Fiction v Friction: Bolano's story in current New Yorker

No question: Roberto Bolano has written some really cool stories (father and son traveling to coastal resort and get involved in fistfights and boxing matches ... ) and some very unusual and provocative novels (Savage Detectives, 2066 - challenging, thoughtful, original), no question The New Yorker deserves a shoutout for more or less discovering Bolano and bringing him to an English-reading readership, no question it's sad and tragic that Bolano died so young while still at the height of his literary output but before he could enjoy his international recognition, no question there are plenty more Bolano pieces in the hands of his executors leaking their way out into publication - yet - from evidence of story in current New Yorker, The Mexican Manifesto, are we getting near the bottom of the proverbial barrel? Is this the best he's got left? This story does of course have the Bolano creepy atmospherics and the disorienting narrative style that work so well in his best stories - in this case a guy (the narrator) remembering a period of his life when he and then girlfriend, Laura, haunted the public bath houses in Mexico City, trying to find the best one - this is not a Zagat guide. Inevitably, they engage in some pretty sordid encounters in the steam. Unfortunately, little more than that. This story is a like a sketch or fragment that Bolano must have put aside, maybe to come back to some day and expand into a true work of fiction, with narrative design. But what we have here is a base and grimy piece - not exactly pornographic, more like unpornographic, in that it's deliberately coarse and even repulsive. Not fiction, just friction. Let's hope there are better pieces in the unpublished archives - and for anyone who has not yet read Bolano, don't start here.