“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” That’s a Charles Baudelaire quote Bolaño uses to preface his novel. With this, he appeared to have a vision of mankind as a monstrous force of energy, bringing with it nearly unstoppable acts of horror, but also prodigious glory. And this is reflected in the writing from first to last page. However, on occasion, Bolano slips in poetic moments which evoke a contrast to the compiling actions, the monumental products, all of the torrential effects:

“Sometimes, however, as they sat on a café terrace or around a dark cabaret table, an obstinate silence descended inexplicably over the trio. They seemed suddenly to freeze, lose all sense of time, and turn completely inward, as if they were bypassing the abyss of daily life, the abyss of people, the abyss of conversation, and had decided to approach a kind of lakeside region, a late-romantic region, where the borders were clocked from dusk to dusk, then, fifteen, twenty minutes, an eternity, like the minutes of those condemned to die, like the minutes of women who’ve just given birth and are condemned to die, who understand that more time isn’t more eternity and nevertheless wish with all their souls for more time, and their wails are birds that come flying every so often across the double lakeside landscape, so calmly, like luxurious excrescences or heartbeats. Then, naturally, the three men would emerge stiff from the silence and go back to talking about inventions, women, Finnish philology, the building of highways across the Reich.” (pg 663-4, hardcover; 1st American edition)