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!
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.
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 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'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?
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...?
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!
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.
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 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'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?
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...?