ANGLO-SAXON POP CULTURE IN THE NOVEL CONSEJOS DE UN DISCÍPULO DE MORRISON A UN FANÁTICO DE JOYCE BY ROBERTO BOLAÑO AND A. G. PORTA

Abstract

The subject of our study is the first novel of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce, written in collaboration with his friend, the Catalan journalist and writer Antoni García Porta, and published in 1984. Through a thorough analysis of the book that contains all the topics which Bolaño will resort to through his whole future career (literature, violence, death, love, art, crime, society, music), we researched the abundant elements of Anglo-Saxon popular culture in it, paying special attention to the references to the Irish writer James Joyce and the American poet and musician Jim Morrison. As the first novel of Bolaño and Porta has not been translated into Serbian yet, nor analyzed in academic articles in our region, we were focused to the literature in Spanish and English, including and notes made by Bolaño and Porta, recent studies of the Latin American literature, as well as the professional books and texts in Serbian language about popular culture and Joyce's and Morrison's life and work. The conclusions we reached can be summarized as follows: life on the margins of the two protagonists, Ana and Ángel, including their constant tendency to "break on through to other side", and two artist (and their alter egos) included in the title of the novel, which at first glance seem like two counterpoints, made the authors of the novel open their "doors of perception" for the sake of the experimentation with literary form (Joyce), or the life itself (Morrison).