By Night in Chile

Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile is a critical look at the behavior of the country's intelligentsia during the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet. The novel is a dramatic deathbed confession by a priest and literary critic, Father Urrutia, who had turned a blind eye to the misdeeds, assassinations, and censorship of the regime, and is now filled with regret, and a desire that he not be misunderstood, that his story be told. He depicts himself as pursued by "the wizened youth", who, it becomes clear as the novel progresses, is a younger Urrutia, who has not yet debased himself.

Although the coup is mentioned (and our priest is an instructor to Pinochet himself!), the novel's most powerful political passage is in metaphor -- Urrutia is sent to Europe, ostensibly on church business, by government agents. He is to write a report on the preservation of churches, as the churches in Europe are much older than the churches in Chile, so there's been significantly more research on the Old Continent. After his arrival, the priest is surprised to find that "the principal threat to the major examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture was pollution caused not by humans but by animals, specifically pigeon shit," and the priests have all taken up falconry as a solution. The passages that follow, describing how two falcons cannot coexist in one city, or how a falcon takes a dove that had been released to celebrate a festival, are clear metaphors for fascism.

The complicity of the intellectuals in the coup is made explicit towards the end of the novel, as our priest relates how a certain woman was able to give parties for writers and artists despite the curfew imposed by the regime. He speaks of how she wasn't exactly in the community due to her efforts, but due to her willingness to host the gatherings. Eventually, it is discovered that her husband is not a traveling salesman, but is a high level functionary in the secret police, and is torturing suspects in the house, sometimes even while the parties are going on. Again, in a metaphor, the poet who finds this out does not raise the alarm, but quietly slinks back to the party and rejoins his fellows.

Unlike this post, By Night in Chile lacks paragraph breaks, or regular sentences -- Bolaño has captured the spirit of a rant, as Urrutia digresses, hallucinates, catches himself, and plunges onward, pausing only to wheeze and draw breath, before the storm of shit begins.

Creatures of Light and Darkness

The most cogent criticism of Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness is that it has a very similar premise to Lord of Light, published two years previous. (In Zelazny's defense, he had not planned on publishing this novel, creating it as a writing exercise, and only publishing it after a friend of his had told the publishing house to request the manuscript). Creatures of Light and Darkness has a slightly greater scope than Lord of Light -- rather than people styling themselves after Hindu deities controlling a planet, people styling themselves after Egyptian deities control the known universe. Like the previous book, this is accomplished with both the means of technology (robotics/genetic manipulation), and possible supernatural abilities.

Perhaps the second biggest criticism one can make of this novel is that due to its birth as a writing exercise, the characters are not as fleshed out as in Lord of Light, with their motivations, origins, and histories often reduced to a few line explanation immediately prior to their introduction. As an example, the protagonist (the Prince Who Was a Thousand) reads much like a two-dimensional version of Sam.

Despite its weaknesses, Creatures of Light and Darkness is an engaging novel, featuring at least one memorable character -- Typhon, who despite originating in Greek mythology, is associated with Set. Appearing as a massive shadow of a horse, he inspires abject terror in all the other characters, as none can stand against him. (He's speculated as drawing his power from a black hole, although around the time Zelazny wrote the novel, the term was not in common use). Additionally, despite the plot of the novel not being quite as compelling as its predecessor, the action moves along at a quick pace.

Although it's not Lord of Light, this is by no means a bad novel -- it's fast-paced, engaging, written in a relatively accessible style, featuring memorable characters, a new martial art, and an evocative ending. Recommended to fans of Zelazny, as well as anyone interested in Egyptian mythology, or quirky sci-fi/fantasy. (Zelazny not at his best is still better than most authors in the genre)