Reflection

 I am rereading El Tercer Reich by Roberto Bolaño.  The author, a Chilean, was highly respected and honored for his work.  He died at just fifty years of age.  Like many other Chileans, Bolaño lived outside his country for much of his life, probably to escape the long Pinochet dictatorship there.   The novel and an English translation were published after Bolaño's death.

I am not sure I will get all the way through El Tercer Reich again.  I recall the vocabulary being a bit challenging for me in spots.  The theme is also outside of my usual interests.  The main character is a German on vacation in Spain whose passion in life is playing war games on a big board with movable pieces and complex strategies.  The real plot, though, revolves around the acquaintances he. makes in the vacation resort.  Throughout the narrative there is an underlying sense of menace which the main character must come to grips with.

It dawned on me on picking up this novel again that my lack of comfort with a book dealing with a topic of little relevance to my own experience is likely similar to what many people may feel about my practice of making photographs with old cameras, and then writing for decades about my involvement with the topic.  (That lengthy sentence alone may be enough to repel potential readers.)

On the other hand (there always is one),  I feel I may have a slight edge on Bolaño as my writing is accompanied by illustrations related to the texts of my blog posts and which I hope will  have some stand-alone value.  

Whatever others may think of my writing and photography, there is an element of self-fulfillment from the sum total of my efforts over a period of decades.  I have over a thousand images in my Flickr photostream.  Those photographs are the ones I consider to represent my best efforts, and there is quite a purposeful variety there of subjects and techniques.  

My pictures posted on Flickr are selected mostly from posts on my blog, Photography & Vintage Film Cameras where my pictures are accompanied by commentary on photographic techniques and gear.  Everything Else (this blog) was originally conceived to let me talk about subjects other than photography, but I am increasingly posting pictures here too as my photographic efforts lean more toward the digital realm, due in part to improvements in digital technology, along with decreases in my mobility which was an essential part of my previous photographic endeavors.

 I visit the Flickr photo sharing site several times daily.  I look at recent pictures by photographers I follow and I always spend some time looking over my own collection.  The web site has a nice feature for viewing the pictures of a photostream or album as a slideshow which can be very captivating.  I made use of that capability recently to present a slideshow of my album of photographs of my wife, Margaret, at a birthday gathering.  While it was nice to hear some favorable reactions to my photography, it was mostly rewarding that I had some success in being able to communicate to othetrs a visualization of how I perceive something. of importance in my own life.

So, whatever literary value Bolaño's work may have, I think we need to be grateful to him and all the other novelists for providing some motivation to look into the possibilities of broadening our often-too-limited horizons.  

An early favorite from our Idaho days