Welcome to week four! This week’s reading is up to page 296 in the U.S. edition. For those reading other editions, it is through the end of Part 2, Chapter 9!
The spoiler discussion for this section starts now!
I've got good news (for me, at least): I got all caught up!
How is everyone else doing? I admit, this is not what I was expecting with part 2. I have always heard of The Savage Detectives as a kind of wanderlust book where two young poets go off in search of an obscure poet. I pictured something like The Odyssey, maybe, or some of Bolaño's short stories with Arturo Belano. I did NOT know that Belano and Lima would be presented as memories from a host of other characters. I'm glad I'm doing this as a readalong with specific weekly parameters, because for me it is hard to keep track of the variety of characters and I've always been one who struggles most when a new storyline is beginning, like the momentum is continually revving up and then having to start all the way over -- and I feel that a lot here!
That's not to say it isn't affecting me. I found chapter 9, particularly the final section, to be moving. I definitely prefer the times when we are hearing from or about folks we got to know in Part 1.
So I'm curious if any of you are wary of continuing. We are almost halfway through!
I wouldn't say wary of continuing, but I'm glad to be able to see other people's experience of reading and to have a set amount to read each week so I can read other things! I've also really enjoyed some sections but am finding the difficulty in getting a proper thread through the story frustrating. Eager to see how the second half continues.
It's really really helping me to be able to discuss this book - it's definitely way upping my enjoyment of it. I'm still not sure it's *all that* as great literature, but for me it's reading easily, and I've found the discussions here so engaging that I definitely want to continue! :D Possibly the trail-of-breadcrumb clues this book dishes out are best enjoyed with others to hash them over with!
I caught up today (and am now through chapter 11) & I have to say this middle section is making me warm to the book much more than I had been in the first part of the book.
I like this round-robin style of storytelling, the viewpoints from different people of different ages from different locations &/or backgrounds.
I'm feeling pretty good about it so far. Knowing sadly little about 20th century Mexico & Latin America, let alone Mexican Poetry, I find little sections like chapter 9, to be a very interesting (and as you said, touching) interlude between this seeming "chase" to track down Belano and Lima (which is always a step or two behind). I've been looking into Latin American poets, especially some of the famous or avant-garde ones mentioned throughout, and that gives me some good flavor. Plus, I can brush up on my Spanish :)
This book also feels like a good reminder of how many lives a life can touch, even if only briefly.
Also there's moments that are just funny. I mean chapter 6 was nearly all lists! Amadeo reciting literally every name in "Actual no. 1"s Directory of the Avant-Garde with occasional commentary? Was that from a real newspaper?? Did Bolaño just go through one of those lists himself writing that section??? Either way it was funny and even funnier that I read the whole 2+ pages of just names of which I only recognized like 5-10 tops.
Oh and another thing, very interesting technique to write around the figure of absence. Never really getting to know Arturo and Ulises, we, like detectives, piecing together who they were. It really reminds me of Seymour in the Salinger oeuvre, this larger than life figure and the narrations around his absence.
This has been one of the most striking parts of the book for me. They are almost mythical figures. The most present I feel them is with Amadeo, and even there they are slippery. I do feel like we are the detectives, being given bits of only semi-connected 'evidence' and having to piece it together ourselves. I'm still not clear what they're both doing in Europe. No mention at all of looking for Cesárea except with Amadeo, which is pre-Europe trip back in Jan 1976. I know that's what all the blurbs say they're up to, not one of the interviewees say that they've asked about her or that they're doing any kind of searching about for anything.
I don't know if anyone else here reads fantasy fiction in addition to classic/literary fiction, but I'm reminded of one of my favorite authors, Steven Erikson, in this regard. In his series, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, for some of his loftiest or most key characters, he employs a technique in which you're rarely, if ever, actually in their head, and they're instead characterized by you viewing their actions or words as seen or heard by other people. Some of people's favorite characters are these millenia-old type characters whose drive and ideals are practically ineffable - all you get is the breadcrumbs of what they do and say in the moments they're "on-screen" or in someone's memories. Far more interesting than just being told "the way it is" in a typical first-person POV.
Like you pointed out, Bolaño takes this even further and you're not even seeing them at all, you're always a step behind and being fed memories of the words and actions of these people. We're just seeing all the ashes they leave in their wake (though that's a bit of a dramatic metaphor - it's usually not so bad). I find it a fascinating form.
I'll read that tomorrow at work. It's a book about poets and there isn't a single poem by them in the whole book. A book about two characters, yet you're never really with them, like with with them. A book about a missing poetess who seems like the most likely thing is she doesn't exist. About a movement that is tried to be hyped as a huge cultural shift and yet ends up being barely a footnote.
Right, it's a bunch of seeming contradictions and we're left to pick and choose what actually matters, what we believe, and how we paint the final picture of these little people in their little lives.
I'm pretty sure visceral realism isn't even defined (by Poet Garcia Madero or anyone else) and I've avoided looking into Infrarealism (a/the? real poetry movement) because it's almost funnier to think that no one actually knows what their movement is but just sticks to it for reasons of their own.
They seem to have just copied the name from Cesárea Tinajero's movement which was about 40-odd years before the action in 1975. And since they can't find any of her poetry to read, not sure they have a clue what the definition is either. GM has a whole paragraph about the provenance of the name toward the end of his Nov 3rd entry, and says the name was 'in some ways a joke, and in some ways completely serious'. He also says there that the original visceral realists were rumored to have disappeared in the Sonoran desert... foreshadowing?
Yes! I also enjoyed that wordplay, but it doesn't sound like it got translated over to the English. In the first example (real visceralistas, which is the most common way they're described in the Spanish), it's more like they're real visceralists, (where visceralist is the noun, and real the adjective), rather than visceral realists (where the noun/modifer relationship is the other way). Whereas the movement is realismo visceral, which is visceral realism.
About differentiation of voices in the interviews - I noticed that in the Spanish, when the voice of the interviewee is European, he sprinkles in some European Spanish - both the vosotros form, as well as some slang ('coger' becomes follar, mota becomes porro) - ironically, the interviewees in this section mostly are not Spanish-speaking (they are French or British, and some of them note that they don't speak Spanish themselves) wonder if the translator made those voices more British (European English!)
I'm from Argentina, and while he tried he didn't quite nail the "voseo" we use here. There are some egregious errors, which is a shame cause he had argentine friends he could've asked. Maybe editorial meddling.
Did he try to nail the voseo somewhere? I'm blanking on who was Argentinian? I only noticed in the European chapters, where he used the vosotros form from Spain (different from the voseo from Argentina and some southern/central American countries, for others wondering) in just a couple of places, really it was just a tiny sprinkle, blink and you'd miss it (which apparently I did if he used voseo as well - or since you've read it before, will it be coming up later?).
When we get there, you'll have to point them out; while I've read lots of Argentinian lit so can easily recognize and comprehend voseo forms, that's very different from understanding nuanced use (which is maybe what Bolaño proves!)
I am really enjoying these interviews. I find each different perspective very well done and for the most part distinct. This is a reread for me so differentiating the characters is easier for me, I think the first time a lot of these characters blended and confused. I think it’s great that someone mentioned the fact that we (the readers) are the savage detectives searching for the story. The stories may lead nowhere but it’s the mood and feeling Bolano invokes. Beautiful melancholic slices of life. I don’t believe Bolano ever gave up poetry and as he once said in an interview some of the best poetry of the 20th century is in prose (e.g. Joyce and Proust). Each interview in this novel, like each section in 2666 separated by that dot (like a dinkus), is a stanza in this great epic.
as the interviews advance, among a few things I don't wanna spoil cause I've already read the novel, but it's interesting to think how come all the interviewed people are so eloquent, and what good memory they have. Is it honestly possible that they all talk in such a literary fashion (stuff like, idk, "he looked at me as if he was doing it from the bottom of the sea a thousand years ago, as if his bones would crumble as soon as he opened his mouth", or whatever)? is it likely they all remember SO MUCH? Amadeo's part especially, but because he's like the anchor: his night with them happened a lifetime ago, it happened outside of time it seems, and he can quote hours verbatim. But all the rest of the people, is the interviewer embellishing? were all these people coincidentally eloquent? were they poisoned by arturo and ulises?
I think it's fairly common in books for people to remember way more about past events than 'real' people. Virtually every book told by a narrator looking back at their life...
In this context I'd say it's likely wise to ponder if all the memories they're recounting are 100% accurate (well, with Quim he's rapidly going sideways, so definitely there).
As to their eloquence... well, almost all of our 'interviewees' are themselves poets, that part isn't particularly surprising to me!
Also, it seems like these may be "interviews" since each section has the heading of the person, location, date... but are they really "interviews"? If so, who is doing the interviewing (two decades worth & spanning continents & then compiling the pieces)?
Because there is an array of people speaking, after catching up this afternoon, I made an excel spreadsheet to list the person, the date, the location, & the chapter for each to see if would help me with those who return repeatedly to tell a section vs. those who are one-timers. (I went ahead & compiled this list for all of section two.)
Interestingly, time marches forward with all of the narrators, except for Amadeo whose story is (I guess) all from one night or meeting in January 1976. Amadeo starts the second section as well as ends it. So I guess things may come full-circle in the middle section (but I don't know that for sure).
Many times, but not always, Amadeo's sections start off a new chapter.
Not sure what any of that means, but it helped me to better grasp people & time in this middle section. Btw, there are 95 entries! No wonder it feels cacophonous. Lol.
I am a little behind in my reading (currently in chapter 5) but I had your comment in mind and had to chuckle at Joaquin Vazquez Amaral's comment about discussing poetry of the Han dynasty because if the text is an accurate rendition, he speaks in parentheses (because he gives dates for various Han poets).
I'm curious: what do you guys think of Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima based on what the interviewees have shared so far? The form is absolutely fascinating—a character study solely based on how others view them, in a way that shares both their absolute best traits and their absolute worst ones. I know they're complex characters, but I'm curious—do you like them based on what you've read? How do we reconcile all these different parts of them?
I wouldn’t say I like them but there are glimmers that help balance some of the negatives and at least bit at their youth and idealism. I’m very curious to see how/if they evolve as we read on.
They're certainly not saints but they seem like they try to be good people in spite of troubled minds. Like a lot of people, really. Like, sure Belano lied about Lima's experience as a sailor (chapter 8) but Lima did try hard to be of value and hey, he brought a little good luck!
It's also an interesting way to present characters, especially if Belano is supposedly a semi-autobiographical sketch of Bolaño. Is this how Bolaño thinks that others see him?
Fwiw, I do like Arturo Belano & Ulises Lima, generally speaking, as we move through the second section. If nothing else, they certainly have met or hang-out & interact with all sorts of cool people who are interesting in their own right; how each character sees Arturo & Ulises is a reflection of him- or herself, I think.
I know we're theoretically not supposed to compare the author as a person to those of their work, but on many occasions I also couldn't help but wonder if Bolaño inserted himself into these characters. Belano also fled Chile during the coup, like Bolaño, and his name couldn't be more similar. Plus I remember seeing somewhere (perhaps here) that Bolaño always considered himself a poet, before he considered himself a writer of others forms like the novelist. Curious to see if Bolaño has ever talked about the book in an interview or such.
While I have mixed-feelings on both Lima and Belano, my feelings towards Belano soured after Laura Jáuregui shared that he had slapped her for dumping him, and then he gaslit her, asking her if she'd "calmed down." A terrible moment in the book.
So, the interview with Amadeo, which we all really like - when did that even happen, if RB and UL took off in the Impala on New Year's Day and didn't reappear in DF till later that year then headed to Europe, from all other accounts - if it was on their way out of town, where are GM and Lupe??
Are the dates given on the interviews the dates of the events reported (this is what I'm gleaning), or the dates of the actual interviews, which would have to be some time later than the events described in them...?
Amadeo interview must have occurred on their way out of Mexico City. I picture GM and Lupe hiding out in a hotel room while RB and Lima are with Amadeo. The time line of the interviews is a good question though. Some of the interviews, going by the dates, seem to occur soon after or the year after the time of the story they tell.
I've got good news (for me, at least): I got all caught up!
How is everyone else doing? I admit, this is not what I was expecting with part 2. I have always heard of The Savage Detectives as a kind of wanderlust book where two young poets go off in search of an obscure poet. I pictured something like The Odyssey, maybe, or some of Bolaño's short stories with Arturo Belano. I did NOT know that Belano and Lima would be presented as memories from a host of other characters. I'm glad I'm doing this as a readalong with specific weekly parameters, because for me it is hard to keep track of the variety of characters and I've always been one who struggles most when a new storyline is beginning, like the momentum is continually revving up and then having to start all the way over -- and I feel that a lot here!
That's not to say it isn't affecting me. I found chapter 9, particularly the final section, to be moving. I definitely prefer the times when we are hearing from or about folks we got to know in Part 1.
So I'm curious if any of you are wary of continuing. We are almost halfway through!
I wouldn't say wary of continuing, but I'm glad to be able to see other people's experience of reading and to have a set amount to read each week so I can read other things! I've also really enjoyed some sections but am finding the difficulty in getting a proper thread through the story frustrating. Eager to see how the second half continues.
It's really really helping me to be able to discuss this book - it's definitely way upping my enjoyment of it. I'm still not sure it's *all that* as great literature, but for me it's reading easily, and I've found the discussions here so engaging that I definitely want to continue! :D Possibly the trail-of-breadcrumb clues this book dishes out are best enjoyed with others to hash them over with!
I caught up today (and am now through chapter 11) & I have to say this middle section is making me warm to the book much more than I had been in the first part of the book.
I like this round-robin style of storytelling, the viewpoints from different people of different ages from different locations &/or backgrounds.
I'm feeling pretty good about it so far. Knowing sadly little about 20th century Mexico & Latin America, let alone Mexican Poetry, I find little sections like chapter 9, to be a very interesting (and as you said, touching) interlude between this seeming "chase" to track down Belano and Lima (which is always a step or two behind). I've been looking into Latin American poets, especially some of the famous or avant-garde ones mentioned throughout, and that gives me some good flavor. Plus, I can brush up on my Spanish :)
This book also feels like a good reminder of how many lives a life can touch, even if only briefly.
Also there's moments that are just funny. I mean chapter 6 was nearly all lists! Amadeo reciting literally every name in "Actual no. 1"s Directory of the Avant-Garde with occasional commentary? Was that from a real newspaper?? Did Bolaño just go through one of those lists himself writing that section??? Either way it was funny and even funnier that I read the whole 2+ pages of just names of which I only recognized like 5-10 tops.
One of the names in that list is Vicente Ruiz Huidobro. I read his (long) poem Altazor quite a few years ago & absolutely loved it.
That's been on my TBR for ages - I probably added it back when you read it and said you loved it! I should really get to it...
Oh and another thing, very interesting technique to write around the figure of absence. Never really getting to know Arturo and Ulises, we, like detectives, piecing together who they were. It really reminds me of Seymour in the Salinger oeuvre, this larger than life figure and the narrations around his absence.
This has been one of the most striking parts of the book for me. They are almost mythical figures. The most present I feel them is with Amadeo, and even there they are slippery. I do feel like we are the detectives, being given bits of only semi-connected 'evidence' and having to piece it together ourselves. I'm still not clear what they're both doing in Europe. No mention at all of looking for Cesárea except with Amadeo, which is pre-Europe trip back in Jan 1976. I know that's what all the blurbs say they're up to, not one of the interviewees say that they've asked about her or that they're doing any kind of searching about for anything.
I don't know if anyone else here reads fantasy fiction in addition to classic/literary fiction, but I'm reminded of one of my favorite authors, Steven Erikson, in this regard. In his series, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, for some of his loftiest or most key characters, he employs a technique in which you're rarely, if ever, actually in their head, and they're instead characterized by you viewing their actions or words as seen or heard by other people. Some of people's favorite characters are these millenia-old type characters whose drive and ideals are practically ineffable - all you get is the breadcrumbs of what they do and say in the moments they're "on-screen" or in someone's memories. Far more interesting than just being told "the way it is" in a typical first-person POV.
In a moment of crankiness, he did write an essay about it, with a made-up example of what he means, if you care to read it, but it might come off as useless ramblings if you've never read his work, so fair warning: https://www.facebook.com/steveneriksonofficial/posts/i-will-probably-regret-this-but-feeling-crotchety-i-wrote-an-essay-on-characteri/1646644495487844/
Like you pointed out, Bolaño takes this even further and you're not even seeing them at all, you're always a step behind and being fed memories of the words and actions of these people. We're just seeing all the ashes they leave in their wake (though that's a bit of a dramatic metaphor - it's usually not so bad). I find it a fascinating form.
I'll read that tomorrow at work. It's a book about poets and there isn't a single poem by them in the whole book. A book about two characters, yet you're never really with them, like with with them. A book about a missing poetess who seems like the most likely thing is she doesn't exist. About a movement that is tried to be hyped as a huge cultural shift and yet ends up being barely a footnote.
Right, it's a bunch of seeming contradictions and we're left to pick and choose what actually matters, what we believe, and how we paint the final picture of these little people in their little lives.
I'm pretty sure visceral realism isn't even defined (by Poet Garcia Madero or anyone else) and I've avoided looking into Infrarealism (a/the? real poetry movement) because it's almost funnier to think that no one actually knows what their movement is but just sticks to it for reasons of their own.
They seem to have just copied the name from Cesárea Tinajero's movement which was about 40-odd years before the action in 1975. And since they can't find any of her poetry to read, not sure they have a clue what the definition is either. GM has a whole paragraph about the provenance of the name toward the end of his Nov 3rd entry, and says the name was 'in some ways a joke, and in some ways completely serious'. He also says there that the original visceral realists were rumored to have disappeared in the Sonoran desert... foreshadowing?
I also like how he uses the play on words real visceralistas and vicerrealistas, in spanish. As, vice realists, second in command to reality.
Yes! I also enjoyed that wordplay, but it doesn't sound like it got translated over to the English. In the first example (real visceralistas, which is the most common way they're described in the Spanish), it's more like they're real visceralists, (where visceralist is the noun, and real the adjective), rather than visceral realists (where the noun/modifer relationship is the other way). Whereas the movement is realismo visceral, which is visceral realism.
About differentiation of voices in the interviews - I noticed that in the Spanish, when the voice of the interviewee is European, he sprinkles in some European Spanish - both the vosotros form, as well as some slang ('coger' becomes follar, mota becomes porro) - ironically, the interviewees in this section mostly are not Spanish-speaking (they are French or British, and some of them note that they don't speak Spanish themselves) wonder if the translator made those voices more British (European English!)
I'm from Argentina, and while he tried he didn't quite nail the "voseo" we use here. There are some egregious errors, which is a shame cause he had argentine friends he could've asked. Maybe editorial meddling.
Did he try to nail the voseo somewhere? I'm blanking on who was Argentinian? I only noticed in the European chapters, where he used the vosotros form from Spain (different from the voseo from Argentina and some southern/central American countries, for others wondering) in just a couple of places, really it was just a tiny sprinkle, blink and you'd miss it (which apparently I did if he used voseo as well - or since you've read it before, will it be coming up later?).
When we get there, you'll have to point them out; while I've read lots of Argentinian lit so can easily recognize and comprehend voseo forms, that's very different from understanding nuanced use (which is maybe what Bolaño proves!)
My bad, the argentine character appears further ahead .
No worries, I was just wondering if something had slipped past me! When I get there, I may have questions for you... :)
Thanks for sharing—this is so interesting, and something I never would've picked up on, reading it in English!
I am really enjoying these interviews. I find each different perspective very well done and for the most part distinct. This is a reread for me so differentiating the characters is easier for me, I think the first time a lot of these characters blended and confused. I think it’s great that someone mentioned the fact that we (the readers) are the savage detectives searching for the story. The stories may lead nowhere but it’s the mood and feeling Bolano invokes. Beautiful melancholic slices of life. I don’t believe Bolano ever gave up poetry and as he once said in an interview some of the best poetry of the 20th century is in prose (e.g. Joyce and Proust). Each interview in this novel, like each section in 2666 separated by that dot (like a dinkus), is a stanza in this great epic.
I also really like the reader as detective idea!
as the interviews advance, among a few things I don't wanna spoil cause I've already read the novel, but it's interesting to think how come all the interviewed people are so eloquent, and what good memory they have. Is it honestly possible that they all talk in such a literary fashion (stuff like, idk, "he looked at me as if he was doing it from the bottom of the sea a thousand years ago, as if his bones would crumble as soon as he opened his mouth", or whatever)? is it likely they all remember SO MUCH? Amadeo's part especially, but because he's like the anchor: his night with them happened a lifetime ago, it happened outside of time it seems, and he can quote hours verbatim. But all the rest of the people, is the interviewer embellishing? were all these people coincidentally eloquent? were they poisoned by arturo and ulises?
I think it's fairly common in books for people to remember way more about past events than 'real' people. Virtually every book told by a narrator looking back at their life...
In this context I'd say it's likely wise to ponder if all the memories they're recounting are 100% accurate (well, with Quim he's rapidly going sideways, so definitely there).
As to their eloquence... well, almost all of our 'interviewees' are themselves poets, that part isn't particularly surprising to me!
Also, it seems like these may be "interviews" since each section has the heading of the person, location, date... but are they really "interviews"? If so, who is doing the interviewing (two decades worth & spanning continents & then compiling the pieces)?
Because there is an array of people speaking, after catching up this afternoon, I made an excel spreadsheet to list the person, the date, the location, & the chapter for each to see if would help me with those who return repeatedly to tell a section vs. those who are one-timers. (I went ahead & compiled this list for all of section two.)
Interestingly, time marches forward with all of the narrators, except for Amadeo whose story is (I guess) all from one night or meeting in January 1976. Amadeo starts the second section as well as ends it. So I guess things may come full-circle in the middle section (but I don't know that for sure).
Many times, but not always, Amadeo's sections start off a new chapter.
Not sure what any of that means, but it helped me to better grasp people & time in this middle section. Btw, there are 95 entries! No wonder it feels cacophonous. Lol.
Yeah Amadeo is the anchor, and the question of who is the interviewer(s) is one of the central aspects of the novel I think.
Wow, Stacia, what dedication!
I am a little behind in my reading (currently in chapter 5) but I had your comment in mind and had to chuckle at Joaquin Vazquez Amaral's comment about discussing poetry of the Han dynasty because if the text is an accurate rendition, he speaks in parentheses (because he gives dates for various Han poets).
I'm curious: what do you guys think of Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima based on what the interviewees have shared so far? The form is absolutely fascinating—a character study solely based on how others view them, in a way that shares both their absolute best traits and their absolute worst ones. I know they're complex characters, but I'm curious—do you like them based on what you've read? How do we reconcile all these different parts of them?
I wouldn’t say I like them but there are glimmers that help balance some of the negatives and at least bit at their youth and idealism. I’m very curious to see how/if they evolve as we read on.
They're certainly not saints but they seem like they try to be good people in spite of troubled minds. Like a lot of people, really. Like, sure Belano lied about Lima's experience as a sailor (chapter 8) but Lima did try hard to be of value and hey, he brought a little good luck!
It's also an interesting way to present characters, especially if Belano is supposedly a semi-autobiographical sketch of Bolaño. Is this how Bolaño thinks that others see him?
Fwiw, I do like Arturo Belano & Ulises Lima, generally speaking, as we move through the second section. If nothing else, they certainly have met or hang-out & interact with all sorts of cool people who are interesting in their own right; how each character sees Arturo & Ulises is a reflection of him- or herself, I think.
I know we're theoretically not supposed to compare the author as a person to those of their work, but on many occasions I also couldn't help but wonder if Bolaño inserted himself into these characters. Belano also fled Chile during the coup, like Bolaño, and his name couldn't be more similar. Plus I remember seeing somewhere (perhaps here) that Bolaño always considered himself a poet, before he considered himself a writer of others forms like the novelist. Curious to see if Bolaño has ever talked about the book in an interview or such.
While I have mixed-feelings on both Lima and Belano, my feelings towards Belano soured after Laura Jáuregui shared that he had slapped her for dumping him, and then he gaslit her, asking her if she'd "calmed down." A terrible moment in the book.
Agree, there are definitely some terrible moments in the book.
So, the interview with Amadeo, which we all really like - when did that even happen, if RB and UL took off in the Impala on New Year's Day and didn't reappear in DF till later that year then headed to Europe, from all other accounts - if it was on their way out of town, where are GM and Lupe??
Are the dates given on the interviews the dates of the events reported (this is what I'm gleaning), or the dates of the actual interviews, which would have to be some time later than the events described in them...?
Amadeo interview must have occurred on their way out of Mexico City. I picture GM and Lupe hiding out in a hotel room while RB and Lima are with Amadeo. The time line of the interviews is a good question though. Some of the interviews, going by the dates, seem to occur soon after or the year after the time of the story they tell.