Wow! Here we are at the. end of Part 2, with just one relatively short section left! Are you all excited to get back to our hero from Part 1?
Well, I won’t get ahead of myself. I am actually going to miss these chapters with their multiplicity of voices and perspectives. As I’ve said before: at first, it was disorienting and I wasn’t sure if anything was being constructed, but as we’ve gone on I’ve really enjoyed this flawed (deliberately, surely) way of presenting our main characters across two decades.
I also really appreciated that in this section we got some perspective (still second-hand) of Octavio Paz. Is there a reason, do you suppose, that Belano, Lima, Tinajero, and now Paz are presented in this way?
I apologize that this post is going up much later in the day, but I hope you’ll all find a bit of time to share your thoughts!
I just wanted to add a comment before tomorrow's discussion when we all will have finished the novel. I am about to head to a local beach bar to indulge in a few happy hour drinks before I come home to what will be an early bedtime, before rising in the early AM to finish The Savage Detectives.. It is at this moment that I am already anticipating the sense of loss that comes from completing an enjoyable book and it is felt stronger since I will also miss the comments shared by everyone in the group. Thankfully, there are so many more books to enjoy and I will get to read some of them with some of you whom I know, but for those of you I do not know from other activities, I do hope we cross reading paths in the future. Now on to some suicide tequila!
Trevor wrote, "I also really appreciated that in this section we got some perspective (still second-hand) of Octavio Paz. Is there a reason, do you suppose, that Belano, Lima, Tinajero, and now Paz are presented in this way?"
I haven't given it enough thought, but I think the approach humanizes them, takes them from legendary status.
First, something I couldn't comment the other week , a tattoo a friend of mine has: https://imgur.com/a/pXqx06H
And for the big question: who’s doing the interviews and why? Many people in the readalong have noticed the date discrepancies, so that’s one thing, but a tiny detail I can’t get over: when the self proclaimed expert on RV is interviewed he says that he’s never heard of Madero, so it’s likely Madero himself is doing the interviews, obsessed with his youth or whatever might have happened and this is his way of atoning. Cesárea wasn’t his obsession like it was for the other poets, but still. But the guy who could see numbers and wins the lottery calls the interviewer Belano, and I don’t know if it was a slip on Bolaño and his editor's part, as in he changed his mind midway through and forgot, or the interviewers are several people. The lawyer that speaks in latin hates Belano’s guts, there’s no way he’d accept being interviewed by him, so this is the only clue I feel could support that theory, although it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Belano would interview people so long after the events. Besides, how would he frame it? “I’m gonna ask you about your relationship to me / us, but talk about me in the third person, not the second”? They are the detectives looking for Cesárea, the interviewer/s is/are the detectives looking for them, we are the detectives trying to piece everything together.
There is still the possibility it is all invented, a fictional product of Madero, or even Belano, found and organized by Madero. Or it could be a discovered text by Belano after the fact. At this time, I am less interested in the who or why, than I am with my feelings or response to it all, for I think that would be consistent regardless of the origin. My feeling is more of what I felt earlier, the sense of time passing, youthful energy departing, hopes or dreams unrealized, the reality of mortality and of being forgotten. Times change. Yet I do not feel a sense of despair in the writing. There seems to be a sense of acceptance. Oops, sorry to digress.
the absolute perfect summary of that is Amadeo saying it's such a shame they don't make mezcal los suicidas anymore, a shame we grow old and good things gallop away from us.
There have to be multiple interviewers - we know Belano did one, but I don't think he did the others, at least not any of the ones where the interviewee was talking about Belano, as they'd know him (as in the one he did), not talking about him like he's someone else. He'd also already know the details of anything he was involved in, and the interviewees would also know that. Amadeo certainly wouldn't be telling the story the way he is to either B or L.
Does Belano even survive Africa? He's pretty much terminally ill in the jungle on top of being headed into a war zone when last we see him. And does Madero survive whatever goes down in Sonora that B&L spend the next 20 years fleeing? I mean, those of you who have finished the book know this one way or the other (don't spoil it for me!), but I've been wondering for a while if he never makes it out of the desert, since he so completely disappears from the story and everyone's memory. He's finally mentioned in the penultimate interview; so the interviewer knows him but the interviewee has never heard of him at all and insists no such person ever existed. Speaking of which, I felt like that penultimate interview came full circle - B&L in the 70s are tracking down the original visceral realists, and Ernesto is now a young student doing his thesis on the visceral realists from the 70s, who themselves have now faded into obscurity.
LOL, I can hardly wait! I'm kind of glad I didn't rush ahead; discussing this with you guys every week has been a highlight, and has definitely enhanced my enjoyment! (although unlike Nora I've also been enjoying the reading itself, happily).
This book, with all its clues and talking circularly around the central characters without getting directly to them, really lends itself to discussion, as we all see different bits and there isn't always a clear right or wrong even! I more and more think we are the detectives!
I always look forward to coming to this comment section after i read the weekly pages. It genuinely makes me happy to read what you all have enjoyed, it makes me stop and rethink things i’ve read during the week.
But i also can’t help feeling a little disappointed with myself for not finding the same enjoyment on my own.
Last week, I nearly convulsed out of boredom when the duel scene switched to focussing on a dirty hankie but reading your enjoyment helps me changing my mindset a bit.
I think, in hindsight, I can conceptually see the slapstickness of it but I can’t say that it works for me *while* reading it. I don’t know if it’s a cultural difference or the translation or that I’m just a humourless droid.
I think ultimately Bolaño’s tendency to load up his narrative with an inane amount of seemingly useless details is doing my head in a bit. Or when he painstakingly describes a scene then backtracks by saying ‘maybe it didn’t happen that way, or maybe I misheard it or dreamt it’ it properly drives me up the wall. Like why mate?
I think what really frustrates me is that I know he’s obviously capable of telling a good yarn, I was really engaged by the Valley-of-the-dolls-esque section of Edith Oster for instance (someone mentioned she was the girl who broke his heart but then he calls her the Andalusian girl, is that the same woman? Did we even meet her?).
Some sections do work for me but mostly it still feels like a slog, which I didn’t expect to feel in the latest stages of the novel. I have to say I’m happy we’re going back to the diary form next week, I missed that narration style.
I was told that the pay off was really good, so I’m hoping this will be all worth it.
Edith was very much not Andalusian - those are two separate women (although they both seem to have mental health struggles - does Belano have a type?), and I was never convinced Edith was necessarily the one he was referring to that broke his heart. I don't think we ever 'meet' the Andalusian woman - nor his ex-wife or son, for that matter. I think a lot of years go by where we get no details at all, and a lot of things happen that only get referred to in the past tense.
Just thinking out loud about what is revealed about Arturo Belano versus what is not revealed (and also to go back to your question Trevor, about the way generally Bolaño writes about the ‘big figures’ in this book), there seems to be a desire from Bolaño to ‘anti-herofy’ his characters. Which in turn makes me think about these ‘useless details’ and the way he zooms out of the big plot moments, in minor (the duel) and in major (the search of Cesarea Tinejo) ways, I wonder if it’s not the ‘anti-epic-ising’ of the text that supports that ‘anti-hero-fication’. Excuse the dodgy terms, can’t think of a better way to express this rn.
Thanks for clarifying this for me, i didnt think she was andalusian but maybe a nickname.
It’s really interesting the bits about his biography and his traits that are being told versus not being told (like that weird repetition of him being impotent or the fact he wrote two novels we know nothing about)
Edith had also moved back to the Americas and long since lost touch with Belano (her interview was 1990 and she'd left Europe, then been hospitalized and then living in both CA and DF over many years before that). The "Andalusian" woman was living in... Andalusia where he visits her just before he left for Africa in the (early-mid?) 90s. It is sometimes hard to figure out the times of the events vs. the time of the interviews... but he had time to meet and marry somebody-or-other, have a kid, and get divorced between Edith and the Andalusian.
From what I have heard, Bolaño created many myths about his own life. Some were partially true others seem to be total fabrications. Some examples are that he was a habitual drug user and another was that he was jailed during during Pinochet’s coup and was only released because his jailers were childhood friends. At the beginning of chapter 25, when Jacobo was in disbelief about the duel story, I was struck by the narrator not believing the duel story. So many layers upon layers with this book. Seems so very meta to have a narrator not believe a story that was told from multiple perspectives, so I am guessing we should believe the duel actually happened.
Just finished up. Some of the later parts of Belano's life were obscure and kind of confusing to me, which is unfortunate considering once Lima fades into obscurity in Mexico City, and all the other visceral realists just sort of settled into their lives, Bolano is all that's left. I don't even know if he's carrying that Visceral Realist torch in Spain, but he becomes almost the sole focus of the interviews aside from a couple breaks.
How you interpret his fate seems up to how you interpreted him as a person. I saw him as a generally good-intentioned guy, with mental health issues (depression?), who as time went on lost sight of what he actually wanted - something that happens to most of us as time wears us out. The myriad of other health problems had to have worn him down, too. As a result he kind of floated around here and there just getting by.
In Africa, it seems he reached some kind of ephiphany, or understanding of himself, but here's where I got a bit of a disconnect: Belano said "...I wanted to die, but I realized it was better not to." Urenda then follows this with "Only then did I fully understand that Lopez Lobo was going to go with the soldiers the next day, not the civilians, and that Belano wasn't going to let him die alone."
Honestly, it seems perfectly in character for Belano to stick by someone until the bitter end, but why choose to join someone in their suicide if you realize it's better to live? I'd be interested to hear how other people interpreted Belano's fate!
I also didn't quite grasp the significance of the final Salvatierra section. I looked up Simonel and all I found was that it could be a variant of Simon (of course), from Shimeon, Hebrew for "one who harkens." But if that's what it is, I still don't quite get it. Insight on that would be nice to see too.
I had to go looking for 'simonel'! I read it in Spanish, and the sleeping one said it, so I parsed it as a 'yesmumblemumble' kind of thing (since sí is 'yes' in Spanish) in sleepy response to 'is it worth it?'. It's not a name; it's not capitalized. The word has no meaning I can find in Spanish, which is likely why it wasn't translated, but if it is some kind of mumbled 'yeahmmwha' it doesn't work in English.
Interesting, I could probably buy that. Strangely, it is capitalized in the Picador publication of the book, which is why I thought maybe it was supposed to be a name at first.
It's definitely not capitalized in Spanish, and so not a name. They were dumb to capitalize it in English, that just makes it even more confusing.
I don't remember seeing it earlier, but the explanation you attach makes sense to me that it's kind of like 'yesno', which kind of makes sense in the mumbled sleepy 'yeahnohuh?' kind of way, in response to a question you haven't really parsed because you're half asleep. Heh, or it reminds me of this Midwestern way of answering: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eHCMXT9dYQI
Do you have any idea where it is in the first part? Now I'd like to go back and find it, lol.
It's on the entry for December 14, one of those entries where you know there's more story there but all you get is some cryptic hints that maybe some things happened "off-page". I can't say it helps make it any clearer :) haha.
Thanks! I'll tell you how I'd translate that whole short entry (and I'd translate 'simonel' which is explained here, perhaps so that we'd understand this non-word when it came up again...)
"No one gives ANYTHING to the visceral realists. Not scholarships, not space in their magazines, not even invitations to go to book presentations or recitals.
Belano and Lima are like two ghosts.
If yeah means yes and nope means no, what does yeahnope mean?
I don't feel very good today."
You could substitute other English slang words for yes and no, but I can't come up with anything as colorful as the Mexican ones off the top of my head, lol. But leaving it in Spanish and then capitalizing it like it's some kind of proper noun? Yeah, nope.
Thanks! That helps, seeing how it was presented in the original Spanish. Don't know if we got an "answer" but maybe there wasn't supposed to be one to begin with. "Is it worth it?" "Yeahno"
Maybe we'll decide for ourselves if it was worth it in Part III?
It's interesting that you use the word ghosts for Belano & Lima, Erin. Because I was coming to type my comments & my overall thought (for chapters 24 to the end of part 2) is that Belano & Lima are ghosts. Ghosts to others, ghosts in their own lives.
I fell behind by one week’s section because of a conference I was preparing for so I will try to catch up in the next day or so! Have missed the characters a lot, it’s so easy to get attached to them.
I just wanted to add a comment before tomorrow's discussion when we all will have finished the novel. I am about to head to a local beach bar to indulge in a few happy hour drinks before I come home to what will be an early bedtime, before rising in the early AM to finish The Savage Detectives.. It is at this moment that I am already anticipating the sense of loss that comes from completing an enjoyable book and it is felt stronger since I will also miss the comments shared by everyone in the group. Thankfully, there are so many more books to enjoy and I will get to read some of them with some of you whom I know, but for those of you I do not know from other activities, I do hope we cross reading paths in the future. Now on to some suicide tequila!
Trevor wrote, "I also really appreciated that in this section we got some perspective (still second-hand) of Octavio Paz. Is there a reason, do you suppose, that Belano, Lima, Tinajero, and now Paz are presented in this way?"
I haven't given it enough thought, but I think the approach humanizes them, takes them from legendary status.
First, something I couldn't comment the other week , a tattoo a friend of mine has: https://imgur.com/a/pXqx06H
And for the big question: who’s doing the interviews and why? Many people in the readalong have noticed the date discrepancies, so that’s one thing, but a tiny detail I can’t get over: when the self proclaimed expert on RV is interviewed he says that he’s never heard of Madero, so it’s likely Madero himself is doing the interviews, obsessed with his youth or whatever might have happened and this is his way of atoning. Cesárea wasn’t his obsession like it was for the other poets, but still. But the guy who could see numbers and wins the lottery calls the interviewer Belano, and I don’t know if it was a slip on Bolaño and his editor's part, as in he changed his mind midway through and forgot, or the interviewers are several people. The lawyer that speaks in latin hates Belano’s guts, there’s no way he’d accept being interviewed by him, so this is the only clue I feel could support that theory, although it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Belano would interview people so long after the events. Besides, how would he frame it? “I’m gonna ask you about your relationship to me / us, but talk about me in the third person, not the second”? They are the detectives looking for Cesárea, the interviewer/s is/are the detectives looking for them, we are the detectives trying to piece everything together.
There is still the possibility it is all invented, a fictional product of Madero, or even Belano, found and organized by Madero. Or it could be a discovered text by Belano after the fact. At this time, I am less interested in the who or why, than I am with my feelings or response to it all, for I think that would be consistent regardless of the origin. My feeling is more of what I felt earlier, the sense of time passing, youthful energy departing, hopes or dreams unrealized, the reality of mortality and of being forgotten. Times change. Yet I do not feel a sense of despair in the writing. There seems to be a sense of acceptance. Oops, sorry to digress.
the absolute perfect summary of that is Amadeo saying it's such a shame they don't make mezcal los suicidas anymore, a shame we grow old and good things gallop away from us.
There have to be multiple interviewers - we know Belano did one, but I don't think he did the others, at least not any of the ones where the interviewee was talking about Belano, as they'd know him (as in the one he did), not talking about him like he's someone else. He'd also already know the details of anything he was involved in, and the interviewees would also know that. Amadeo certainly wouldn't be telling the story the way he is to either B or L.
Does Belano even survive Africa? He's pretty much terminally ill in the jungle on top of being headed into a war zone when last we see him. And does Madero survive whatever goes down in Sonora that B&L spend the next 20 years fleeing? I mean, those of you who have finished the book know this one way or the other (don't spoil it for me!), but I've been wondering for a while if he never makes it out of the desert, since he so completely disappears from the story and everyone's memory. He's finally mentioned in the penultimate interview; so the interviewer knows him but the interviewee has never heard of him at all and insists no such person ever existed. Speaking of which, I felt like that penultimate interview came full circle - B&L in the 70s are tracking down the original visceral realists, and Ernesto is now a young student doing his thesis on the visceral realists from the 70s, who themselves have now faded into obscurity.
Oh you are gonna love the ending.
LOL, I can hardly wait! I'm kind of glad I didn't rush ahead; discussing this with you guys every week has been a highlight, and has definitely enhanced my enjoyment! (although unlike Nora I've also been enjoying the reading itself, happily).
This book, with all its clues and talking circularly around the central characters without getting directly to them, really lends itself to discussion, as we all see different bits and there isn't always a clear right or wrong even! I more and more think we are the detectives!
I think there are multiple interviewers, including Belano and Madero - I also picked up on it being Madero in that interview.
I always look forward to coming to this comment section after i read the weekly pages. It genuinely makes me happy to read what you all have enjoyed, it makes me stop and rethink things i’ve read during the week.
But i also can’t help feeling a little disappointed with myself for not finding the same enjoyment on my own.
Last week, I nearly convulsed out of boredom when the duel scene switched to focussing on a dirty hankie but reading your enjoyment helps me changing my mindset a bit.
I think, in hindsight, I can conceptually see the slapstickness of it but I can’t say that it works for me *while* reading it. I don’t know if it’s a cultural difference or the translation or that I’m just a humourless droid.
I think ultimately Bolaño’s tendency to load up his narrative with an inane amount of seemingly useless details is doing my head in a bit. Or when he painstakingly describes a scene then backtracks by saying ‘maybe it didn’t happen that way, or maybe I misheard it or dreamt it’ it properly drives me up the wall. Like why mate?
I think what really frustrates me is that I know he’s obviously capable of telling a good yarn, I was really engaged by the Valley-of-the-dolls-esque section of Edith Oster for instance (someone mentioned she was the girl who broke his heart but then he calls her the Andalusian girl, is that the same woman? Did we even meet her?).
Some sections do work for me but mostly it still feels like a slog, which I didn’t expect to feel in the latest stages of the novel. I have to say I’m happy we’re going back to the diary form next week, I missed that narration style.
I was told that the pay off was really good, so I’m hoping this will be all worth it.
Edith was very much not Andalusian - those are two separate women (although they both seem to have mental health struggles - does Belano have a type?), and I was never convinced Edith was necessarily the one he was referring to that broke his heart. I don't think we ever 'meet' the Andalusian woman - nor his ex-wife or son, for that matter. I think a lot of years go by where we get no details at all, and a lot of things happen that only get referred to in the past tense.
Just thinking out loud about what is revealed about Arturo Belano versus what is not revealed (and also to go back to your question Trevor, about the way generally Bolaño writes about the ‘big figures’ in this book), there seems to be a desire from Bolaño to ‘anti-herofy’ his characters. Which in turn makes me think about these ‘useless details’ and the way he zooms out of the big plot moments, in minor (the duel) and in major (the search of Cesarea Tinejo) ways, I wonder if it’s not the ‘anti-epic-ising’ of the text that supports that ‘anti-hero-fication’. Excuse the dodgy terms, can’t think of a better way to express this rn.
Thanks for clarifying this for me, i didnt think she was andalusian but maybe a nickname.
It’s really interesting the bits about his biography and his traits that are being told versus not being told (like that weird repetition of him being impotent or the fact he wrote two novels we know nothing about)
Edith had also moved back to the Americas and long since lost touch with Belano (her interview was 1990 and she'd left Europe, then been hospitalized and then living in both CA and DF over many years before that). The "Andalusian" woman was living in... Andalusia where he visits her just before he left for Africa in the (early-mid?) 90s. It is sometimes hard to figure out the times of the events vs. the time of the interviews... but he had time to meet and marry somebody-or-other, have a kid, and get divorced between Edith and the Andalusian.
Yes i’m majorly confused by the timeline, really appreciate the commenters here trying to figure it out!
From what I have heard, Bolaño created many myths about his own life. Some were partially true others seem to be total fabrications. Some examples are that he was a habitual drug user and another was that he was jailed during during Pinochet’s coup and was only released because his jailers were childhood friends. At the beginning of chapter 25, when Jacobo was in disbelief about the duel story, I was struck by the narrator not believing the duel story. So many layers upon layers with this book. Seems so very meta to have a narrator not believe a story that was told from multiple perspectives, so I am guessing we should believe the duel actually happened.
Just finished up. Some of the later parts of Belano's life were obscure and kind of confusing to me, which is unfortunate considering once Lima fades into obscurity in Mexico City, and all the other visceral realists just sort of settled into their lives, Bolano is all that's left. I don't even know if he's carrying that Visceral Realist torch in Spain, but he becomes almost the sole focus of the interviews aside from a couple breaks.
How you interpret his fate seems up to how you interpreted him as a person. I saw him as a generally good-intentioned guy, with mental health issues (depression?), who as time went on lost sight of what he actually wanted - something that happens to most of us as time wears us out. The myriad of other health problems had to have worn him down, too. As a result he kind of floated around here and there just getting by.
In Africa, it seems he reached some kind of ephiphany, or understanding of himself, but here's where I got a bit of a disconnect: Belano said "...I wanted to die, but I realized it was better not to." Urenda then follows this with "Only then did I fully understand that Lopez Lobo was going to go with the soldiers the next day, not the civilians, and that Belano wasn't going to let him die alone."
Honestly, it seems perfectly in character for Belano to stick by someone until the bitter end, but why choose to join someone in their suicide if you realize it's better to live? I'd be interested to hear how other people interpreted Belano's fate!
I also didn't quite grasp the significance of the final Salvatierra section. I looked up Simonel and all I found was that it could be a variant of Simon (of course), from Shimeon, Hebrew for "one who harkens." But if that's what it is, I still don't quite get it. Insight on that would be nice to see too.
I had to go looking for 'simonel'! I read it in Spanish, and the sleeping one said it, so I parsed it as a 'yesmumblemumble' kind of thing (since sí is 'yes' in Spanish) in sleepy response to 'is it worth it?'. It's not a name; it's not capitalized. The word has no meaning I can find in Spanish, which is likely why it wasn't translated, but if it is some kind of mumbled 'yeahmmwha' it doesn't work in English.
Anyone else have a theory?
Interesting, I could probably buy that. Strangely, it is capitalized in the Picador publication of the book, which is why I thought maybe it was supposed to be a name at first.
I did find this, which doesn't necessarily offer more insight, but apparently the "word" appears in the first section of the book? I missed it, if so: https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2007/09/bolaos-simonel.html
It's definitely not capitalized in Spanish, and so not a name. They were dumb to capitalize it in English, that just makes it even more confusing.
I don't remember seeing it earlier, but the explanation you attach makes sense to me that it's kind of like 'yesno', which kind of makes sense in the mumbled sleepy 'yeahnohuh?' kind of way, in response to a question you haven't really parsed because you're half asleep. Heh, or it reminds me of this Midwestern way of answering: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eHCMXT9dYQI
Do you have any idea where it is in the first part? Now I'd like to go back and find it, lol.
It's on the entry for December 14, one of those entries where you know there's more story there but all you get is some cryptic hints that maybe some things happened "off-page". I can't say it helps make it any clearer :) haha.
Thanks! I'll tell you how I'd translate that whole short entry (and I'd translate 'simonel' which is explained here, perhaps so that we'd understand this non-word when it came up again...)
"No one gives ANYTHING to the visceral realists. Not scholarships, not space in their magazines, not even invitations to go to book presentations or recitals.
Belano and Lima are like two ghosts.
If yeah means yes and nope means no, what does yeahnope mean?
I don't feel very good today."
You could substitute other English slang words for yes and no, but I can't come up with anything as colorful as the Mexican ones off the top of my head, lol. But leaving it in Spanish and then capitalizing it like it's some kind of proper noun? Yeah, nope.
Thanks! That helps, seeing how it was presented in the original Spanish. Don't know if we got an "answer" but maybe there wasn't supposed to be one to begin with. "Is it worth it?" "Yeahno"
Maybe we'll decide for ourselves if it was worth it in Part III?
It's interesting that you use the word ghosts for Belano & Lima, Erin. Because I was coming to type my comments & my overall thought (for chapters 24 to the end of part 2) is that Belano & Lima are ghosts. Ghosts to others, ghosts in their own lives.
I fell behind by one week’s section because of a conference I was preparing for so I will try to catch up in the next day or so! Have missed the characters a lot, it’s so easy to get attached to them.