Roberto Bolaño - The Spirit Of Science Fiction (Picador, 2018) ***½

The "Spirit Of Science Fiction" is a story of two young poets, stranded in Mexico City and trying to get notoriety and recognition. One of them, Jan Schrella, is also passionate about science fiction, and half the novel are letters written by Jan to his idols of the science fiction genre: Alice Sheldon, Forrest J. Ackerman, Fritz Leiber, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, James Hauer, which clearly remain unanswered, but that does not keep him from continuing to write. While Jan increasingly becomes a hermit in their flat, the other poet, Remo, is trying to build a life in the city and meet people.

The narrative chapters are not only interlaced with Jan's letters, but also with long dialogues and dreams. This is one of Bolaño's earlier works, now translated by his heirs. The novel shows all of his potential, his sense of literary experimentation, his fascination (and experience) with young people who devote their lives to something as commercially unsustainable as poetry. Also stylistically, the future writer is already present here, with descriptions full of alternate possibilities, uncertainties and open-endedness. His style is propulsed forward by his own love of language and the crazy thoughts that come up in his imagination. Because of all this, it's at times hard to follow what it is all about, but that's not really important. Even if not essential, Bolaño fans will be more than happy to have this translation, which, despite the fact that it's an early work, still stands well above the average of most books that are published today.