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Dear <<empyreans>>, <br>
<br>
there is an image that keeps coming back to me in regard to the
exhumations and the missing from Ariel Dorfman's <i>Widows</i>, a
book with only one image in it: the black-clad women standing beside
the river claiming the corpses as they float down it into the
village and wash ashore: Yes! Yes! That is my husband! That is my
brother! That is my son! <br>
<br>
Another text of Dorfman's that this discussion has brought to mind
is his long essay in <i>Some Write to the Future</i> on testimonial
literature. The title of this book of essays further recalls Robert
Bolaño's future: <i>2666</i>. The overwhelming litany of the lost
in book 4, <i>The Part About the Crimes</i>. It is a monument built
out of repetition, as effective and affecting in its way as the
Holocaust-Mahnmal in Berlin, by Peter Eisenman.<br>
<br>
It is perhaps interesting to note the difference in these two
structures and that of the different 'cities' from which they came.
Bringing us back to the future written but never arriving, like its
people, missing.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
<br>
Simon Taylor<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.squarewhiteworld.com">www.squarewhiteworld.com</a><br>
<br>
<br>
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