Monsieur Pain - Softcover

Bola�o, Roberto; Andrews, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811218899 ISBN 13: 9780811218894

Publisher: New Directions, 2012

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A Bola�o classic. The Peruvian poet C�sar Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness and unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow him and bribe him not to treat Vallejo. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, Pain does not intend to abandon his new patient, but his access to the hospital is barred and Madame Reynaud mysteriously leaves Paris. Another practitioner of the occult sciences enters the story (working for Generalissimo Franco, using his mesmeric expertise to interrogate prisoners) -- as do Mme. Curie, tarot cards, an assassination, and nightmares. Meanwhile, a haunted Monsieur Pain wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . .

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Review

Delightfully noirish.--Brad Hooper

John Coltrane jamming with the Sex Pistols.--John M. Richardson

Employing a reserved and stately voice reminiscent of pre-Modernist fiction, Pain's tale is itself mesmerizing, debonair and entertaining.--Cooper Renner

This beautifully translated early novella, set in Paris... joins the late author's other works in all its aching splendor.

A surrealistic attic of unlikely juxtapositions. . . . The novel melds existential anxiety to political terror in a measure peculiar to Bola�o. Imagine the protagonist of Poe's 'Tell-Tale Heart' if he were being interrogated by the secret police on suspicion of having hidden subversives behind his wall.--Will Blythe

Roberto Bola�o was an examplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown, he had to go there himself, and there invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results are multi-dimensional.--Sarah Kerr

Bola�o wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own.--Francisco Goldman

A very good read and essential for Bola�o completists.--Craig Morgan Teicher

A real discovery and a substantial addition to the growing Bola�o library in English.--Stephen Henighan

Bola�o's gleeful but deadpan bouillabaisse of French surrealism, expressionism, and Kafkaesque unease.--Dan Vitale