“I am in the women’s bathroom in the faculty building and I can see the future, I said, in a soprano voice, as if I were being coy.

I know that, said the dream voice, I know that. You start making your prophesies and I’ll note them down.

Voices, I said in a baritone voice, don’t note things down, they don’t even listen. Voices only speak.

You’re wrong about that, but it doesn’t matter…

Cesar Vallejo shall be read underground in the year 2045. Jorge Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045. Vincente Huidobro shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

Virginia Woolf shall be reincarnated as an Argentinean fiction writer in the year 2076. Louis-Ferdinand Celine shall enter Purgatory in the year 2094. Paul Eluard shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear. Its non-power shall manifest itself in a different form…

I haven’t read them, said the voice, and I could distinctly hear the sound of chattering teeth. Do you have teeth? I asked incredulously.

Not real, genuine teeth of my own, no, she replied. But when I’m with you, all your missing teeth chatter for me.”


2 Responses to “Excerpts from Roberto Bolano’s Amulet: a conversation with an angel”

  1. The Housewives’ Guide To Anatomy » Blog Archive » On Roberto Bolano’s Amulet: a bit more Says:

    […] a bit more about that angel I quoted in yesterday’s post: the one, identified as Auxilio Lacoutre’s guardian, who tends her […]

  2. The Housewives’ Guide To Anatomy » Blog Archive » Halfway through The Savage Detectives: mind as a collective Says:

    […] incantation, the noise of voices joining together in a communal force. (For an example, check this excerpt from Amulet.) The structure of the middle section of The Savage Detectives recreates that hive mind. […]

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