Welcome to March, fellow visceral realists! This week’s reading is up to page 220 in the U.S. edition. For those reading other editions, it is through the end of Part 2, Chapter 5!
The spoiler discussion for this section starts now!
I hope everyone is having a great first weekend of March! I for one am always happy to get January and February behind me! While I am feeling a lot better this weekend than last, I am still playing a bit of catch up. But I will be all caught up soon. Like most of you, I find the pages slip by quickly, so it hasn’t ever felt like a chore to sit down and read. I just wasn’t reading anything for a handful of days!
I’m excited to hear what you all think of this new section!
“Drink up, boys, drink up and don’t worry, if we finish this bottle we’ll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won’t be the same as the one we’ve got now, but it’ll still be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don’t make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don’t you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.”
I love Amadeo Salvatierra, he so jovial, sentimental, a master of mezcal, and just so fun to read. These sections ground us throughout and I get so excited when I see his name continuing his interview.
< I posted the following as a response late in last week's thread, so don't think most people saw it, and it really applies to this week's reading - I'd love to hear if anyone else has thoughts on these two things. >
As I'm going through the next section, I've been wondering who it is interviewing these people - as they do seem like interviews, as they seem to be answering a prompt. And also interesting that we're still being kept at arm's length from Belano and Lima - we have lots of new POV, but none from them - or Garcia Madero for that matter.
I also did peek ahead (at least in the TOC) and notice that the interview snippets move way forward into the future from where we started (into the 1990s) but the last section appears to be GM's diary again, picking up just one day after we left him on New Year's Eve 1975. This makes me curious, but I haven't peeked at the actual text to figure out more - will wait to see how it all comes together!
Back when I was reading "The Savage Detectives" along with several other bloggers, we had a long and useful discussion of the issue of who was doing the interviewing.
On Week 3, I feel like I turned into that meme with the investigation board and all the red threads. Damn you Bolaño for lulling me into a false sense of security in part 1 -_-
Very interesting, if jarring transition into Part 2! It skips forward, yet we do go back, but not really, and also we're going back and forth and being thrown this way and that in the story of Mexican Poetry, Visceral Realism, and Lima and Belano.
In this new format, I almost picture as I'm reading a documentary. You know, the way that documentaries take multiple interviews from multiple people (sometimes at different times) and cut them up and splice them all together to form some sort of semi-cohesive narrative? Yeah, this strongly reminds me of that. Especially when you have sections like the beginning of chapter 3, when Manuel Maples Arce was talking about his one interaction with Belano and his cohort, being somewhat self-aggrandizing - then cut to Barbara Patterson, chewing him out in the most vulgar way possible. Funny as heck but also cinematic in a very specific way.
And this continues to be both funny and intriguing. Especially when you consider the idea of Bolano writing others "talking" about him(self), presumably. But who are the people interviewing all these folks connected to Bolano and Lima? Is it the titular but (for now?) nameless "Savage/Wild Detectives"? What happened in Sonora? Are we chasing Belano and Lima all the way to Europe? I'm eager to see how the narrative and themes shape. Even if I'm often hopelessly lost when it comes to history and poetry of the region.
I have some translation questions! Did they manage to translate the pun with Auxilio's name, where Belano would call 'Socorro!' up to her window (both Auxilio and Socorro mean 'help')?
And how did they translate 'manicomio' - where poor Quim ends up? I was pondering the options, and was thinking 'sanitarium' was likely best for the shade of meaning that implied, but wondered if they went with 'mental hospital' (more standard/proper) or 'looney bin' (more slang/derogatory) or something else...
What do you think is going on with Quim? When we first were introduced to him, Pancho told GM that he was crazy, but then he didn't really seem crazy when we saw more of him, just kind of quirky/eccentric. But then he ends up in a mental hospital - his first entry still seems fairly lucid, but then in the second he starts going on about Laura Damián, does her death have something to do with his mental state, and if so why did it affect him so much?
Here are the weekly reading threads. I'll update this as they go up.
-Preliminary Thread: https://mookse.substack.com/p/the-savage-detectives-preliminary/comments
-Week 1: https://mookse.substack.com/p/week-1-the-savage-detectives-readalong/comments
-Week 2: https://mookse.substack.com/p/week-2-the-savage-detectives-readalong/comments
-Week 3: https://mookse.substack.com/p/week-3-the-savage-detectives-readalong/comments
-Week 4: https://mookse.substack.com/p/week-4-the-savage-detectives-readalong/comments
I hope everyone is having a great first weekend of March! I for one am always happy to get January and February behind me! While I am feeling a lot better this weekend than last, I am still playing a bit of catch up. But I will be all caught up soon. Like most of you, I find the pages slip by quickly, so it hasn’t ever felt like a chore to sit down and read. I just wasn’t reading anything for a handful of days!
I’m excited to hear what you all think of this new section!
My favorite quote from this book:
“Drink up, boys, drink up and don’t worry, if we finish this bottle we’ll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won’t be the same as the one we’ve got now, but it’ll still be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don’t make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don’t you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.”
I love Amadeo Salvatierra, he so jovial, sentimental, a master of mezcal, and just so fun to read. These sections ground us throughout and I get so excited when I see his name continuing his interview.
< I posted the following as a response late in last week's thread, so don't think most people saw it, and it really applies to this week's reading - I'd love to hear if anyone else has thoughts on these two things. >
As I'm going through the next section, I've been wondering who it is interviewing these people - as they do seem like interviews, as they seem to be answering a prompt. And also interesting that we're still being kept at arm's length from Belano and Lima - we have lots of new POV, but none from them - or Garcia Madero for that matter.
I also did peek ahead (at least in the TOC) and notice that the interview snippets move way forward into the future from where we started (into the 1990s) but the last section appears to be GM's diary again, picking up just one day after we left him on New Year's Eve 1975. This makes me curious, but I haven't peeked at the actual text to figure out more - will wait to see how it all comes together!
Back when I was reading "The Savage Detectives" along with several other bloggers, we had a long and useful discussion of the issue of who was doing the interviewing.
Please see here, especially the comments:
https://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2012/01/still-my-story-wont-be-as-coherent-as.html
That is the first of five posts. Many curious things in those posts, and in the comments.
On Week 3, I feel like I turned into that meme with the investigation board and all the red threads. Damn you Bolaño for lulling me into a false sense of security in part 1 -_-
Very interesting, if jarring transition into Part 2! It skips forward, yet we do go back, but not really, and also we're going back and forth and being thrown this way and that in the story of Mexican Poetry, Visceral Realism, and Lima and Belano.
In this new format, I almost picture as I'm reading a documentary. You know, the way that documentaries take multiple interviews from multiple people (sometimes at different times) and cut them up and splice them all together to form some sort of semi-cohesive narrative? Yeah, this strongly reminds me of that. Especially when you have sections like the beginning of chapter 3, when Manuel Maples Arce was talking about his one interaction with Belano and his cohort, being somewhat self-aggrandizing - then cut to Barbara Patterson, chewing him out in the most vulgar way possible. Funny as heck but also cinematic in a very specific way.
And this continues to be both funny and intriguing. Especially when you consider the idea of Bolano writing others "talking" about him(self), presumably. But who are the people interviewing all these folks connected to Bolano and Lima? Is it the titular but (for now?) nameless "Savage/Wild Detectives"? What happened in Sonora? Are we chasing Belano and Lima all the way to Europe? I'm eager to see how the narrative and themes shape. Even if I'm often hopelessly lost when it comes to history and poetry of the region.
I have some translation questions! Did they manage to translate the pun with Auxilio's name, where Belano would call 'Socorro!' up to her window (both Auxilio and Socorro mean 'help')?
And how did they translate 'manicomio' - where poor Quim ends up? I was pondering the options, and was thinking 'sanitarium' was likely best for the shade of meaning that implied, but wondered if they went with 'mental hospital' (more standard/proper) or 'looney bin' (more slang/derogatory) or something else...
What do you think is going on with Quim? When we first were introduced to him, Pancho told GM that he was crazy, but then he didn't really seem crazy when we saw more of him, just kind of quirky/eccentric. But then he ends up in a mental hospital - his first entry still seems fairly lucid, but then in the second he starts going on about Laura Damián, does her death have something to do with his mental state, and if so why did it affect him so much?