the spirit that gives him rise.
My feeling is that there's a direct line from Coleridge to Joyce to Kerouac to the Romantic-Postmodernism of Bolano but I need to finish reading before I can hope to say anything remotely intelligent.
Also, they're still airing episodes of Battlestar Galactica, though I'm not sure why. The last two episode thread involving the mutiny went exactly nowhere and seemed to be designed to clear a few non-essential personnel from the cast. Otherwise no one seems to have noticed that the show as a whole has lost it's dramatic momentum. If there's anything we're expecting to have happen in the remaining episodes other than "everyone dies" I don't know what it is.
Finally, this happened on the Grammys last night. It's one thing to have a marching band backing you; it's a whole 'nother thing to have a minimalist marching band backing you. Instead of going all loud and schmaltzy the band put down the groove which was pretty impressive.
