Woes of the True Policeman - Roberto Bolaño and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - B. Travern

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This post initially started as a list of writers I like and trying to explain what it is that draws me to them. I decided that was a hard task and in honesty, I just wanted to explain why Bolaño is an important writer to me. So instead it's about him and B. Traven. Enjoy deciphering the long post.

I have been reading The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Woes of the True Policeman. One by audiobook and the other by paper (respectively reversed). A coworker said "You're interested in Latin America then?" and I don't think he's too wrong. I worry if I fetishize the writers I like. I responded with "I've always liked Borges" which seems to accept the rightful assumption that I do find myself drawn to latinx writers - particularly men; latino. My college application essay, in the funniest worst way, was a parody of Borges and I, a ridiculous trek to imitate what has mattered to me. I find myself, in my more honest and racially guilty way drawn to postcolonial writers - people who talk about the system I feel my ancestry was against but didn't care enough to kill Mussolini for. Shame on the Italian diaspora for sending gold to his meaty claws.

In the past I was intoxicated with Stephen King, and before that Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) (whom I revisted by Handler's adult books and feel a complication about them that I do not want to revisit) and before that Mary Pope Osborne (Magic Tree House). There is also the other obvious influence after King where I primarily read comics and classics - The Odyssey, Maus, and Frankenstein come to mind among others - young adult books describing school shooters/fascist undertakings an inbetween I haven't come to terms with - see, Give a Boy a Gun.

I have been a reader as long as I remember. My first true memory that is mine is reading the text (unknown) off a billboard in the backseat of my mother's X-Terra. Another, which feels outside myself, is reading to the kindergartners as I was held back in preschool for being too young but then spent life too old. I have always been told how "smart" I am but it causes errors with my relationships - school children I taught made motions at my being confusing at times, my mother being angry that I use big words that make her feel largely small. I am not sure it is pointful or more accurately, I process information and then utilize it, become obsessive and sporadic into my own reading of texts and their deluge. I often in this draw myself towards specific writers or works.

The first Bolaño I attempted reading was actually Woes of the True Policemen. It was in the new books section of JP Adams, and I picked it up off the first sentence, read the first section sitting on the rock in the woods where the gate to the golf course breaks. Bolaño is very akin to how I write in a lot of ways and he talks about my favorite subject to consider for my means or others: violence.

I mentioned this to my roommate the other day - how I read male writers - and they were nonunderstanding but not rejecting. It was offhand, but reads into my way of writing - writing violence for the faggots (Violence Violence Violence is a story I wrote about a party turning towards a man beating the face in of a transwoman, narrated by another in closet that no one felt comfortable with reviewing as I handed it to them). I tend to follow this with works that are problematic - I do not find myself bothered by the idea that writing and people are flawed, racist, vengeful, horrid, homophobic and lament for murdering those who do not fit the model existence. Do I take that horribleness, and antisocial remark as a need to change it in its written form? No, I don't. I find it a necessary component of our life to understand that violence happens and will be either driven by a force of contempt and disgrace or has some backing. All things sensible and senseless. I cannot find things to be incomprehensible if I am to combat them in relative existence - the meaningful expanse that I actually breathe and survive through rather than that useless language. It is not insanity to see that someone does something horrible for spite or accident or elsewhere otherwise. It is a practical thing.

Bolaño, whose only work I've true-ly (policeman, woes of) finished is The Skating Rink - a murder mystery with no mystery. It's good. Anyone against it is a silly person (critics didn't love it). 2666 I have a single chapter left. I've read a bunch of the Romantic Dogs - Bolaño always called himself a poet first, a writer second only for living wages (sidenote, I want to read the poetry in the original language without doing the 2nd language translation in my head as is the way of English speakers first). His works are violent, often homophobic (but I think he was gay because if he isn't Amalfitano, who the fuck is he????), and long and about nothing most the time. It's always how I try to tell people how much I like 2666 and how they should attempt it. The first part is pointless and beautiful. I want to write about nothing while describing the problem with academia too (he loves to write about academics, writers, "educated people" and reference a swash of people). Not really but, also sometimes.

Woes of the True Policeman is a weird book - it is more likely to be simply drafts or abstracted/disorganized pieces from 2666 than its own destined book. If unfamiliar, 2666 was published in a full book form posthumously and was/is the largest piece of Bolaño's to be noticed by the English-speaking/non-Latinx world. Bolaño had actually stated he wished it to be published serially, the parts as separate novels in an attempt that his family would receive more money from the sales of the books.

It tells a bit more detail, focuses more on Amalfitano as a driving force. It is less about work and violence against women by police hands examining or acting - how capitalism may lend bodies to a meat grinder for profit and function. In 2666, Amalfitano hangs a geometry textbook on a clothesline (in the same way Duchamp did, apparently). In Woes of the True Policeman he writes back in forth about being an exiled faggot and how his job unfulfils him in a city he disregards as worthwhile. AIDS and terms of "internalized homophobia" are rampant among his communications but I find it very unlikely Bolaño would make that Padilla's (Amalfitano's ex) book subject so obvious, called The God of Homosexuals. This book is very "autobiographical" even though Bolaño says his work isn't. He was a liar, you know.

It is hard to write about Bolaño for me, as I write - I think - akin to him and have since my first reading, accidentally or not. I am more unpredictable as my head is not keen to edits when I write, or makes its senses as it goes. This can be an obtuse thing to process. Every time I try to explain or write, I mention the words "writing about nothing" and how his work is about violence at the same time, and I find myself looking for endless critics' perceptions of his work - particularly in the few fanclubs/bookclubs that exist on the internet. These spaces find it easy to call out his homophobia but never his racism - both 2666 and Woes have anti-black moments against black men dating latina women (I believe Rosa Amalfitano in both cases) and do not spend time reasoning why this racism is prevalent in Mexico on the US border. That is a mistake of them treating it as academia first, rather than abstraction I beleive - or that homophobia is obviously more damaging to nonblack people than antiblackness. There is a road to being valid as a human and being black and a faggot would never be useful if not profitable for white society, eg. actresses in highly syndicated and revered television not halting the murder of the poor black trannies cross the nation. People politely do not combine identities or when they do, do not see the systems of intersectionality - rather the pride of falsified affirmation and inclusion. That's a short of it and me being a bitter fuck.

As a transition, B. Traven was the definite inspiration for Archimboldi - both JMG and Benno Von (who are distinctly the same person). There is debate as to who he was, beyond probably Ret Marut and all the other psuedonyms but just assuming names and identities, and what he may of done, beyond be a German-American living in Mexico who wrote anarchist pamphlets who was part of the Bavarian Soviet Republic attempt to takeover and autonomously rule an area of Germany following some of that bullshit history I don't know much about and won't. Archimboldi sort of emulates a lot of this mystery and secrecy that Traven had as a writer, and it could matter less beyond their comparison and coincidentally finding about him via his script writing behind Macario and a Day of the Dead Google doodle that led me there.

Traven writes a lot like Sister Carrie meets Stagecoach. I recently watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs on a whim, and the Tom Waits segment of that would be a fair comparison to Sierra Madre, albeit a weak one because by having no politics, the Coens have nothing to say beyond violence and humor (sidebar: also watched Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter and am sure it's not connected but needed to connect to both Coens and Traven I guess) so the Coens basically have nothing to say. Don't watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs on a whim by the way. It keeps the whole trail of fears white cowboy thing in full effect. Kumiko's fun but kinda a mess too. Anyway.

Anyway. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (hilarious that someone uploaded it to Libcom) is about white men in Mexico (so far) and where it does have a political understanding albeit is just as racist as his critiqued capitalists - particularly against the indigenous Mexican peoples. His characters, I think or am modernly reading, are not meant to be the heroes of their story but are - downtrodden working white men seeking fortune and meeting a nothing, meaningless end by the violence of it. It's sort of an opposite to 2666's women - still working or poor and destitute, but at maquiladores for their white murderous counterparts. I found myself making these sorts of comparison - oil labor and Midas-touch dreams versus sex work and factory assembly. How similar could they really be for Bolaño to inspire himself by this random mysterious white socialist? These realities are different and always the hand of colonizers (a bad and limited read that is purposefully being phrased as such - autonomy to cause harm is granted to all peoples).

Constantly in Sierra Madre, Travern goes on tangents about risks of work, the lumpsome processes denied of reason beyond hierarchy and starvation of the workers, and the white man at the center of it all. But he doesn't really care to have his characters be some sort of guiding de-colonizer anticapitalists. Rather they are stubborn, abrasive and the nothing they reach feels deserved. This battle is another thought to process in US (Marquez paraphrased - "United States ofs forget they are not all of America") of the white working class as an enemy against those who are not. On sides where we should be with our nonwhite counterparts but are unwilling to accept our own participation in the system. I too, almost have elevated myself beyond my class and joined a whiteness that divulges itself - remiss not for the loss of power but the loss of knowing a stance that can denounce that which kills my, cough cough sounds like a manarchist, fellow man, when the fellow ain't fellow or human to what stays power. Thoughts that go nowhere but brought up by a gold rush novel about uneducated American men in Mexico only witnessing the version of violence there and throwing some of their own.

I admit, while writing this that I'm not actually done with the books (1/3 to go, Madre, 20pgs Policeman) but could just stop reading them and know their endings. Padilla is about to die from AIDS in a letter. The bandits are not going to be truly gone or soldiers truly done with these gringos in the mountains. Rosa is going to be in danger or dead because of Amalfitano's faggotry and Pancho's violent past will make him the culprit who follows suit his upbringing (I don't want to talk about the chapter but The Killers of Sonora, chapter 2 is nearly as hard to read through as The Part about the Crimes in 2666 - Crimes however serves a purpose where I think Sonora's chapter is gratuitous and a lazy take from Bolaño overall - which is why it was probably NOT INTENDED TO BE PUBLISHED). Traven's characters are going to realize that the danger home is all the indigenous folk and never adjudicate their colonizing natures, when they die by those hands resisting an occupation.

These endings are unsatisfying and will offer nothing for means to understanding the real world of violence but provide some interesting. It is fine to be interesting if that is all it can be because it is art and art has no purpose in true action. It's not meant to and doesn't need to be categorized and canonized as such. If there's anything to take away from this post it's that these are works I like and find interesting. They are highly damaging in their rhetoric while including revolutionary politics by accident or purpose.

Favorite parts:

Woes of the True Policemen

• The opening of Woes of the True Policeman when Bolaño says which writers are faggots or not and what that means without explaining why he's decided which are which.
• "Hard cocks, with glorious exceptions were hardly ever literary." (p. 40)
• When Amalfitano goes to try and find La Llarona (not really what he does but sort of is - his part, chapters 12-13.
• The story about the Spanish recruit told to Castillo (one of few bookmarked sections).
• Archimboldi's list of enemies, loves, etc. Dude gets into a fights he always loses. It's very funny.
• Negrete's story about the General - because it's obvious he was gay to me and the dead man his lover. I don't think this is a stretch.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre

• "Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn't know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love and to demonstrate how little he knows the world." (p. 2)
• When the indigenous person follows Dobbs and Curtin and tells them that the tigers don't eat Americans so he thinks he'll be safer and the succeeding part where they all think a tiger is nearby and climb up a tree to try and survive the night but it ends up being a donkey (making an ass of themselves).
• The boss that throws a tantrum when Dobbs and Curtin corner him in the most blunderingly incompetent way at a hotel bar.
• Geecries (Jesus Christ) and funking (fucking) and all the other censored curses.
• Howard's character in his entirety because he's the basis for prospector caricature.
• Lacuad's Bandit story for its gruesomeness.

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I returned Frankisssstein because it wasn't interesting enough. I have a bunch of Woolf and Traven short stories and Jamaica Kinkaid in my bag. I also just picked up Paradiso which seems like it's gonna be good as shit. Who knows. I also bought The Skin Team by Jordaan Mason online and want to sneakily print it but...that's a fuck ton of paper and isn't feasible (Also, Charlotte still has my copy of Small Beauty by Jia Qing Wilson-Yang). I'm also going to try and read Rubyfruit Jungle. Also also also. End.