Berman, Paul (2007), "Mayhem in Mexico: Roberto Bolaño's great Latin American novel", Slate, 10 September 2007: "Bolaño himself, in recounting these literary doings, slyly molds his story around a style that will be familiar to the readers of Paz's circle in Mexico—the style of the writer and critic Juan García Ponce, a lesser member of the Paz entourage, famous in Mexico, though maybe not in many other places, for his priapic mischief. In the novels of the real-life Juan García Ponce, every innocent conversation seems to inspire the conversationalists to doff their clothes; and in the adventures of Bolaño's teenage narrator, Juan García Madero, something similar does seem to occur."
Roberto Ontiveros, "For Bolaño, No Divine Miracles", The Texas Observer, 10 August 2007: "Bolaño must have felt that the story of Auxilio Lacouture, based on real-life Uruguayan poet-exile Alcira who went mad hiding out for 10 days during a 1968 military raid, needed its own plane."
