The Shorter Story

Roberto Bolaño, the novelist responsible for 2666, has cropped up again (not literally, of course; he's dead) in this month's New Yorker with a short story entitled 'William Burns'. It's quite an easy, two-thousand word read that's pretty powerful stuff. Bolaño seems to have written extensively in the last decade of his life, and it's only now that publishers, not least of all, translators are getting their mitts on the stuff. There are even rumours of a sixth and final part to 2666, turning a brick of a 1200 page novel into a cinder block. No thanks. Interestingly, Don DeLillo also published a short story in the New Yorker recently: Midnight in Dostoevsky (an ambiguous title, it must be said, but befitting the mode).

The library was deserted during the break. I entered with a key card and took a novel by Dostoevsky down from the shelves. I placed the book on a table and opened it and then leaned down into the splayed pages, reading and breathing. We seemed to assimilate each other, the characters and I, and when I raised my head I had to tell myself where I was.

The two styles could not be more contrasting: one with an emphasis on narrative, the other on language and style. DeLillo's masterwork is, of course, Underworld, another 1000 page epic. So, then, both responsible for mammoth journeys into the void, it's worth reading these two side by side to see how they handle the shorter medium. Well worth fifteen minutes.