MM: Do you like dogs or cats?
RB: Female dogs, but I don’t have any more pets.
MM: What do you remember of your childhood?
RB: Everything. I don’t have one bad memory.
MM: Did you collect figurines?
RB: Yes, of soccer players and Hollywood actors and actresses.
MM: Did you have a scooter?
RB: My parents made the mistake of giving me a pair of roller skates when we lived in Valparaiso, a city made up of hills. The result was disastrous. Every time I put the skates on it was as if I was trying to commit suicide.
MM: What is your favorite soccer team?
RB: None right now. The ones who fall to second tier, then third consecutively, then regional until they’ve disappeared. The phantom teams.
MM: Which historical character would you have liked to resemble?
RB: Sherlock Holmes. Captain Nemo. Julien Sorel, our father. Prince Mishkin, our uncle. Alicia, our professor. And Houdini, who is a mix between Alicia, Sorel and Mishkin.
MM: Did you fall in love with older neighbors when you were young?
RB: Of course.
MM: Did the girls in your school pay any attention to you?
RB: I don’t think so. At least I was convinced they did not.
MM: What do you owe the women in your life?
RB: Ever so much. A sense of defiance and high risk. For the sake of decency, I’ll keep quiet about the other things.
MM: Do they owe you anything?
RB: Nothing.
MM: Have you suffered much for love?
RB: Very much the first time, then I learned to take things with a bit more humor.
MM: And what about hate?
RB: Even if I sound somewhat pretentious, I’ve never hated anyone. At least I’m certain I am incapable of sustained hatred. And if the hatred is not sustained, it’s not hatred, is it?
MM: How did you win the affection of your wife?
RB: Cooking rice for her. I was very poor at that time and my diet basically consisted of rice, so I learned to cook it in many different ways.
MM: Describe the day you became a father for the first time.
RB: It was night, a little before midnight. I was alone, and because you couldn’t smoke in the hospital, I smoked a cigarette virtually perched on the cornice of the fourth floor. No one saw me from the street, only the moon, as Amado Nervo would have said. When I came back in, a nurse told me my son had just been born. He was very big, almost all bald, with open eyes as if asking himself who the devil had him in his arms.
A Mexican poet, Amado Nervo (1870–1919) was among the vanguard of nineteenth century Mexican poetry.
MM: Will Lautaro be a writer?
RB: I hope only that he’s happy. Thus, it would be better if he were something else. Airplane pilot, for example, plastic surgeon or editor.
MM: What do you recognize in him as your own?
RB: Luckily he resembles his mother much more than me.
MM: Do you worry about the position of your books on bestseller lists?
RB: Minimally.
MM: Do you think about your readers?
RB: Almost never.
MM: Of all the things your readers have said about your books, what has moved you the most?
RB: Quite simply, the readers themselves move me — the ones who dare to read Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, which is one of the most pleasant and modern works I know. I’m moved by the steely youth who read Cortázar and Parra, just as I read them and intend to continue reading them. I’m moved by those youths who sleep with a book under their head. A book is the best pillow that exists.
MM: What things have made you angry?
RB: At this age, getting angry is a waste of time. And, regrettably, time matters at my age.
MM: Have you ever feared your fans?
RB: I’ve feared Leopoldo María Panero’s fans. On the one hand, he seems to me one of the three best living poets in Spain. During a cycle of readings organized by Jesús Ferrero in Pamplona, Panero closed the cycle and as the day of his reading neared, the neighborhood where our hotel was began to fill with freaks who looked like they had recently escaped an insane asylum. But on the other hand, they were the best readership any poet can aspire to reach. The problem was that some didn’t just look crazy but like murderers too. Ferrero and I were afraid that at any moment someone might get up and say they had killed Leopoldo María Panero, then fired four shots at the head of the poet; and while they were at it, one at Ferrero and the last one at me.
MM: How does it feel to be regarded as the Latin American writer with the most promising future by critics like Darío Osses?
RB: It must be a joke. I am the Latin American writer with the least promising future. But on that point, I am the type with the most past, which is what matters anyway.
A Spanish poet, Leopoldo María Panero (b. 1948) was infamous for his wild lifestyle. Five of his poems were published in English translation in the Spring 2009 issue of eXchanges.
Jesús Ferrero (b. 1952) is a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His major works include Bélver Yin (1981) and Las noches rojas (2003).
Darío Oses (b. 1949) is an important Chilean literary critic, specializing in the literature of the 1990s.
MM: Does the critical book being prepared by your compatriot Patricia Espinosa arouse your curiosity?
RB: Not at all. Apart from how I’ll end up in her book, which I don’t suppose will be very good, Espinosa seems to be a very good critic. But her work is necessary in Chile. In fact, the need for new critics — let’s call her that — is urgent all over Latin America.
MM: And what about the Argentine Celina Mazoni’s book?
RB: I know Celina personally and I’m very fond of her. I dedicated one of the stories from Putas Asesinas to her.