Book Review: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Contributed by Felix L.G
I first came to appreciate Roberto Bolaño reading 2666 a couple years ago. The way he could build a sense of dread had me reading as attentively as I would with some of my favourite authors – Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O’Connor, Anne Hebert, to name a few who bring me to that same emotional place.
This novel was a different experience. The epigraph of 2666 is a Baudelaire quote, “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom”. This novel felt far more in the territory of the desert of boredom, leaning heavily into nearly plotless mystery, with less of that central tension that I had come to expect. But as I read I found myself really identifying with the characters, and seeing in them the traits of many of my rock and roll friends (and adversaries).
Part of my selfish motivation to write this review is just to encourage people in this thing of ours (punk rock, baby) who have read this book to come chat me up about it. If you’ve yet to read any Bolaño, then maybe this will encourage you to do so. If you have read this book already, then maybe this will inspire you to take another look at the text with our lifestyle in mind.
NEVER MIND THE VISCERAL REALISTS
What I managed to get out of him was that the director had said that Neruda was shit and that Nicanor Parra was the greatest poet of the Spanish language. Something like that. Of course I could hardly believe that two people would fight about something so unimportant.
The Savage Detectives follows a gang of Mexico City youths at the cutting edge of a fictional literary movement dubbed “Visceral Realism”. The Visceral Realists get into fist fights over Pablo Neruda, orchestrate sabre duels over bad book reviews, and risk their lives to seek the wisdom of unpublished authors. The novel’s cult of writers (based on a younger Bolaño’s own literary movement, the Infrarealists) take themselves deadly seriously, even if other poets don’t. Even if most people don’t even read poetry, or haven’t in a long time, or mix up one poet with another. Even the diehard Visceral Realists themselves drop in and out of their poetic pursuits as real life gets in the way, as they get full time jobs or have kids or realize that their movement is just sort of aimless.
Everything that is fundamental to the Visceral Realists feels very punk to me. Their intense devotion to an art form that is so small in scope, the intense feelings you have when you’re young and your passion becomes your whole identity, finding like-minded people and the subsequent discord and fragmentation of “scenes” that come with time.
Punks or poets, it takes a certain kind of person to dedicate themselves to something so specific. If you are wholeheartedly dedicated to, for example, an obscure Northern European country’s interpretation of a rock subgenre, from a specific year, and attempt to track down and listen to every band of that very tiny category, you will probably identify with the Visceral Realists.
HOW MUCH LIT CAN YOU TAKE?
...messengers with no message or an untranslatable message…
At times The Savage Detectives can feel like a slog. I took monthlong breaks from it at times. Most editions are around six hundred pages, divided into three sections. The second section, about two thirds of the novel, consists of loosely connected interviews of individuals with some connection to the novel’s protagonists – shameless stand-in for the author, Arturo Belano, and the stand-in for Bolaño’s best friend, Ulises Lima. The first and third parts feel more like novellas which frame that impressive midsection.
If there’s one tip I have to enhance your reading experience, it would be to treat that second section which makes up the majority of the novel more like reading a collection of short stories. As the common threads show up between the accounts of these poets and ex-poets, you’ll start to see the forest for the trees. Be patient, step away and read something else for a while when you need to – The Savage Detectives rewards slow reading.
WHEN IT’S OVER
...that moment of silence after you hear something truly beautiful, the kind of moment that can last a second or two or your whole life, because there’s something for everyone on this cruel earth…
Towards the end of the novel’s middle chunk, Bolaño writes that there is no poetry in details. But as I read on through these vignettes and different perspectives, and I started to see myself and the people I know in the world he writes, the more poetry I found in small details. Quiet moments – spare descriptions of the sun rising on an exhausted poet who had been up all night reading, or of two people at one time intensely devoted to each other and their art slowly beginning to misunderstand each other – made me want to cry.
I don’t know if I am trying to use punk to understand the world or if I am trying to understand punk – to somehow justify to others or myself the time I’ve spent on it. I know I’ve been playing in bands and been part of this community for more than ten years now. I guess that’s gotta count for something more than just a list of faces and places and demo titles.There has to be some kind of poetry in those details.
Time will tell how often I will think about The Savage Detectives. But at least for the duration of my reading, it made the ordinary a little more extraordinary, details a little brighter and sharper around the edges. If you are like me and are wondering what this thing of ours means for you when you’re alone, or the only one awake in your apartment, and have removed yourself from the damaging noise for a little while, maybe give this one a try, eh?