Robert Bolaño got some more posthumous press today, regarding possible inaccuracies in his biography. A biography that hasn’t been written yet, mind you, and so only exists in “several of the rapturous recent reviews of 2666 in the United States.” Apparently, our man in Chile never used heroin, and was probably not in Chile during the Pinochet coup.
Before you start screaming James Frey or Herman Rosenblat, let’s review: Bolaño never wrote a memoir purporting these facts. The heroin rumor originated from a short piece published in El Mundo in 2000, alongside autobiographical narratives from 29 other Spanish-language writers. It was “endorsed” by his American translator, and critics ran with it in their reviews of Bolaño’s work.
