Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The New Yorker: "Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" by Roberto Bolaño


The narrator is Lalo Cura, the son of a woman who acted in porn films in Colombia even while she was pregnant with him. He claims to have been able to see the men who had sex with his mother and now he has come to speak with one of them, Pajarito. Pajarito thinks Lalo has come to kill him, because apparently that’s what Lalo does. But no, he only wants to talk.
The narrator, it seems, sees the porn industry in Latin America as a metaphor for the condition of the continent. The men are all either diseased or dead of violent causes, and the women are, for want of other options, whores. This may or may not also be Bolaño’s view, but Lalosurely feels this way. And yet Pajarito is his only link to the only innocent time of his life.
Not much of a plot here, but the language of the story is intoxicating.

April 19, 2010: “Prefiguration of Lalo Cura” by Roberto Bolaño

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