Anti-Climacus

First reactions to Bolaño's The Third Reich, now finished: better than all the short novels except By Night in Chile, and, for an unpublished novel, possessed of a high degree of polish. Impressively so. But the central metaphor is either far too obvious or very obscure. And the plot structure (following through one character's thoughts) is not a strong suit of Bolaño's, so it's no surprise he mostly ditched it in his later work, or superimposes on his characters an unspoken-but-acknowledged second narrator through whom the story is edited and told.