Tags:
Journalism of Courage
This was the year of the dead novelist, with two
posthumous bestsellers
In the delightful Spanish novel Bartleby 038; Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas, a hunchbacked clerk ponders on the writers who have put down their pens, who have just refused to publish 8212; the J.D. Salingers of the world who have retreated to a home in Cornish with a No Trespassing sign put up on the lawns. But then there are writers who refuse to stop publishing, who leave manuscripts 8212; like wills 8212; to be retrieved from their desks after their deaths to be turned into bestsellers. And the year 2008 saw two novelists rising from the dead in a trail of publishing glory 8212; Vila-Mates8217; close friend and the maverick Chilean Roberto Bolano, and the librarian from West Virginia Mary Ann Shaffer. They are not content to rest in peace, but the fervour around bestsellers will most certainly do.
Five years ago, at the age of 50, Bolano died while waiting for a liver transplant, but Latin Americans know something about resurrection, know how to haunt, and he knowingly left his life to be bookended by 2666. Death infests that book, as it talks about the serial murders in the fictitious city of Santa Teresa on the Mexico-US border. The five-part book, published in Spanish in 2004, has been translated into English by Natasha Wimmer 8212; and will hit Indian stores early next year.
Shaffer8217;s is not the apocalyptic world of Bolano8217;s. And her wish was modest: to write a book that someone would like enough to publish. The American, who flew to Guernsey on a visit to London in the 1970s, got stranded in the fog and reportedly ended up reading all the books on the shop at the Guernsey airport. Her website says how her health failed during the last stages of writing the book on the German occupation of the islands and asked her niece Annie Barrows to help her finish it. Shaffer died in February 2008, aged 74, after completing the book and sending it to publishers 8212; but before seeing it hit the bestseller list, week after week after week.
After Bolano died, Isabel Allende tartly commented, 8220;Death does not make you a nicer person.8221; Bolano, who infamously called her a scribbler, might have guffawed from the grave, but these days even death cannot stop the sales figures.
