Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

To identify the texts that make up this volume and to establish when each was written, the full resources of the Bolaño Archive have been consulted. The archive is maintained in the author’s home and consists of loose papers, notebooks, newspaper clippings, magazines, and—in the case of the later work—computer files.

“Cowboy Graves”

The complete text of this narrative appears in a file titled VAKEROS.doc on the hard drive of Roberto Bolaño’s computer. In addition, a backup copy was kept by the author on a 3½-inch diskette labeled Cowboy Graves.

Material was also located in the physical archive, in two files. File 9/33 contains a green folio notebook with the handwritten title Arturo, Cowboy Graves. I’ll give you ten kisses and then ten more. Found inside, along with assorted materials, were handwritten notes for “Cowboy Graves” on six loose folio sheets, folded in half, with a numbered list of chapters. File 2/12 contains notes on various works (including The Savage Detectives). Two notes pertain to “Cowboy Graves.” One lists page counts of The Savage Detectives, Llamadas telefónicas,[1] Nazi Literature in the Americas, Distant Star, and “Cowboy Graves.” The other includes notes for the first chapter of the text.

This text was therefore composed between 1995—when Roberto Bolaño began to use a computer—and 1998, the date of The Savage Detectives notes, which share space with those for “Cowboy Graves.”

“French Comedy of Horrors”

The complete text of this section appears in a file titled FRANCIA.doc on the hard drive of Roberto Bolaño’s computer. In addition, a backup copy was kept by the author on a 3½-inch diskette labeled File: France, French Comedy of Horrors. In the paper files, only one handwritten reference to this work has been found, on the envelope of a letter addressed to Roberto Bolaño and postmarked April 11, 2002. It is kept in File 31/209.

The date of the postmark, and the dedication in the computer files to his two children, Alexandra and Lautaro, allow us to conclude that the text was composed between 2002 and the date of Roberto Bolaño’s death in July 2003.

“Fatherland”

The materials for this text were found in three files. One, labeled File 4/17, contains notes and a draft of the narrative, both handwritten, along with other work by the author and a press clipping dated 1993; File 30/171 also contains a handwritten draft, part of a collection of loose sheets of graph paper from a half-folio notebook; finally, in File 34/5 there is a later version, sixty-two pages long, typewritten on an electric typewriter that Roberto Bolaño used between 1992 and 1995. To determine the date of composition, we considered the 1993 clipping, kept in the first file with the notes and draft and presumably from the same period, as well as the fact that the text was typed on an electric typewriter. Thus we conclude that “Fatherland” was written in the period between 1993 and 1995.