B, “who is inclined to melancholy (or so he likes to think)”, and his father drive from Mexico City to Acapulco for a holiday. B is aged 22 and is reading an anthology of French surrealist poets translated into Spanish. They stay in an almost empty hotel; they sleep, eat, order beers, stroll on the beach, drive around, watch TV, even have a little adventure (their hired boat capsizes) – time passing “in a placid sort of daze that B’s father associates with ‘The Idea of the Holiday’ (B can’t tell whether his father is serious or pulling his leg)”. Eventually, of course, the mood turns “and an icy phase begins, a phase which appears to be normal but is ruled by deities of ice (who do not, however, offer any relief from the heat that reigns in Acapulco)”. The story ends a split second before violence hits the page. Much of the story depends on the banal but watching Bolaño trying to write dull and failing dismally is one of life’s pleasures.
First published in The New Yorker, 2005, and available online to subscribers; in Last Evenings on Earth, translated by Chris Andrews, Harvill Secker, 2007; Vintage paperback, 2008
A Personal Anthology 