Yesterday’s note was on a writing tip from Roberto Bolaño. I should mention at least one of his stories.
I found “Last Evenings on Earth” astonishing. Literature is full of stories about how parents influence children. This is one, but it’s not what I expected.
The story is about a couple of Chileans living in Mexico City: B, a student, and his father. The boy is reading French surrealist poetry, is taken with the minor poet Gui Rosey, and is convinced by the poetry that something bad is going to happen.
The father, a manly ex-boxer, is looking for action, meaning alcohol and sex.
The vacation is a tug of war about what kind of man the boy will become. B avoids his father’s revels on the first night, but is trapped on the second.
The boy’s father starts playing cards and wins a lot of money. The father doesn’t seem to care who he angers. Women tell B to get his father out of the club, but the game goes on.
Finally, B’s father pays the bill. As father and son leave, two men block the door.
B thinks of poor, doomed Gui Rosey, but his father, without flinching, leads the way.
“And then the fight begins.”
It’s one of the great last lines of literature.
What happens? Does father, son or both die, as the title suggests? What would happen if father and son won the fight? Is the death figurative — a poet dies to be reborn as a tough guy who beats up bouncers when he has to? And what would happen if they survived and returned home, to mom and the family?
It’s an astonishing place to end an astonishing story.
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