Chapter 21 - Journalism, Media, Mass Culture

Summary

This chapter argues that thinking about Roberto Bolaño in the context of journalism and mass culture means recognizing how mainstays of globalized twentieth-century journalistic communication – photographic realism, reportage with a pretension of objectivity, investigative journalism – as well as discourses about literature, have circulated differently in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Explores in particular the convergences and divergences between Latin American and Spanish crónicas and North American New Journalism in Bolaño’s fiction and in his own newspaper writing, the essay argues that Bolaño’s portrayal of the daily cultural and political contexts one confronts in the newspaper reflects his suggestion that readers are always exiles, and that they produce a commentary on seeing as both a journalistic practice and a metaphor for social understanding. Bolaño draws on, but also rewrites, the history of literary journalism in a wider Atlantic world, even as he comments on the superficiality of mass media and culture. Discussing Bolaño’s engagement with cronistas such as Rubén Darío, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Carlos Monsiváis, and Pedro Lemebel, the chapter includes discussions of 2666, Los detectives salvajes, Bolaño’s short stories, and articles he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Spain and Chile.