Monsieur Pain Review

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Monsieur Pain ReviewThe principal audience for this book is readers who have tackled and enjoyed Bolaño's mature novels, most notably "The Savage Detectives" and "2666" -- and who would now like to engage in a bit of literary archeology. If you are such a reader, and want to trace back, to their earliest expression, Bolaño's mature themes, motifs and obsessions, then "Monsieur Pain" will offer you many rewards. Dreams, delirium, labyrinths, assassinations, artists versus fascists, secret histories, alienation, a blurred line between realism and fantasy -- it's all here in a rudimentary state.
But I'm reluctant to recommend this short (134-page) novel to a novice reader. The reason is this: Bolaño's strength is in what one critic called his "summative" powers -- his ability to encompass a mass of subjects, to assemble a formidable mountain of prose that draws you into a relentlessly engrossing world.
There are writers who excel at shorter forms (short stories; sonnets) but who fail at more sustained efforts (novels; epic poems). Bolaño may be an example of the opposite -- an author who is most convincing when creating lengthy works of cumulative power, but who may strike you as meandering, indulgent, and unfulfilling, when he invites you on a shorter excursion. I suspect many new readers will find "Monsieur Pain" to be a fragment-like experience without much pay-off. In short, this is not the best of Bolaño.
That is not to say the book lacks felicities apt to please a new reader. If you are comfortable with unconventional fiction, tolerant of detours and ambiguity, and intrigued by what happens when Poe meets Borges meets Paul Auster meets Thomas Pynchon -- then take the plunge.
Among the pleasures of "Monsieur Pain" is how economically Bolaño sketches scene after scene, managing to disorient the reader while generally maintaining narrative equilibrium. For me, the experience of reading "Monsieur Pain" was akin to watching a film noir, one with an experimental bent. One reviewer likened it to to the style and effect of David Lynch. As for his treatment of details, some scenes reminded me of Hitchcock, especially in the way Bolaño "edits" the sights and sounds of a sequence, and the way he uses physical surroundings to echo psychological space, and vice versa. At the very least you are likely to come away impressed by how skillfully the author (who viewed himself principally as a poet) taps into the strange beauty of the world, and conveys this with a sensitive descriptive power.
Bolaño's wizardry with a pen shines through clearly in Chris Andrews' translation. Pierre Pain, the shy narrator, describes a surprise appearance of his romantic interest, Madame Reynaud, at his garret: "The light delineating her silhouette had the gray intimacy of certain Parisian mornings." Later that day, called to the bedside of a dying poet, he is struck by how "the silence in the room seemed to be full of holes." The patient's face "displayed the strange disconsolate dignity shared by all those who have been confined in a hospital for some time." Later, anger and resentment seize the narrator, which he describes as "gradually hardening me from within like a carcass being stuffed by a taxidermist." Toward the end of the book he enters the rear of a darkened movie theater, his eyes adjusting to this scene:
"An aisle divided the rows of seats, from which the heads of the viewers protruded like nocturnal flowers; they were sparsely scattered, unclassifiable, mostly alone and isolated in their places."
That neatly captures Bolaño's vision of the world.(Mike Ettner)Monsieur Pain Overview

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