I found this week’s reading Amulet by Roberto Bolaño a captivating read. I personally don’t read a lot of books about war or know much history about this context in the book, but Bolaño made it enjoyable with the narrator Auxilio. I was quickly grasped by the book because of her captivating narration. Throughout this class, I was surprised by how much these books made me more aware of the history and the brutality of war and revolutions. The writing in this book and its details made it easy for me to visualize her thoughts and these different scenarios in my head.
The narrator Auxilio hides in the lavatories of her university, fearing that soldiers will come and discover her there. She begins to recall memories of her friends, literature, and life. She is seen as unsure about her purpose and roots, trying to re-imagine herself as she says, “one day I arrived in Mexico without really knowing why or how or when.” These memories and reflections of her friends seem like she is a sideline character in her own life. Auxilio does not fit into any of the Mexican cultural roles, so she finds herself taking on a nurturing role to the young poets. She seems to find her purpose in life and lives through her friends and their experiences and this is what she holds onto while stuck in the lavatories, along with the visions of the future. I found it surprising that Auxilio remained calm despite her fear in the lavatories. As a reader, I was distracted and somewhat stressed out by this scenario as I was worried about what was going to happen to her.
As we have talked about in our class lectures a concept that is a reoccurring theme in every book we have read is memories. These memories that we follow from these characters show a pattern that we can start to connect and compare each of them with each other. The shrouded woman was one that stuck out to me as they both revolve around a woman who is reaching and guessing about what possibilities could have come from their lives. Also comparing Amulet to W, both main characters are experiencing displacement due to the impacts of their respective traumatic events.
My question for the class is: How do you think her memory and the event of the occupation impact her visions about the future.
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with history, memories, war
I found this week’s reading Amulet by Roberto Bolaño a captivating read. I personally don’t read a lot of books about war or know much history about this context in the book, but Bolaño made it enjoyable with the narrator Auxilio. I was quickly grasped by the book because of her captivating narration. Throughout this class, I was surprised by how much these books made me more aware of the history and the brutality of war and revolutions. The writing in this book and its details made it easy for me to visualize her thoughts and these different scenarios in my head.
The narrator Auxilio hides in the lavatories of her university, fearing that soldiers will come and discover her there. She begins to recall memories of her friends, literature, and life. She is seen as unsure about her purpose and roots, trying to re-imagine herself as she says, “one day I arrived in Mexico without really knowing why or how or when.” These memories and reflections of her friends seem like she is a sideline character in her own life. Auxilio does not fit into any of the Mexican cultural roles, so she finds herself taking on a nurturing role to the young poets. She seems to find her purpose in life and lives through her friends and their experiences and this is what she holds onto while stuck in the lavatories, along with the visions of the future. I found it surprising that Auxilio remained calm despite her fear in the lavatories. As a reader, I was distracted and somewhat stressed out by this scenario as I was worried about what was going to happen to her.
As we have talked about in our class lectures a concept that is a reoccurring theme in every book we have read is memories. These memories that we follow from these characters show a pattern that we can start to connect and compare each of them with each other. The shrouded woman was one that stuck out to me as they both revolve around a woman who is reaching and guessing about what possibilities could have come from their lives. Also comparing Amulet to W, both main characters are experiencing displacement due to the impacts of their respective traumatic events.
My question for the class is: How do you think her memory and the event of the occupation impact her visions about the future.
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with history, memories, war
Roberto Bolano’s Amulet was an interesting read particularly because of the way its central motifs interact with one another in a way that feels very natural. On the one hand, the narrative is centrally concerned with time, however its dissection of time is not one of some objective or empirical account of time’s nature, rather […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with Chile, future, history, latin america, memories, memory, Mexico, Poetry
Amulet opens with: “This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror” (1). This explanation by the narrator, Auxilio Lacouture, created, right off the bat, a sense of suspense and mystery that allowed readers to expect an exciting or thrilling story. However, in my opinion, the novel was the …
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with entrapment, history, memories, sleepwalking
This week, I read ‘Amulet’ by Roberto Bolano.
I found the first paragraph of the story interesting. The narrator started off by telling the readers that this story “…is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it wont appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s a story of a terrible crime” (p 1). I never read a story that started off by telling what kind of story it will be, so it grabbed my attention and made me want to continue to read it. After reading the first paragraph, I was preparing myself for a violent story or the memories/fights of the war. However, the story was about a woman, Auxilio Lacouture, who was locked inside a washroom alone “..from the eighteenth to the thirtieth of September”(p 172). Specifically, the fourth floor washroom in the faculty of Philosophy and Literature building at the National Autonomous University (p 22). Due to the invasion of the army, the narrator locked herself inside the washroom for 12 days. With the terrifying situation outside, she tends to deal with her fear by looking back on her memories.
One of the most vivid moments to me was: when she was hiding in a stall, a soldier opened the washroom door and walked in. The detailed description of what had happened and what she was feeling makes me super nervous about what is going to happen. It felt as if I was hiding with her as well.
I like how the narrator described things, events, and people in detail. I noticed the narrator uses a lot of similes and metaphors to describe those. The detailed descriptions helped me imagine and picture the scenes in my head. Another thing I like is that the narrator used brackets/side notes to express her ‘inner feelings’.“…I became a bat, I left the university and wandered around Mexico city like a wraith (I can’t in all honesty say like a fairy, although I would like to) and drank and talked and attended literary gatherings (I knew where to find them all) ” (p20). The inner thoughts make me feel’ closer’ to the narrator as I am able to know more about her ‘inner’ feelings.
After Auxilio saw soldiers, tanks and riot police outside of the window, she went back to the washroom. That brings it to my question for the class: If you were in Auxilio’s situation, what would you do? Would you go back to the washroom and stay there or go somewhere else?
This week, I read ‘Amulet’ by Roberto Bolano.
I found the first paragraph of the story interesting. The narrator started off by telling the readers that this story “…is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it wont appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s a story of a terrible crime” (p 1). I never read a story that started off by telling what kind of story it will be, so it grabbed my attention and made me want to continue to read it. After reading the first paragraph, I was preparing myself for a violent story or the memories/fights of the war. However, the story was about a woman, Auxilio Lacouture, who was locked inside a washroom alone “..from the eighteenth to the thirtieth of September”(p 172). Specifically, the fourth floor washroom in the faculty of Philosophy and Literature building at the National Autonomous University (p 22). Due to the invasion of the army, the narrator locked herself inside the washroom for 12 days. With the terrifying situation outside, she tends to deal with her fear by looking back on her memories.
One of the most vivid moments to me was: when she was hiding in a stall, a soldier opened the washroom door and walked in. The detailed description of what had happened and what she was feeling makes me super nervous about what is going to happen. It felt as if I was hiding with her as well.
I like how the narrator described things, events, and people in detail. I noticed the narrator uses a lot of similes and metaphors to describe those. The detailed descriptions helped me imagine and picture the scenes in my head. Another thing I like is that the narrator used brackets/side notes to express her ‘inner feelings’.“…I became a bat, I left the university and wandered around Mexico city like a wraith (I can’t in all honesty say like a fairy, although I would like to) and drank and talked and attended literary gatherings (I knew where to find them all) ” (p20). The inner thoughts make me feel’ closer’ to the narrator as I am able to know more about her ‘inner’ feelings.
After Auxilio saw soldiers, tanks and riot police outside of the window, she went back to the washroom. That brings it to my question for the class: If you were in Auxilio’s situation, what would you do? Would you go back to the washroom and stay there or go somewhere else?
This week, I read ‘Amulet’ by Roberto Bolano.
I found the first paragraph of the story interesting. The narrator started off by telling the readers that this story “…is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it wont appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s a story of a terrible crime” (p 1). I never read a story that started off by telling what kind of story it will be, so it grabbed my attention and made me want to continue to read it. After reading the first paragraph, I was preparing myself for a violent story or the memories/fights of the war. However, the story was about a woman, Auxilio Lacouture, who was locked inside a washroom alone “..from the eighteenth to the thirtieth of September”(p 172). Specifically, the fourth floor washroom in the faculty of Philosophy and Literature building at the National Autonomous University (p 22). Due to the invasion of the army, the narrator locked herself inside the washroom for 12 days. With the terrifying situation outside, she tends to deal with her fear by looking back on her memories.
One of the most vivid moments to me was: when she was hiding in a stall, a soldier opened the washroom door and walked in. The detailed description of what had happened and what she was feeling makes me super nervous about what is going to happen. It felt as if I was hiding with her as well.
I like how the narrator described things, events, and people in detail. I noticed the narrator uses a lot of similes and metaphors to describe those. The detailed descriptions helped me imagine and picture the scenes in my head. Another thing I like is that the narrator used brackets/side notes to express her ‘inner feelings’.“…I became a bat, I left the university and wandered around Mexico city like a wraith (I can’t in all honesty say like a fairy, although I would like to) and drank and talked and attended literary gatherings (I knew where to find them all) ” (p20). The inner thoughts make me feel’ closer’ to the narrator as I am able to know more about her ‘inner’ feelings.
After Auxilio saw soldiers, tanks and riot police outside of the window, she went back to the washroom. That brings it to my question for the class: If you were in Auxilio’s situation, what would you do? Would you go back to the washroom and stay there or go somewhere else?
I absolutely adored the concept of this book by Perec and I thoroughly enjoyed every chapter whether it made sense or not. The themes of fantasy and reality are really expressed here and it shows that the author may be contemplating the choice of W over the realism of his memories. The “real” portion of […]
Near the beginning of the novel, the narrator, Georges, explains that he has very little memories from his childhood. He has lived a very difficult early life, losing both his parents during WWII, and moving from different boarding houses to different family members as he grew up in a war-torn world as a young child. […]
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with childhood, memories, war
Finally! An author I know! I have been SLOWLY reading Perec’s A Void for ages now, I really cant get into it because I keep just rereading sections to make sure there is really no ‘e’ there. I have to admit the difficulty I had reading A Void did not give me much hope for this book. I could talk extensively about my appreciation of A Void in an artistic, boundary pushing, breaking away from norms wowee kinda way but as a book goes, it is kinda rough to read honestly. Anyway! Onto the book I am actually meant to be writing about. W, or the Memory of Childhood was pleasantly read-able for me. It became very quickly obvious that there was two seperate sets of memories that were intertwined into eachother. A note at the beginning of the book brough to my attention that ‘W’ should not be thought of as ‘double-u’ as in French it is called ‘double vé.’ I do not know what the word in French but in Spanish I first thought of vida which I guess I should note means life incase you don’t know. The title fits perfectly for the two intertwining stories being told.
The more fantastical storyline occuring in this novel struck me as a childs coping mechanism at first. I know atleast the part about the island W is based off of a story Perec wrote at 13. When this storyline switched over to focusing on the island I was immediately struck by how cultish it felt. I was intrigued and really found myself looking forward to the next part. The extreme conditions the athletes lived in were representative of what Perec’s mother went through in the concentration camps in real life. This comparison lead me to further realize thar this fantastical story was like a parallel world to real life. A still pretty depressing reimagination of the horrific things that a 13 year old may not have been able to fully comprehend.
I pretty quickly became a lot more interested in the story about the island than the chapters about Perec’s fragmented and warped childhood memories but overall I really enjoyed both. It was depressing honestly, it wasn’t because of what I was reading but the context around it and this sorta childlike but also disturbing tale being told at the same time made me sad. I am done rambling now I think, I have no other thoughts about this that I can word well. To wrap this up I have a very simple question, which part of this story interested you more?
