A FICÇÃO DA FICÇÃO: DERRAMAMENTOS DE UM “EU” EM ROBERTO BOLAÑO

Abstract

Part of the work of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, who died in 2003, seems
to be articulated from certain aspects of his self. In other words, the way he writes his own
name on the text, or, how do we answer the question: “who is “I” in this text?”. Many of his
short-stories and novels, not to mention the poems, operate strategies of hide and exposure of
that “I” that speaks. Those strategies point to an uneven reading of his works, according to the
inscription of the given name. Using the short-stories “Detectives” (1997) and “Muerte de
Ulises” (2007), the novel Los Detectives Salvajes (1998) and the compendium Entre
Paréntesis (2004), this article articulates an analysis that compares Bolaño’s aesthetics
strategies regarding his own personal history. We’ll investigate the consequences of choosing
the signature Roberto Bolaño, or Arturo Belano, his alter-ego, to the essays, the interviews or
the fiction work. The question is not the verification of the truth within the fiction, but, more
profoundly, pose the exam in the effect of reality that comes from the subject-effect. Writing,
as it is, is considered as a vehicle to the construction of the “self”, that leads to the unstable
overflow of a identity that ultimately can never be Roberto Bolaño.