An Inaccessible Past

Roberto Bolano, author of "The Insufferable Gaucho", never stayed long in one place in the years of his childhood. He was constantly on the move, living in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, and France before finally settling in Spain. His literary works draw inspiration from the great Spanish and Latin American writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, who's short story "El Sur" serves as a model for "The Insufferable Gaucho." Bolano tells the story of Hector Pereda, who abandons a comfortable life in a city to live a life of the past as one of Argentina's gauchos.
inaccessible
I read the the short story in the October 1st edition of The New Yorker three days after reading Borges' short story "El Sur". Hecter Pereda's yearning for the past which drives him out of the city is exactly the same as the yearning that propels Borges' Dahlmann into his delirium of the past. Bolano says of Pereda:" For a moment, he thought that his destiny, his screwed-up American destiny, would be to meet his death like Dahlmann in "The South"". My understanding of the parallel between "The Insufferable Gaucho" and "El Sur" transformed what was a long tedious story of a pathetic protagonist into an illuminating story about our obsession with progress that prevents us from seeing or even being able to experience the glory of the past. The copious presence of rabits in the country that Peredea sees instead of the cows that should be there signify this fall from Argentina's glory days. It is a bias of the past that prevents Pereda's son from recognizing his father after he has been living in the country, because he is now and "old man in bombachas with a beard long tangled hair, and a bare chest tanned by the sun."

Pereda's immersion into his gaucho lifestyle causes an acute hatred for things modern, a hatred which ultimatly inspires him to stab a coked up author.