Abstract
This paper, focusing on Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile, purports to rethink the relationship between the popular literature and the world literature from historical perspective. Facing the grim reality of the levelling effect of commercial literary markets, which is prevalent on a global scale, the critical task of evaluating creative achievements tantamount to the popular literature-cum-world literature is getting more difficult to perform. Bolaño is believed to be one of the most challenging examples to such a task: he is a symbolic figure to audaciously tackle the book market ceaselessly drives itself to produce the world’s best-sellers. This paper argues that By Night in Chile is to be ‘placed’ as the most brilliant and enduring work in Bolaño’s entire oeuvre, which deserves the acclaim of the world classic literature. By questioning the fate of the modern literature in general and its reason d’être that is inextricably tied to market and vested interest, this article addresses its full attention to the potential crisis that creative writers are yet to confront. Its tentative conclusion is that By Night in Chile remains one of the most prominent examples that affirms the critical role of literature by demistifying the ideological aura of literature against the age of neoliberalism.
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