Roberto Bolaño’s writing emphasizes the ways exile shapes individual and collective responses to traumatic losses, which are often produced by state violence. The dispersive nature of these responses demands an approach to collective memory that resists the purported coherence of the national narrative. My analysis considers the effort to establish coherency in By Night in Chile in contrast to the calls for openness that characterize the other texts I analyze: The Spirit of Science Fiction, “Visit to the Convalescent,” and Woes of the True Policeman. In reference to discussions of memory and trauma by Adeila Assmann and Nelly Richard, my reading of Bolaño’s texts pairs a critique of authorial coherence with a critique of national coherence. I focus especially on narrative boundaries and fissures, including the motifs of holes and storms. I conclude that an open, interrelational textual analysis of a single author’s work enables a critique of that work that, in turn, strengthens a critique of national narratives and their propensity to conceal traumatic pasts.

It must have been with a mixture of pride and awe that in the latter years of the nineteenth century French children learned from their textbooks about the Battle of Tolbiac; of how Clovis lifted his hands to Heaven, promising God that if he were granted victory he would accept baptism, and how, the divine pact having worked, the Alamanni fled. Had those children delved deeper into their Première année d’histoire de France, their delight would certainly have been compounded when they read about King Pepin and his beheading of a lion and a bull with a single blow of his sword – a deed that, it is easy to suppose, many of those eight- and nine-year-olds mimicked, impersonating their king. No doubt they would have been equally impressed to learn from their textbook that, as her body was burned at the stake, the soul of Joan of Arc was miraculously borne up to Heaven by a white dove – the just reward for the sacrifices she had made for France and the Church.

Given the strength of prospective push factors, a plausible plan for shaping and managing migration must include incentives for aspiring migrants to play by the rules rich governments set. The strategy most likely to succeed (success being relative) combines an annual lottery, a point system, and offshore processing and migration-preparation centers. A lottery along with clearly articulated means for accumulating points (e.g., acquiring proficiency in the host country’s language) would give prospective migrants renewable hope that their turn for legitimate entry will come round. Ideally, the EU, in conjunction with the UNHCR, would establish offshore havens where asylum claimants would not only be given humanitarian relief but in addition opportunities to accumulate points through language and vocational training. Internally, rich states would require biometric identification for all transactions and would incentivize and test new arrivals’ capacity for economic and social integration and would organize mentoring of migrants by citizens, protect expressions of religious identity, suppress hate speech, and use the schools to inculcate an inclusive national narrative. Policing would be combined with social services. Compulsory national service is key to deep integration and adequate staffing of schools and overseas havens.