#  Bolaño, By Night in Chile: Reading Group with David Kurnick 

 



    ![floating letters](/sites/g/files/omnuum4936/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/mahindra/files/novel_theory.jpg?itok=wJt0X7D4) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **February 5, 2025** 

 06:00PM - 07:30PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Online**  



 

 [ Register Here arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wellesley.zoom.us/meeting/register/1MjtDtVVS12IBtTC30Tg2g) 

 



 

## [NOVEL THEORY](/novel-theory)

## SPEAKER: David Kurnick, Rutgers University

*Nocturno de Chile* was the last novel published in Bolaño’s lifetime but one of the first to be encountered by Anglophone readers. It forms a kind of loose conceptual trilogy with 1996’s *Estrella distante* (Distant Star, 2004) and 1999’s *Amuleto* (tr. Amulet, 2007): all novella-length, first-person fictions about Art and Politics. One of his few wholly “Chilean” books and based on recognizable figures, it raises questions about the politics of literary criticism; the conventions of the death-bed confession novel; the Lukácsian problematic of the appearance of world-historical figures in the historical novel; humor, sympathy, allegory, and readerly identification. Please join us for a discussion of this fascinating work.

### About the Speaker

David Kurnick is Professor of English at Rutgers. He is the author of *Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel* (Princeton, 2012) and, for Columbia’s Rereadings series, *The Savage Detectives Reread* (2022). His translations include Julio Cortázar’s *Fantomas versus the Multinational Vampires* and works by Álvaro Enrigue. He’s working on a book on nineteenth-century ideas of the social and has been writing recently about the relations between queer theory and literary criticism.

**Please see the pre-circulated paper attached to this page below.** **The passcode you receive when you register for the Zoom event is also the password for this pre-circulated paper.**

If you have any questions, please contact Deidre Lynch at <deidrelynch@fas.harvard.edu> or Yoon Sun Lee at <ylee@wellesley.edu>.



 

 

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 Attachments- [  picture\_as\_pdf  Savage Detectives Reread.Intro\_.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum4936/files/2025-01/Savage%20Detectives%20Reread.Intro_.pdf)
 
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 See also:- [ Seminar ](/event-type/seminar)
- [ Novel Theory ](/seminars/novel-theory)
 
 

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