woes of the true policeman [bolaño]

According to the notes, Bolaño spent many years working on the Woes of the True Policeman, a novel which is clearly unfinished. How many writers have stuff lying around, which was in reality part of another project, a project which gradually took over. There might be novels that spring from nowhere, fully formed, but it seems more likely that every novel is the distillation of years of thought, notes, unfinished scraps. As a narrative, overall, Woes of the True Policeman is frustratingly incomplete: a host of parts which don’t add up and aren’t fully formed enough to stand on their own two feet.  There’s clearly a reason for this. An alternative title for the book might be Notes towards the Creation of 2666. Because this is a book which acts as an escort for another book which is now regarded as a masterpiece. The central character, Amalfitano,  is one of the protagonists of 2666. The book is steeped in the fictional history of the novelist Archimboldi, another key figure in 2666. The book touches on the issue of the femicides in a Mexican border town which also constitute a major element of 2666. 

It would appear that Woes of the True Policeman is made up of material which Bolaño chose, in the end, not to include in 2666. Or perhaps, if he hadn't been dying whilst he was completing that work, this would have been material which he would have found a way to have included had he had more time to work over the text. Certainly the section on Archimboldi, which includes synopses of his novels, accounts of his friendships and enemies, etcetera feels as though it might have slotted into 2666 fairly seamlessly. 

All of which is to say that the novel is of more interest to the Bolaño aficionado than it might be to the casual reader. The narrative has too many loose ends, the novel is too bitty. Having said all of that, the one thing which that any reader can take from this novel is the unadulterated pleasure of reading Bolaño's prose. There might have been greater stylists in twentieth century literature, but they will be few and far between. No-one picks up an idea and plays with it with quite such kittenish pleasure as Bolano, and that pleasure is something the reader basks in. For a partial, frustrating, unfinished novel, there’s still a hell of a lot to enjoy.