The part about the critics

The thing about the critics is, most of the time, they have no idea what they're talking about. They seem to know, they even think they know but, truth be told, they're just a bunch of phonies. Anyway, I envy them, not the phony part, though, that kills me, but the very idea that reading can be a job and you can work in your pj's laying on your bed is just something to be jealous, isn't it? But, who am I kidding? That's exactly what I do in my career as a failed writer.

So, as I read the papers and blogs and trash every once in a while and have some friends who write too and know the inner movements of this tidal wave that is called literature, I was aware of this Boñalo euforia. When you think about it, is kind of sad that a writer become recognize just after his death and just because of his death: the myth that surrounds the author, the idea of the romantic writer, the living poem (heroin addiction included -of course, an invention of the critics traced back in a misread of one story by Bolaño, as if the word 'fiction' didn't exist). One could reply that is kind of unfair to say such a thing, but it's no news that the Bolaño critic efluvio, at least the critics written in english, started a couple of years ago. Literature, as everything nowadays, is a merchandise, something you buy. And if you want people to buy your stuff, you have to make people interested in your merchandise. So you spread a rumour or two, write some lies and publish them, translate the books and the critics will jump and scream that they have discovered the thing that no one needed to discover because it was just there, in front of everyone who would open his eyes.

I thought I had a point, but now this just seems senseless and useless. As everything else crossing my mind.

The part about the critics, from 2666.