Chile 7 – Mexico 4<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nJames Crossley: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
I really liked Faces in the Crowd<\/em> and urge more people to read it. Remember when Ben Lerner got all that attention for Leaving the Atocha Station<\/em>? Luiselli’s book is in some ways similar, but loads better. It’s one of the best books to come out this year, in fact. But By Night in Chile<\/em> is one of the best books of this millennium. Bola\u00f1o should win the 2014 Cup, but I have a feeling I’ll be rooting for Luiselli four years from now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 8 – Mexico 4<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nP.T. Smith: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
By Night in Chile<\/em> and Faces in the Crowd<\/em> are a similar length, both books that I eye and think “If I time it right, I can finish this in a sitting.” By Night in Chile<\/em>, with compelling, prose that pushes on and on, I read in one. Faces in the Crowd<\/em>, fragmented, yet creative, and bringing those fractures together, took three. I cherish those one-sitting readings, and so want novels that aren’t structured to give me reasons to leave. Faces in the Crowd<\/em> was my discovery of the tournament, and I’ll read Luiselli again, but By Night<\/em> was a sitting I remember years later, and Faces<\/em> seems less likely to do the same.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 9 – Mexico 4<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nChris Schaefer: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
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Chile 10 – Mexico 4<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nLaura Radosh: Mexico<\/b><\/p>\n
Stephen\u2019s right, Faces<\/em> isn\u2019t in the same class as BNiC<\/em>, but Luiselli shouldn\u2019t go down like Brazil. Another vote for the future of literature.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 10 – Mexico 5<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nHannah Chute: Mexico<\/b><\/p>\n
Bola\u00f1o is “one of the greats.” But hell, we all knew that before we started this competition. I’m pretty sure the whole point of this project was to highlight interesting, contemporary world literature, and Bola\u00f1o winning this isn’t going to help anyone. Faces in the Crowd<\/em> is a fantastic book; everyone should go out right now to buy it, read it, and cherish the fuck out of it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 10 – Mexico 6<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nRyan Ries: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
There’s an inescapable ad on a local radio station in which the hysterical business owner insists that using his service is “the biggest no-brainer in the history of mankind”. This isn’t quite at that level, but, c’mon. <\/p>\n
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Chile 11 – Mexico 6<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nTrevor Berrett: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
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Chile 12 – Mexico 6<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nElianna Kan: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
Bola\u00f1o, nearly no contest, for his unflinching vitality and for passages like this one:<\/p>\n
\n. . . and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that\u2019s the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can’t read all day and all night. You can’t write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Chile 13 – Mexico 6<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nWill Evans: Mexico<\/b><\/p>\n
My vote for the final goes to Faces in the Crowd<\/em>. This is the voice of a master in training. The voice of an author finding herself, creating herself as she goes along. The themes are universal, the text as intertext, the narrative voice is distinct, the exploration of motherhood is profound, and when it comes down to it I just liked reading it more than By Night in Chile<\/em>, which I also loved, but for different ways. Maybe it was the strength of translator Christina MacSweeney lifting Luiselli to heights in English hard to fathom. And maybe because I want to crush the patriarchy. Even when the odds are stacked against little old Mexico’s team, the shock team in the final, Luiselli’s novel is strong enough to carry the Mexican people the way El Tri couldn’t quite manage this year, though they gave it everything they had and inspired me and millions more in the process. They say Mexico’s national team is the most popular national team in the USA<\/span>, and Luiselli is soon to be everybody’s favorite author in the USA<\/span> too. She is amazing, Faces in the Crowd<\/em> is brilliant. Props to Coffee House for publishing Luiselli!!!!!!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 13 – Mexico 7<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nKaija Straumanis: Mexico<\/b><\/p>\n
Copy paste anything I\u2019ve said in the past being pro-Mexico and insert it here. I also agree with what Will says above, and not only because of his mustache. \u00a1VIVA MEXICO<\/span>! (Or not. Bola\u00f1o-loving jerks.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 13 – Mexico 8<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nLance Edmonds: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
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Chile 14 – Mexico 8<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nShaun Randol: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
Having refereed Chile’s killer first match and silently cheered them on since, I gotta go with fan loyalty on this one. <\/p>\n
Chi Chi Chi! Le Le Le! Viva Chile!<\/p>\n
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Chile 15 – Mexico 8<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nKatrine Jensen: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
I’ve helped carry Luiselli’s excellent Faces in The Crowd<\/em> to a well-deserved spot in the finals; but a wise man I know once wrote on Facebook, “Bola\u00f1o always wins,” and to this I must say yes. Yes he does.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 16 – Mexico 8<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nLori Feathers: Mexico<\/b><\/p>\n
Faces in the Crowd<\/em> and By Night in Chile<\/em> are both smart and provocative. But simply put, Faces in the Crowd<\/em> is a more interesting read.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 16 – Mexico 9<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nFlorian Duijsens: Chile<\/b><\/p>\n
What a great surprise, this final battle. I’d imagined it would be a clash of legends, dead authors whose cult has only grown as their posthumous vaults have been methodically cleared these past few years. Ironic, then, that Luiselli’s is a book about ghosts, about seeing literary ghosts and becoming them. Faces in the Crowd<\/em> is a stunning juggling act of truths and fictions, but ultimately the ghost stories collected in By Night in Chile<\/em> (also not a very hefty book) weighed heavier on me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chile 17 – Mexico 9<\/center><\/b><\/p>\nAnd there you have it: Roberto Bola\u00f1o’s By Night in Chile<\/em> wins the 2014 World Cup of Literature in a rout. Buy it, read it, and enjoy it! <\/p>\n<\/center><\/p>\n——<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our thirty-first match of the first ever World Cup of Literature features two amazing books written in Spanish: one by a revered, now dead author, the other by a young upstart; one by a man, one by a woman; one from Chile, the other from Mexico; one focused on a singular narrative voice, the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[56836,766,56766,56286,1646,756,56276,56386],"class_list":["post-298666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-by-night-in-chile","tag-chris-andrews","tag-christina-macsweeney","tag-faces-in-the-crowd","tag-review","tag-roberto-bolano","tag-valeria-luiselli","tag-world-cup-of-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317336,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298666\/revisions\/317336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}