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A review by thaurisil
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
4.0
This book is written in three sections. The first comprises diary entries by Juan García Madero, a law student in Mexico in 1975 who joins a group of visceral realists. The visceral realists are young poets led by Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, and while the leaders on what good poetry entails and want to change the face of modern Mexican poetry, the rest of the group mainly just want to get published. Under their influence, Madero functionally drops out of school, loses his virginity, writes poetry all the time, stops going home, has sex multiple times with María Font, and, right at the end, jumps into a car with Arturo, Ulises and a prostitute called Lupe, to escape from Lupe's violent pimp Alberto. The second and longest section spans 20 years from 1976 to 1996, and contains accounts of people who have met Arturo and/or Ulises in one way or another. Some know them intimately, others have only met them in passing. In general, the visceral realists die out (literally or figuratively), Arturo has multiple relationships but Ulises is rejected by the only woman he likes, both travel a lot, and both get worn out by the realities of life. The chronological series of accounts is broken only by a 1976 account by Amadeo Salvatierra which is divided and told in multiple pieces throughout the section. Salvatierra shows the boys the only surviving poem by Cesárea Tinajero, the founder of a different movement also known as visceral realism int he 1920s. The final section goes back to Madero's diary entries in 1976. Arturo, Ulises, Madero and Lupe travel around the Soneran desert in search of Cesárea Tinajero while on the run from Alberto. When they find her, she has grown fat and works as a washerwoman. In a dramatic showdown with Alberto and his corrupt policeman friend, Arturo and Ulises kill Aberto and his friend, both Cesárea also dies while trying to protect Ulises.
The book gave me a feeling of tragedy. Arturo and Ulises start off young and eager. They are passionate about poetry, seem to think they can change the world, and their followers to varying degrees share the same zest for life. But in the second section, as they grow older, they also grow jaded. Several of the accounts are narrated by people who view the visceral realists with contempt and disgust, but even the visceral realists themselves slowly lose faith in the pair. For all their youthful idealism, Arturo is published only once and Ulises never at all. They fall sick, get rejected by lovers, are chronically poor, sell drugs for a living, and Arturo even goes through a semi-suicidal phase. Arturo's wife is never named, and his marriage is only mentioned when he has divorced.
Arturo represents Bolaño, so perhaps Bolaño is reflecting on his own experiences of the hardships he faced in becoming a known writer, and the struggles that all young poets face. Bolaño himself succeeded, but only in prose and not in his preferred medium of poetry, and the conspicuous lack of poetry in a novel about poetry emphasises the anonymity of young poets. The only poem in the book, by Cesárea is scarcely a poem. It comprises three drawings, one a straight line, one a wavy line, and one a zigzag line, each with a small rectangle on it. Arturo and Ulises interpret it as a boat on a sea that is first calm, then choppy, then stormy. This poem, monumental in the book, seems to be a metaphor for life, which is initially full of hope, but gets increasingly broken up by struggles.
The fate of the young writers is not helped by Mexico's decline, and indeed South American politics features heavily in the book, a by-product of Bolaño's own experiences which involved being jailed for his participation in the Pinochet coup. My ignorance about Mexican and South American politics prevents me from commenting more, but the hardships that the poets face transcend generations. Arturo and Ulises live eerily similar lives to Cesárea – all start with a zest for life and poetry and are highly respected by those in their sphere of influence, but all have waning fortunes and end up lost in the realities of life. Cesárea sacrificing her life to protect Ulises has the heartwarming aspect of the mother of visceral realism protecting her young, but also the tragic quality of one forgotten poet passing on the baton to her successors, thereby condemning them to trudge the same weary path that she took. And has the baton passed on once more, considering that the unknown interviewer in the second section seems to be seeking information on Arturo and Ulises the same way that the pair sought information on Cesárea?
But it is not all sorrow and tragedy. Arturo and Ulises do some funny things, and even outright crazy things. Arturo, for one, challenges a reviewer to a duel with real swords on a deserted beach to defend himself against a review that has not even been written. And while the lives of the pair are pretty sad, the organisation of the second section into accounts by different narrators means that the tone varies from narrator to narrator. And since I'm here, I'd like to say that Bolaño does a fantastic job with his narrative voices. There must have been at least fifty different narrators, but most were characterised well, and their voices were believable, regardless of their gender, race or sexuality. There were funny narrators, reflective narrators, mad narrators, boastful narrators, and many, many unreliable narrators.
This format serves several purposes. Firstly, the variety precludes boredom. Secondly, while we never get close to Arturo and Ulises, we see them from several angles. Everyone has different opinions on them, but one thing is common – everyone thinks that they are a little (or more than a little) queer. Was Bolaño showing cognizance of the attitudes that people in real life had of him? He certainly doesn't hide the flaws of the two characters, and it may be that those were his own flaws. Thirdly, Arturo and Ulises made some impact, sometimes miniscule, sometimes large, on all the narrators. And this gives us hope. For although they remained obscure writers, never receiving the recognition they desired, their lives, if not their works, influenced the lives of so many others.
The book ends with a two pictures of rectangles representing windows, and a final picture of a rectangle formed from dotted lines accompanied by the cryptic question "What's outside the window?" Everyone has their own interpretation, but I offer two. Firstly, it may be a bright light, so blinding that it shines through and blocks the edges of the window. The light represents hope, for in the drudgery of life there is always hope, even if we do not recognise it. Secondly, it may be a call to shatter the window and to go beyond its confines to find out what is outside. It is a call to challenge boundaries the way Bolaño and Arturo both did, and not to give up on our passions when we meet opposition, but to pursue them to the end, whatever the end entails.
The book gave me a feeling of tragedy. Arturo and Ulises start off young and eager. They are passionate about poetry, seem to think they can change the world, and their followers to varying degrees share the same zest for life. But in the second section, as they grow older, they also grow jaded. Several of the accounts are narrated by people who view the visceral realists with contempt and disgust, but even the visceral realists themselves slowly lose faith in the pair. For all their youthful idealism, Arturo is published only once and Ulises never at all. They fall sick, get rejected by lovers, are chronically poor, sell drugs for a living, and Arturo even goes through a semi-suicidal phase. Arturo's wife is never named, and his marriage is only mentioned when he has divorced.
Arturo represents Bolaño, so perhaps Bolaño is reflecting on his own experiences of the hardships he faced in becoming a known writer, and the struggles that all young poets face. Bolaño himself succeeded, but only in prose and not in his preferred medium of poetry, and the conspicuous lack of poetry in a novel about poetry emphasises the anonymity of young poets. The only poem in the book, by Cesárea is scarcely a poem. It comprises three drawings, one a straight line, one a wavy line, and one a zigzag line, each with a small rectangle on it. Arturo and Ulises interpret it as a boat on a sea that is first calm, then choppy, then stormy. This poem, monumental in the book, seems to be a metaphor for life, which is initially full of hope, but gets increasingly broken up by struggles.
The fate of the young writers is not helped by Mexico's decline, and indeed South American politics features heavily in the book, a by-product of Bolaño's own experiences which involved being jailed for his participation in the Pinochet coup. My ignorance about Mexican and South American politics prevents me from commenting more, but the hardships that the poets face transcend generations. Arturo and Ulises live eerily similar lives to Cesárea – all start with a zest for life and poetry and are highly respected by those in their sphere of influence, but all have waning fortunes and end up lost in the realities of life. Cesárea sacrificing her life to protect Ulises has the heartwarming aspect of the mother of visceral realism protecting her young, but also the tragic quality of one forgotten poet passing on the baton to her successors, thereby condemning them to trudge the same weary path that she took. And has the baton passed on once more, considering that the unknown interviewer in the second section seems to be seeking information on Arturo and Ulises the same way that the pair sought information on Cesárea?
But it is not all sorrow and tragedy. Arturo and Ulises do some funny things, and even outright crazy things. Arturo, for one, challenges a reviewer to a duel with real swords on a deserted beach to defend himself against a review that has not even been written. And while the lives of the pair are pretty sad, the organisation of the second section into accounts by different narrators means that the tone varies from narrator to narrator. And since I'm here, I'd like to say that Bolaño does a fantastic job with his narrative voices. There must have been at least fifty different narrators, but most were characterised well, and their voices were believable, regardless of their gender, race or sexuality. There were funny narrators, reflective narrators, mad narrators, boastful narrators, and many, many unreliable narrators.
This format serves several purposes. Firstly, the variety precludes boredom. Secondly, while we never get close to Arturo and Ulises, we see them from several angles. Everyone has different opinions on them, but one thing is common – everyone thinks that they are a little (or more than a little) queer. Was Bolaño showing cognizance of the attitudes that people in real life had of him? He certainly doesn't hide the flaws of the two characters, and it may be that those were his own flaws. Thirdly, Arturo and Ulises made some impact, sometimes miniscule, sometimes large, on all the narrators. And this gives us hope. For although they remained obscure writers, never receiving the recognition they desired, their lives, if not their works, influenced the lives of so many others.
The book ends with a two pictures of rectangles representing windows, and a final picture of a rectangle formed from dotted lines accompanied by the cryptic question "What's outside the window?" Everyone has their own interpretation, but I offer two. Firstly, it may be a bright light, so blinding that it shines through and blocks the edges of the window. The light represents hope, for in the drudgery of life there is always hope, even if we do not recognise it. Secondly, it may be a call to shatter the window and to go beyond its confines to find out what is outside. It is a call to challenge boundaries the way Bolaño and Arturo both did, and not to give up on our passions when we meet opposition, but to pursue them to the end, whatever the end entails.