Preface to Other Sides

Preface to

Other Sides:  A Journey With Maps

"What then is writing of quality?  Well, what it has always been:  knowing to stick one's head into the dark, knowing to jump into the void, knowing that literature is basically a dangerous occupation."  Roberto Bolano

The news from Mexico now is all about drugs, especially the wars along the border, those closest to home.  In the spring of 2003, even though it was already old news, the Zapatistas were still getting most of the attention, and there was then and is now the persistent issue of the hundreds of murdered and mutilated young women in the border towns, especially Juarez, about which Roberto Bolano wrote what I consider a masterpiece of fiction, 2666. 

And those are just the headlines, the major events that seep across the border because news editors think we might find them relevant to our lives up here in the promised land, where most things, relatively speaking, work pretty well and reliably, and where, although we are not by any means at the top of the class in low rates of crime or violence, at least, as far as I know, no one has ever rolled the heads of their victims across a dance floor, nor do sheriffs and police chiefs count on being murdered a few days after taking office.