Woes of the True Policeman

Padilla’s response arrived shortly afterward, too soon to be a reply to Amalfitano’s letter.

It was written on the back of an airmail postcard from Barcelona and it said that his life had taken a radical turn. Elisa is living with me now, he said, and my father is beside himself with joy. Of course, Elisa and I are like brother and sister. Some nights we masturbate side by side. But really, it doesn’t happen very often. I do the shopping. Elisa cooks and deals heroin in her old neighborhood. We live in the most delightful holding pattern. At night we sit on the couch and watch TV, my father, Elisa, and me. Something’s going to happen soon. I’ll keep you posted.

EDITORIAL NOTE

Woes of the True Policeman is a novel whose parts are at different stages of completion, though the general level of revision is high, since all the chapters were first written by hand, then transcribed on an electric typewriter, with many of them-approximately half-subsequently polished on a computer, as Roberto Bolaño’s files show.

A number of additional documents deposited in the same files confirm that this is a project that was begun in the 1980s and continued to be a work in progress up until the year 2003: letters; dated notes in which the author describes his projects; an interview from November 1999 in the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, in which he states that he is working on Woes of the True Policemen, among other books. The title is a constant in all the documentation relating to the work.

At least two manuscript versions of the novel were found on Roberto Bolaño’s work table and among his papers, making it possible to state with certainty that the novel was carefully revised and that the computer files were part of the transcription of the novel that the author had been carrying out. The most complete manuscript version was organized in four folders, each labeled with a number, title, and page count: 1. Amalfitano and Padilla, 165 pages; 2. Rosa Amalfitano, 39 pages; 3. Pancho Monje, 26 pages; 4. J.M.G. Arcimboldi, 38 pages. Another folder, bearing the title “Cowboy Graveyard,” contained eight additional chapters, as well as material related to another unfinished project.

After careful study and compilation of this material as well as of the chapters found on Bolaño’s computer (more recent but only accounting for part of the novel), the final shape of the book was determined. The first and fifth parts of the novel come from the computer files, and the second, third, and fourth parts from the manuscript copies. This edition was undertaken with the unwavering intent to respect Bolaño’s work and the firm pledge to offer the reader the novel as it had been found in his files. Any changes and corrections have been kept to a bare minimum.

My thanks to the Andrew Wylie Agency, and to Cora Munro, who with the greatest respect for the legacy of the author has lent her literary counsel and the support of her invaluable knowledge to this edition.

Carolina López

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