Perhaps there's something fortuitous about the fact that I received John Bennett's: The Birth of Road Rage (Vagabond Press 2005), after returning from a trip to the Bay Area; where I had stolen Nazi Literature from a more than reputable bookstore in North Beach.
"For those of you tied to institutions that will not order a book without an ISBN tattoo, you're shit out of luck. Vagabond Press is kicking the ISBN habit."
After reading the forward, I felt morally reinforced in the lengths I go to procure books. Being a person who believes that anything worth knowing is worth giving away or stealing (a philosophy that I first embraced after reading Bolaño's The Savage Detectives behind a 7-11 in the farthest reaches of Phoenix) seeing the words: "ISBN tattoo" made me pity the vanguards who hold to such labels with utter devotion.
It's certainly never been a gauge for quality...
After close scrutiny of the text, I found the sly approach of a stand-up comedian, looking out over the cliffs of pacifism and complacency, and spinning many of his observations into well- placed, and clearly poignant punch lines. Reading further, I began to deconstruct the differences between the two books, finding more and more connections between Bennett's narrative1 shard: No One Loves A Kamikaze, and the Georgian avenger's quest for recognition.
"They say the truth will set you free. They also say ignorance is bliss. I don't know who they are, but I suspect they're lonely bruised people who stand back from the action."
Jim O'Bannon was one who fell into such a pitfall, seeking the truth about his "peers" in several cities across the globe, and finding his "literary invective" nothing more than a barren shell of nullified sarcasm, and his indignities only slightly resolved at the time of his death.
Throughout analysis, I realized I knew very little of 2 Bolaño's life. But what I did know of him pointed to certain ideals bleeding through the voice of Bennett's Road Rage, relatively in tune with the characters of Nazi Literature.
"The truth doesn't set you free. The truth crushes you into powder and you don't know how or why, you don't even know it's the truth doing it, you're baffled and so go looking for answers and along the way lose your innocence."
John Bennett's approach progresses much like Bolaño's defamation- into an interchangeable web of satire and a bleak stance on the current socio-economic agenda- not limited to the scope of North America, but even delving into the exploitive and murderous track records of continents like South America and Asia.
"A stitch in time no longer saves nine, just throw the rag out as soon as its colors fade, there's more where that came from- in Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru. And a penny saved is a penny shot in the ass, not a penny earned."
Such right-wing genocidal organizations (some trained by the CIA) as The White Hand and Ojo Por Ojo (http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_guatemala1.html), as well as their South Indian counterparts, the Tamil Tigers (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1869501,00.html) are under the umbrella of the Kamikaze, pointing indellibly to the condemnation of fascist or "purist" beliefs; which funnily enough, I found hard to pinpoint in Bolaño's Nazi Literature.
Indeed, there were times in the book, especially outside of North American Poets, that I questioned whether Bolaño had actually romanticized the despicable lives he had created; but to divulge at this point and speak on such allusions would defeat the purpose of this review.
Notes:
1 "The Shards in "The Birth of Road Rage" were written over a span of time ranging from the mid 1990's until late in 2004. Some of them that sound as if they were written post 9/11 were actually written years earlier. Which goes to show that if you've got your finger on the pulse, you can hear the beating heart of the future. Which goes to show that Time is an illusion."
—The Birth of Road Rage. Forward/credits.
Although I am not altogether familiar with the reasoning for Bennett's terminology, when he calls the writing inside "shards", from what I can surmise, a shard to John, is a fraction of a longer train of thought, a completely emotive and spontaneous culmination of a bigger message. Let it also be noted that a "shard" does not adhere to genre boundaries, as John has written numerous collections of "shard" poems and prose pieces.
2 Bolaño was reputed as being involved with left-wing activists. He was a journalist, and admitted Trotskyite, supporting such socialist leaders as Salvador Allende (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/20/salvador-allende-committed-suicide-autopsy) before the former president's suicide during the coup orchestrated by Pinochet in September 1973.
