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The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer (Translator)

4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 · rating details · 11,521 ratings · 1,679 reviews

New Year’s Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the obscure, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. A violent showdown in the Sonora desert turns search to flight; twenty years later Belano and Lima are still on the run.

The explosive first long work b...more

Hardcover, 577 pages

Published April 3rd 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1998)

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Aug 05, 2012 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: groupthink, 2012, reviewed, thrill-me-chill-me-fulfill-me

I am so late to this party!

Sorry, I meant to share my review of The Savage Detectives sooner but things got sort of crazy. I was enjoying a Cuba Libre at El Loto de Quintana on Avenida Guerrero near the Glorieta de Insurgentes with Ian Graye’s visceral reviewers, the self-proclaimed readers of the Goodreads avant-garde. We were discussing the poetry of Alberto Bonifaz Nuño and López Velarde and even the butch queer Manuel José de la Cruz from San Luis Potosí when I noticed the waitress Jacinta R...more I am so late to this party!

Sorry, I meant to share my review of The Savage Detectives sooner but things got sort of crazy. I was enjoying a Cuba Libre at El Loto de Quintana on Avenida Guerrero near the Glorieta de Insurgentes with Ian Graye’s visceral reviewers, the self-proclaimed readers of the Goodreads avant-garde. We were discussing the poetry of Alberto Bonifaz Nuño and López Velarde and even the butch queer Manuel José de la Cruz from San Luis Potosí when I noticed the waitress Jacinta Rúbin eyeing me from behind the bar. It was clear what she wanted. Her English may not have been the best, but the meaning of her language required no translation. I quickly ordered a shot of tequila, downed it, and followed Señorita Rúbin to the back storage closet. The wet, sloppy blow job she gave me was amazing and I wanted to tell her I loved her but instead I cleaned myself up and left the bar through the back alleyway, wandering over toward the Encrucijada Veracruzana on Calle Bucareli in Colonia Lindavista. It was there that I indulged in a few more Cuba Libres, which undoubtedly caused me to receive looks of disgust from some of the other patrons, but it nonetheless strengthened my resolve to return to El Loto de Quintana. When I entered the bar, I noticed that the visceral reviewers had left, but Señorita Rúbin was still there, and when she finished her shift she asked me to accompany her back to the first-story flat she rented in the seedy part of Coyoacán reserved mostly for the city’s prostitutes and drug dealers, and I went. She asked me if I was a virgin and I told her no, which was a lie and I’m not sure why I said it except that it felt like the right answer at the time. We fucked six times between midnight and 4 a.m. which must be some kind of record. In the morning I returned to Calle Bucareli where the visceral reviewers were eating their breakfast, already having discussed their reviews of The Savage Detectives, but even though I am late to this party (DAMN YOU, JACINTA RÚBIN!), my entry into their collected works has been graciously accepted. It is therefore time to present my review.

But first, let us order an El Diablo and talk a bit about some poetry...

Jason Morais, West Grand Avenue, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, August 2012. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mary and Kris came to see me at my small studio apartment in Chapultepec where I often barricaded myself for days writing love letters and poetry to the waitress Jacinta Rúbin, which I never planned to send. They came to ask about the three Steves. The Steves had left México the previous year and hadn’t been seen since. We found this diary, Mary said, it belonged to one of the Steves, the one they called Hermano Penkí. I told them to sit down, offered them a drink, some Los Suicidas mezcal, a favorite of mine from a distillery that had gone out of business long before the Steves disappeared, but of which I had the sagacity to stock up on and it was only occasions like this along with my own excessive drinking when writing letters to Jacinta Rúbin that threatened to extinguish my supply. The diary was unremarkable, a simple square book with worn edges. I had never seen it before but knew what it would contain. I knew it would heighten the curiosity of its reader to the whereabouts of the three Steves, and even while it may not reveal the truth, it would surely point to me as the one most likely to know it. I read the diary slowly, trying to buy time and hoping to imbue myself with the fortitude to fend off questions from the young señoritas meant to ascertain what information I was not yet ready to give, information that would inevitably lead the conversation over the disappearance of the three Steves back to Jacinta Rúbin.

This review is as much about Roberto Bolaño’s novel as the novel itself is about visceral realism. In tribute to Jenn(ifer) and her style of song inclusion, here is the appropriate accompaniment to this Goodreads “review”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soHq5-...(less)

73 likes · like · see review

Aug 06, 2012 s.penkevich rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The dreams of the dreamers

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Jenn(ifer)

Shelves: road_map_of_life

‘Youth is a scam’

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) created a very special novel with The Savage Detectives. The novel is constantly moving, grinding slowly across the years steady and sure as a freight train, carrying the baggage of our existence towards the inevitable finality of life. During the course of my reading, people would misinterpret the title and tell me they enjoyed a good crime thriller and inquire into the plot of the book I clutched lovingly in my hands. While this is no ‘whodunnit’ nov...more

60 likes · like · see review

Jun 22, 2008 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: probably the young, and definitely the formerly young; people who like to read

Recommended to Jessica by: a few of my favorite booksters

Shelves: arturos, favorites, happyendings, groups-of-people, love-and-other-indoor-sports

I'll bet a lot of us walk around with some real concrete ideas about just who it is we could possibly fall in love with. Maybe the specifics of our ideas change over time and even become less rigid, but still we maintain that we know on some level what it is that we want. Maybe when we're nineteen, we're convinced we could only ever truly love a man with a neck tattoo who sings lead in an Oi! band and has great feminist politics and knows how to cook. Or maybe our criteria are purely negative, a...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Ian Graye rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews-5-stars, reviews, read-2012, bolano

What’s a Giggle Amongst Family and Friends?

I bought this book 15 months ago. I finished it yesterday. It started off as a crisp, thin-leafed semi-brick whose 648 pages intimidated me. I only got the courage to read it when a discussion group gave me the impetus I needed. Now, it sits less crisp, but read, on my desk, wondering who will read it next. Like me, it’s 15 months older, but we are both easing into middle age and are still making new friends. We two are friends now, as if we’ve known ea...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: romantic dogs

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: MGK

Shelves: own, gr-group-coreads, the-tops, read-in-2012, self-discovery, game-changers, you-should-read-this, gr-friends-recommend, 5-f-ing-stars, my-reviews-that-dont-suck

I want to sum up my thoughts about this book using a quote from its pages…

“…What a shame that time passes, don’t you think? What a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.”

But that seems insufficient. How about a song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLx__X...

That doesn’t quite do it either. How about a poem?

SELF PORTRAIT AT TWENTY YEARS
I set off, I took up the march and never knew
where it might take me. I went full of fear,
my stomach dropped, my head was bu...more

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Apr 06, 2008 brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

a reviewer wrote that she enjoyed Savage Detectives, but complained that it was 'about nothing' -- that she read nearly 700 pages and left with this notion proves her a total jackass and describes precisely why this is a great book: as with a life, Savage Detectives cannot be reduced to a few rote themes or ideas; it's a messy, sprawling jackson-pollock-painting of a book.

kept at a distance from our main characters, we hear testimonials by various people who knew them through different chapters...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Kris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, contemporary, 1001, latin-america, chile, favorites

I am struggling over writing this review. The Savage Detectives has become an important book to me, and I’m trying to find the best way to put a whole series of associations, emotions, and thoughts into words about how it has entered into my life and mind and heart. I have a tendency to hide behind a lot of formal analysis when I am writing, but I don’t think that approach is good enough for this review.

I just met a close friend from graduate school for dinner last week - he now lives in San Fr...more I am struggling over writing this review. The Savage Detectives has become an important book to me, and I’m trying to find the best way to put a whole series of associations, emotions, and thoughts into words about how it has entered into my life and mind and heart. I have a tendency to hide behind a lot of formal analysis when I am writing, but I don’t think that approach is good enough for this review.

I just met a close friend from graduate school for dinner last week - he now lives in San Francisco, and we don’t get to see each other all that often. We entered the restaurant soaking wet from a tropical-style thunderstorm that hit just as we got out of the cab. As we were drying off (courtesy of a pile of extra napkins that the sympathetic host gave us), we reconnected with each other as if no time had passed since we navigating the highs and lows of graduate school together. It was the 1990s, and we were like sponges, soaking up ideas and books and movies and good meals together. We were politically active too, campaigning together to elect Clinton, writing a parody of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas to try to shake off the sting of the 1994 US elections that swept Gingrich and a wave of other Republicans into the House, and commiserating with each other over the latest offensive legislative initiative. It was an exciting, scary, enthralling time to be alive.

As I was talking with my friend over old times and new, our conversation kept resonating with The Savage Detectives. In our mid-40's, we were looking back across our lives, with affection for our younger selves, but also with understanding over how we had grown and changed over the years, and how the world had changed with us. In The Savage Detectives, as Bolaño pays homage to his younger self and his comrades in poetry, there’s a maturity and wisdom mixed in with the affection, humor, excitement, and sadness that he brings to his exploration of the Visceral Realists, who came together to form an artistic-political-counter-cultural movement in Mexico City in the 1970s, similar to the Infrarealist movement that Bolaño belonged to. Bolaño represents himself through two characters in the novel - Juan García Madero, a young, naive student who navigates sexual, artistic, and emotional transitions and rites of passage, and Arturo Belano who, along with Ulises Lima, heads up the Visceral Realists, a group of young poets who are striving to forward political and artistic aims through their poetry.

The novel is structured around three sections: a first and a third section narrated by Juan through diary entries, and a long second section, in which Visceral Realists and their friends, family members, associates, and enemies come together to tell their story through interviews or oral histories. There are many themes you can explore through the novel -- the Latin American poetry scene, the formation of youth cultures and countercultures, gender relations, sexuality, and rites of passage, the split between ideals and reality, how friends grow up, grow apart, and sometimes re-connect. To me, though, what I take from the novel more than anything else is a re-immersion in the excitement of youth, with its discoveries, explorations, complications, and questions. There’s a dynamism throughout the novel, and while Bolaño is willing to poke gentle fun at himself, he also recaptures the excitement, energy, and ideals that fueled the Visceral Realists.

There is another personal and special meaning of The Savage Detectives for me. I joined a Goodreads group read moderated by Ian Graye (see http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/7... ). In a short period of time, through discussions of the novel, posts of music we loved, and some very creative collaborative interviews, we formed a tight-knot group of fellow adventurers. I am grateful that everyone was so welcoming to me, a relative newcomer. The group exhibited camaraderie, warmth, creativity, intelligence and humor; I can’t imagine a better group to have read The Savage Detectives with, or a better novel to have read with this group. Many thanks to all of you for a truly special experience. It’s worth coming out from behind my barrier of academic analysis to say that! (less)

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Oct 09, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core, latin-american, doorstopper

I enjoyed 2666(5 stars) more than this. 2666 is more engaging, brutal and with far more interesting characters. 2666 is also more cohesive and the plot is more intricately built. However, The Savage Detectives has more heart being basically a story of a male friendship. Then what made this friendship between two poets Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima more touching was the fact that this was based on real-life friendship between Roberto Bolano (as Arturo Belano) and his friend Mario Santiago (as Uli...more I enjoyed 2666(5 stars) more than this. 2666 is more engaging, brutal and with far more interesting characters. 2666 is also more cohesive and the plot is more intricately built. However, The Savage Detectives has more heart being basically a story of a male friendship. Then what made this friendship between two poets Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima more touching was the fact that this was based on real-life friendship between Roberto Bolano (as Arturo Belano) and his friend Mario Santiago (as Ulises Lima).

This book is very popular among my foreigner friends here in Goodreads. So I will not write a long detailed synopsis of the plot anymore. If 2666 has 5 sub-parts, this has only 3. The first and the last are narrated by a young poet called Juan Garcia Madero while the middle part is narrated by 50+ people who have at some points in their lives crossed the paths of the Belano and Lima. Think of a long queue during a eulogy for a popular man. It's so happened that the people there deliver no-holds-barred eulogies. No-holds-barred because the people who speak in front of the coffin say not just the good things the dead man did did while he was still alive but even the bad ones, the dead man's intimate secrets and even their unfounded opinions.

Roberto Bolano was a genius. He was part of the new batch of Latin American writers who gave a fresher feel on the novels in that part of the world that used to be dominated by the magical realism writers led by my favorite Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Their styles are different and I do not want to take sides. I love them both.

Bolano was also one of those writers who are not afraid to write long novels. He said that "the longer the writer's book is, the higher is the chance that inconsistencies can come out." However, he was not afraid to expose himself, precisely because there was no inconsistency in both long novels of him that I've read. His storytelling is flawless and his imagination is boundless. There is basically no fault that I could cite in either of these two wonderful works.

My next read will definitely be his Amulet. Then because of this The Savage Detectives, I will buy his other book: By Night in Chile. When will this buying and reading ever stop?(less)

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Feb 08, 2013 Seth Hahne rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the great troubles with reading borrowed books is that when it comes time to write about such a book, there are no quotations ready and at hand. One cannot browse pages looking for that one line of dialogue, that single narrative flourish, that lone twist of phrase with which to properly set off ones review. Borrowed books present a problem of weight and heft for those who would review such books. And The Savage Detectives was certainly a borrowed book, lent from the library for three wee...more

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Nov 08, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, tortured-artists, voluminous, latin-american

I am told this novel made some minor splash upon its publication. I see no evidence to support this claim. I see no particular swelling of interest in this lowly text on Goodreads. I see no ecstatic over-the-top declarations of lust for this novel. No effusive dissertations conveying the message “I totally bought into the hype and splooged fifty times over this book like Ron Jeremy catching his reflection in the pupils of a malnourished Cuban trollop.” I see no substantial body of scholarship ag...more I am told this novel made some minor splash upon its publication. I see no evidence to support this claim. I see no particular swelling of interest in this lowly text on Goodreads. I see no ecstatic over-the-top declarations of lust for this novel. No effusive dissertations conveying the message “I totally bought into the hype and splooged fifty times over this book like Ron Jeremy catching his reflection in the pupils of a malnourished Cuban trollop.” I see no substantial body of scholarship agglutinating on the first two review pages alone. I see no pitiful deniers, squeaking their dissenting humbuggery about the overrated and overhyped nature of the prose and so on and boo-hoo, swallowed up in box after box of Bolaño devotees on their knees licking the long-dead man’s Chilean loafers as though hoping to absorb some essence of the punchdrunk poet’s furious pace, first-person range and painful aversion to paragraph breaks. I see no evidence of this whatso— Oh no, wait . . . there they are. Oops.

What of this? A structural sandwich. The bread: a road-trip narrative about a poetry nerd with a penchant for obscure technical words for verse forms and metrical structures that explodes into violence. The filling: an nth number of first-person interview-style intersecting stories about the short-lived Mexican experimental poetry movement visceral realism. More unreliable narrators than the Bible. More icky sex than a caterpillar’s boudoir. More characters per page than Catch-22. A Mexican Thousand and One Nights of tales, yarns, confessions, digressions, hoodwinks, self-reference, neverending stories and long blog-like rambles. A personally insulting deficit of paragraph breaks. An entertained but infuriated MJ. A far-too-long second part which this gringo abandoned on p481 to move into the final section (which he left on p550 due to mounting boredom). A loquacious universe-sized novel of sprawling scope and ambition that collapses under its own weight but leaves an indelible imprint on the reader’s psyche. An aperitif compared to the five-square-meals of 2666.(less)

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Aug 16, 2012 Stephen M rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ocean-of-noise

(This review has some vague spoilers, just as a warning. It’s really tough for me to do a proper analysis without spoilers.)

This is a brilliant book. This is a frustrating book.

This is due to the brilliance and the frustration of its second section, the largest section of the Chilean born Roberto Bolaño’s debut novel. This, the book’s namesake, is a sprawling and splintered affair that features an array of thrilling locales that would make Roland Emmerich’s budget committee blush. From Mexico to...more

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Dec 14, 2008 Tosh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well first of all it took me forever to read this novel. Not because it was boring or even great, just the fact that the structure of the novel made me put it down and read other things. For one, it's an incredible guide to avant-garde literature that has affected the world or at least my world. The only names I didn't get were one's from Latin Americas. I knew all the French references. It makes me want to list all the authors that are mentioned and get their books. There should be a book on th...more

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Oct 11, 2010 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2008, the-new-new-new-new-thing, why-werent-you-better

I wish there was a proper way to splutter in written form. I mean, it's not that I didn't like this book, really. I certainly didn't not like it. I just... just... I dunno, I guess I just didn't get it like everyone else seems to've. As I said somewhere else, given that everyone really lost their shit over this book (I mean, did you see brian's review? Or Andrew's? Or freaking Josh's??), I guess I was really expecting to have my whole brain rearranged by it, like when I first read Cortàzar. And...more I wish there was a proper way to splutter in written form. I mean, it's not that I didn't like this book, really. I certainly didn't not like it. I just... just... I dunno, I guess I just didn't get it like everyone else seems to've. As I said somewhere else, given that everyone really lost their shit over this book (I mean, did you see brian's review? Or Andrew's? Or freaking Josh's??), I guess I was really expecting to have my whole brain rearranged by it, like when I first read Cortàzar. And that definitely didn't happen.

I think that part of it was the format. First of all, for those who don't know, this book is told as kind of an oral history of these two poets. Spanning several decades, seemingly everyone who ever knew Ulises Lima or Arturo Belano, even for just a little while, tells a story about his or her own life, usually featuring one of the poets prominently. Which is interesting as a technique, but makes necessarily for a very uneven flow. Some of the passages were incredibly moving, lasting pages and pages and telling terrible or wonderful stories with great emotion, exploring fascinating ideas or just recounting incredible discussions or moments of thought. But others were really short, or really boring, or really confusing, or hard to mesh in with what I thought I was beginning to know about Lima and Belano. There were a lot of names to keep track of, which always gives me trouble (my fault, not Bolaño's, of course), and I may as well mention that I was chewing through this book for an awfully long time, so that also makes it harder to keep a somewhat ragged storyline straight. But the biggest problem with the 'oral history' angle, for me, is that you have a million people talking about our main guys, but you never hear them actually speak. That makes me just incredibly frustrated. They are the protagonists! They have led more or less epic lives! They have done a lot of questionable — and downright stupid — things! And of course amazing things too! I want to hear them speak!! Does this make me crazy? It just seems so unfair to have to always view them through a thick filter, or a million over-layered thin ones. I have said elsewhere that reading, for me, is a matter of getting as close as I can to a story, a character, a feeling. And so keeping me at arm's length for six hundred pages... well, it's just not going to keep me entranced, or (sometimes) even focused.

I also (and this is a much smaller complaint) found the main characters and most of their friends to be kind of a bunch of narcissistic jerks. They all sleep around like crazy and cheat on their spouses and sell or do drugs and let their parents support them and their children get taken care of by someone else, and then they just leave, regardless of who is depending on them for what. Saying that probably makes me sound rather maudlin or conventional (and I'm not saying that it doesn't also describe my friends), but whatev, it's how I felt. Just another way that I was unable to really give myself over to this book.

So that's my main speculation for my reluctance to droolingly adore this book, which so many others have done, and which I am usually so eager to do. So I'm sorry, brian. Sorry Andrew and Josh. Sorry Bolaño. I feel such guilt when I don't like a book that I've really been primed to adore. But it just didn't happen for me this time. Sigh.

(and p.s., since I'm referencing all my GoodReads friends who reviewed this so glowingly, check out Ryan, who reviewed this back in March and basically told my review how stupid it is before I even wrote it.)(less)

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Jul 09, 2008 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm writing this, sadly, not while sitting atop floatwood scribbling into the salty breeze of some nameless sea, but rather staring into my computer screen at a metrosexual Budapest café with expensive lamps and wi-fi. It's exactly the type of café that Roberto Bolaño pleaded his fellow poets to abandon in the 1976 infrarrealist manifesto "Leave it all behind once again, throw yourselves to the roads."

There is no reason for me to copy and paste Wikipedia's biography of Bolaño's life. The man was...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Mary by: Ian Graye

Shelves: fiction, 2012

"Always remember you are unique, just like everyone else." Author: Unknown

There are no true individuals. Bolaño knew this.

Juan García Madero did not know this.

When we were 17 years old, none of us knew this either. Sometimes when we're 30 we still don't know this. And if we're lucky/unlucky/smart/stupid maybe when we're 60 we won't know this then either.

This book is a lingering smoke cloud, a feeling that will not go away, impending doom?, recognition?, a satire of the literary world and a hom...more

28 likes · like · see review

Sep 14, 2012 Garima rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, to-re-read, books-to-read-before-you-die, its-not-you-its-meta-or-gfhrytyt, testing-patience-1-2-3, bolanic, moments-of-huh, channeling-challenge

The innocence of childhood, the muddiness of adolescence, the charm of youth

Unconditional love of a mother, passionate love of a lover, bloody revenge by an enemy.

Teachings of a teacher, lessons learnt by a student, choosing a road untraveled.

Poems by poets, novels by writers, paintings by painters.

A lost idol, reminiscences by ironic souls, A regained Idol.

Love, obsession, sex, drugs, heart-breaks, longing, road-trip, search, survival.

Arturo Belano, Roberto Bolano, Ulises Lima, Mario Santiago-...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Aloha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: a-ebooks, a-own, genre-literature-spanish, genre-fiction-general, z-bolano-roberto, a-audios, b-road-novel, b-pov, 1-favorites

“...then Lima made a mysterious claim. According to him, the present-day visceral realists walked backward. What do you mean, backward? I asked. “Backward, gazing at a point in the distance, but moving away from it, walking straight toward the unknown.”
~The Savage Detectives

I was trying to figure what is meant by the above statement. So I walked backwards gazing at a point. I felt no compass, I don’t know where I’m going, but I have my eyes on the goal, that point in the distance. It’s an odd fe...more

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Mar 30, 2009 RandomAnthony rated it 1 of 5 stars

My interpretation of 90% of the passages I encountered in Savage Detectives

I walked around Mexico City for a while. And then I sat in a coffee shop and wrote poetry for seven hours. And then I saw a crazy poet I know and we argued about Octavio Paz. And then I read (name drop about 30 Latin American poets of whom I've never heard). And then I wanted to see Maria.

But somebody who cares a lot about the history and insider references of Latin American poetry might love it. I only managed 150 pages.

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Jun 17, 2011 tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first one hundred and fifty pages didn’t do a whole lot for me. I thought the narrator of the initial diary section was pompous, annoying, and full to overflowing with name-dropping. Not helping matters, the next couple hundred pages of mixed narratives were sporadically on and off. At about the halfway point I recalled what Mike Reynolds said in a review or thread somewhere, something along the lines that there are two different kinds of readers. Those who hear words while reading, and thos...more The first one hundred and fifty pages didn’t do a whole lot for me. I thought the narrator of the initial diary section was pompous, annoying, and full to overflowing with name-dropping. Not helping matters, the next couple hundred pages of mixed narratives were sporadically on and off. At about the halfway point I recalled what Mike Reynolds said in a review or thread somewhere, something along the lines that there are two different kinds of readers. Those who hear words while reading, and those who read without voice-overs (or something to that effect). I definitely belong to the former group, which might explain my glacial reading pace. Mike said he reads by the latter style -- a method which allows for quicker word intake. By this point in The Savage Detectives I decided to attempt reading without hearing the words. Through an awkward acclimation period I adjusted and started getting the hang of it. Before long I was blazing through words as the pages flew by. Perhaps now two-thirds in, however, I realized that the writing either got remarkably better, or the style just clicked with me. I had to fight to keep from hearing the voice(s). I wanted to hear the voices. It wasn’t long before I abandoned my reading blitzkrieg and resorted to my normal speed of auditory reading to let the voices saturate my inner ear. For if anything, this book deserves to be heard (and I don't mean as an audio book). My compulsion to finish every book I start reading paid off more than enough this time to overcome my ambivalence in the beginning. Some really amazing writing occurs in the second half that more than made up for my initial skepticism. Sword duels on the beach between poet and critic (even though the book in question had yet to be critiqued), the rescue of a baby who had fallen down an abyss populated by an unseen screaming demon, an almost never ending search for a long vanished poetess...to give but a few examples of elements that thoroughly pulled me in to this spinning vortex of a book. I may very well continue to practice reading without hearing the words, but I will never fight off voices that want to be heard.(less)

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Mar 12, 2009 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book reminded me of a presentation I once sat through about fractal geometry, whereby the coast of England grew progressively larger as the size of the instruments used to measure it got smaller and smaller (a version of this you can do at home: measure your hand with a ruler, it's X inches long, measure it with a subatomic particle, and it's, like, X million light years long... I said your HAND, people!). The caveat to such an approach, of course, is that fractal measurement is theoretical...more This book reminded me of a presentation I once sat through about fractal geometry, whereby the coast of England grew progressively larger as the size of the instruments used to measure it got smaller and smaller (a version of this you can do at home: measure your hand with a ruler, it's X inches long, measure it with a subatomic particle, and it's, like, X million light years long... I said your HAND, people!). The caveat to such an approach, of course, is that fractal measurement is theoretical (ahh!) and does not apply in the real world (oooh!) - though it does, apparently, apply in Mexico City, or whatever vague ghost version of it Roberto Bolano annexes for his Savage Detectivery. Think about it: how long is this book? 115 pages? 400? 2,000? The last bottom right corner of my paperback edition says 592 - but really, how can I take this number seriously? For like a television version of your girlfriend's face, or your arm while you're falling asleep, or Tolstoy's over-vacuumed divan, The Savage Detectives blurs as you approach it. This should be annoying, right? We've had enough artifacts of self-conscious paralysis by this point to realize that there is an absence at the heart of any presence - but again and again while reading this book, I found myself feeling the way I used to with Magic Eye posters, which of course everyone hated but which I secretly loved, not for the banal Michael Jordan silhouettes that they would reveal when you hit on the exact right way to cross your eyes, but for the sheer sensation of moving my head back and forth, back and forth, watching the patterns slide around in my eyeballs like a herd of drunken zebras. A book about nothing should not, a la Lebowski's nihilists, parade its lack of beliefs: that's not only simple but a lie, since no belief, no book. A book about nothing (and I realized this about three seconds after "finishing" my version of the Savage Detectives, which I secretly suspect will be a completely different book from the one you open) should point your attention back to the searchers. I don't care what medium or genre you choose: no one cares about the body. We care about the detectives. (less)

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Apr 21, 2008 Roderick rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have a good feeling about this, based on the first few pages. Feels like Murakami meets Kerouac. So, grown up Roddy reading meets teenage Roddy reading. The locale shifts from Japan and the USA to South and Central America. The quest narrative continues with a new backdrop. Everybody wins.

************

300 pages later, and nothing has happened yet, so I'm having second thoughts about my first impression. It's not at all clear what the big deal is supposed to be about this book. I mean, seriousl...more

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May 28, 2013 Con McVeety rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: southern-hemisphere

Review now with song

There is a duel with swords on a beach in Spain between a poet and a literally critic! in this celestially messy masterpiece by Robert Belano. A novel about life, death and literature that stands alone in its prose and It’s passion for literature and the inner torture of it’s poets and writers. A novel I still have vivid dreams about even when I'm awake

Reading again for an in the flesh book club.

Just as fucking a powerfull read the first time as the second and the second tim...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Goodreads customer service, how may I direct your call?

I'd like to phone in a review, please.

Reason?

I don't know how to do it myself.

I'm sorry sir. As part of Goodreads terms of service, I could have accepted: illness, vacation, out of body experience, picking vegetables in a garden, working overtime, mission control for the Mars rover program, --

-- That's it, that's it, mission control. I'm working mission control. It's --

-- Be serious, sir.

Alright, fine. I'll work on it myself.

Now we want...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Tanuj Solanki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chile, latin-america, mexico, library, romulo-gallegos, favorites

"How can we break with a program that makes a value of crisis(modernism), or progress beyond the era of Progress (modernity), or transgress the ideology of the transgressive (avant-gardism)?"

Hal Foster in the preface to his collection 'The Anti-Aesthetic Essays on Post-modernism'

*

A note by Octavio Paz, quoted subsequently by Jurgen Habermas' in his essay 'Modernity versus Postmodernity':

"the avant-garde of 1967 repeats the deeds and gestures of those of 1917. We are experiencing the end of the...more

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Jun 02, 2008 Edan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd give certain passages of Savage Detective five stars, even six if that were allowed, but overall I have to say that this novel didn't knock me out as I was hoping it would.

The largest section of the book, the first person testimonials, is by far the most successful. I fell in love with a lot of these stories, and I liked how some characters knew Lima and Belano (either or both of them) fairly well, and some had just barely crossed paths with the two poets. Bolano has an incredible ear for v...more I'd give certain passages of Savage Detective five stars, even six if that were allowed, but overall I have to say that this novel didn't knock me out as I was hoping it would.

The largest section of the book, the first person testimonials, is by far the most successful. I fell in love with a lot of these stories, and I liked how some characters knew Lima and Belano (either or both of them) fairly well, and some had just barely crossed paths with the two poets. Bolano has an incredible ear for voice, and these testimonials felt authentic to me in a way that fiction often doesn't--I could hear these voices in my head as I read, and I understood the speakers as people, not characters. There were moments when I was definitely on the "Me Encanta Bolano" train (tren).

Unfortunately, not all the testimonials were effective, and I wondered why there were so many. I also felt the second Garcia Madero section was boring, sloppy, and so ineffective compared to the beauty of the previous testimonials. I am sure people on the site will curse me out for saying this, but here it goes: I didn't care about their search for Tinajero! It seems to me that Bolano should have made me care.

So, in the end, I loved The Savage Detectives at times, and I was bored with it at other times, and sometimes I felt pretty apathetic about it. I also wonder at the sloppy/blah language in places. I know Bolano is inhabiting the voices of various people, but does that mean that he has to use "still as a statue" like a zillion times? Also, "shrug your shoulders" could be simply "shrugged". What else can you shrug, Bolano, aside from your shoulders? (I do wonder if this is a question of translation. I don't recall what the Spanish verb for "to shrug" is, and perhaps in Spanish, one must say "los hombros" with shrug..hmmm...anyone know the answer to this?)

Maybe I'm just not the right reader for this book. Some people say The Savage Detectives is innovative and bold; I think it's heartfelt, and messy. (less)

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Oct 11, 2008 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: you and possibly you too.

Shelves: fiction

I can't say for certain, but this might be the best four star book I've ever read. Maybe that's not true, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is the best book that I liked, but you know didn't like like. Does that make any sense?
I'm not interested in what the book is about for this review, but rather the amazing feeling of wanting to read other books, like all of the great books in the world all at once, because literature really is important, and it all needs to be read. Or maybe j...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Wordsmith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: award-winning-book-or-author, translation, topfavorites, literature, lit-world, magical-realism, linguistic-marksmanship, mystery, philosophy, gay-lesbian-unsure, star-five, poetry-shortstory, mythology, politics, love-relationships, love, family-dysfunction, classicky, history, bolano, ranking-2012-reads-processing, over-500-pages

I'm sick. Afflicted with a disorder, one all would dread, one affecting neural transmitters, affecting the way a thought might be ordered, or worse? Written. Losing an arm or leg might not have this profound an affect on me, personally; my brain being something I placed a mighty high value on. Sadly, that's neither here nor there, for what is, is where I go from here. How I deal the hand dealt. But then, like Arturo Belanos, I'm nothing if not multi-faceted, multi-layered, complicated, a human b...more I'm sick. Afflicted with a disorder, one all would dread, one affecting neural transmitters, affecting the way a thought might be ordered, or worse? Written. Losing an arm or leg might not have this profound an affect on me, personally; my brain being something I placed a mighty high value on. Sadly, that's neither here nor there, for what is, is where I go from here. How I deal the hand dealt. But then, like Arturo Belanos, I'm nothing if not multi-faceted, multi-layered, complicated, a human being. IN FULL GLORY.

Which brings me to "The Savage Detective" and the genius of Bolaño. He gives us this birds eye view. A 360° arial ever-widening, far-reaching grasp of all these perceptions of his maybe•kinda•sorta•semi-autobiographical, main character, Arturo Belanos. We begin to feel we know him, we do, but he, like all of us, is all these different people, to so many people he becomes, in time ineffably HUMAN.

With every insight into a human's frailties and misfires, their joys and sadness, perversions, delusions and fuck-ups, all the myriad loves gained and lost—"The Savage Detective's" is all this and more. O! It's so much more than this. There is a world in this here book. A world of Poetry. Longing. Despair. Twilight nights of a Beauty-a Mexican Beauty. There is Humour. Sex. Los Sucidas Mezcal. It's the Mother of All Road Trips. And always, always, always The Writing.

It comes back to the writing. It comes back to do or die. Finding new paths—pathways. New ways. The old ways are done. Finite. Gone are the days of old, when my affliction was verb-eee-ahh-sah-tee. Putting in every f n word u c? Even throwing in, for good measure, the purina, bowl and the kitty. Lessons Learned? Don't put in-What you can't take out. It was the writing that tipped me off to this being a "real" problem, it giving pause to things like grammar and editing.

I can thank God that like a lot on this beautiful planet, these things have a way of re-generating. Amazing. I feel it happening now. It makes me feel like a Savage. A Detective of my own body. A Savage Detective.

Lesson Two? Don't jump in a moving Impala making a quick qet-away. Oh my Juan, we hardly knew ye. We cry for you, we who remember you at all. And I do. (less)

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Dec 31, 2010 Pollopicu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I would have loved to read this book in Spanish. I bet there are minute, yet significant expressions and details lost in the translation that you can only experience reading it in it's original language. This novel is like the love-child of Marquez and Murakami. Perhaps. one day I will read it in Spanish. I think I will have to, because I enjoyed it so much.

I know readers who didn't enjoy this novel accuse it of being cliquey and haphazard, but perhaps it's because they were constantly anticipat...more I would have loved to read this book in Spanish. I bet there are minute, yet significant expressions and details lost in the translation that you can only experience reading it in it's original language. This novel is like the love-child of Marquez and Murakami. Perhaps. one day I will read it in Spanish. I think I will have to, because I enjoyed it so much.

I know readers who didn't enjoy this novel accuse it of being cliquey and haphazard, but perhaps it's because they were constantly anticipating something grand to happen, and that is exactly what Bolano meant when he referred to readers who buy into the "exotic stereotype"-style narrative. Although, I have to admit, Bolano himself falls into this trap with The Savage Detectives, with examples of ghosts, whores, and just a dab of magical realism, but I loved it all!

The story begins in a diary format, and later moves on to an interview format, in which many poets are questioned about the whereabouts of Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, later Cesaria Tinajero. Each account is like a short story. Bolano rarely writes within quotation marks, but the dialogue flows smoothly like real-time conversations and interviews. I enjoyed all of the stories. Each character had their own fascinating tale to tell, and all so full of intrigue. How talented to be able to write so many short stories with so many different plots and scenarios. That takes an incredible amount of skill and talent. I even read one of the stories aloud to hear the words, and I chose a good one too, the one by Pablo Del Valle from Madrid. By coincidence that one sounded more like poetry than any of the other stories and it sounded so beautiful to hear it spoken out.

I wish Cesarias poem would've been made more clearer. I know it was suppose to be a joke, but I'm not clear on why since Cesaria was a serious and reserved character. I wasn't 100% clear on the ending but I guess Miguel and Lupe got caught by the police and when he was asking, "what's outside the window?" it meant prison cell window because he made a reference to a star. That would make a lot of sense. I'm not sure. But I loved this story. It was a long book but there wasn't a moment where I found myself bored. I could see reading it again down the road.

Favorite Passage:

"He whispered that he loved me, that he would never be able to forget me. then he got up (twenty seconds after he'd spoken , at most) and slapped my face. The sound echoed through the house. We were on the first floor, but I heard the sound of his hand (when his palm left my cheek) rise up the stairs and enter each of the rooms on the second floor, dropping down through the climbing vines and rolling like glass marbles in the yard. When I could react , I made a fist with my right hand and hit him in the face. He hardly moved. But his arm was fast enough to hit me again. Bastard, i said, faggot, coward, and I launched a clumsy attack, punching, scratching, and kicking. he didn't even try to dodge my blows. Fucking masochist".(less)

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Apr 20, 2009 Georg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: english

What can you say about this book which seems – for me at least – to be more than just a book. It is written in the same pseudo-easy language as the novels by Franz Kafka or Haruki Murakami, it shows or quotes – like John’s Wife by Robert Coover – in the same kaleidoscopic way hundreds of people, but in more than one way it really is unique.

Between two diaries at the bginning and at the end there is the main part (called “The Savage Detectives”) consists of a multitude of stories told by a varie...more

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Apr 15, 2008 Pete rated it 5 of 5 stars

Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives is the type of book that gets better after you finish it. It is an artistic statement, best appreciated as a whole. You have to commit yourself to either the whole thing, or nothing, and it's not for everyone:

There is little plot, the characters are thin, the narrative style is odd, and there are several pornographic scenes early on. The 400 page middle section can become tedious at times. I checked this book out of the library, and on the "Date Due" slip i...more Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives is the type of book that gets better after you finish it. It is an artistic statement, best appreciated as a whole. You have to commit yourself to either the whole thing, or nothing, and it's not for everyone:

There is little plot, the characters are thin, the narrative style is odd, and there are several pornographic scenes early on. The 400 page middle section can become tedious at times. I checked this book out of the library, and on the "Date Due" slip in the back, the first two stamps are "May 29, 2007", and "May 30, 2007". Either someone checked it out and read it in one day (unlikely), or else they checked it out and decided it was not for them (much more likely).

The Savage Detectives is written like a documentary, with first person testimonials (diaries) from dozens of peripheral characters, over the span of 20 years. We dip in and out of these lives, with no other context than their run-ins with the principals of "visceral realism," a Latin American poetry movement that doesn’t go anywhere.

The "story," if you can call it that, revolves around the two leaders of 1970's visceral realism, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. The author Bolano (maybe, or maybe not to be confused with the character Belano), never shows the reader their poetry, or provides evidence of any impact they have as artists. Even the self-proclaimed mother of the original forgotten 1920's visceral realism poetry movement, Andrea Tinajero, was nearly unpublished, and was barely known to her contemporaries.

It's interesting that the author can keep momentum going using his narration technique, and I think he succeeds because he shows us true humanity in each diary entry. Each narrator takes a turn, relating events in their lives, while projecting an out-of-focus picture of the main characters, Arturo and Ulises. The narrative's effect is that we are glimpsing into real lives, not stories, as told by real people, not characters.

Ultimately this isn't a book about poetry or a failed poetry movement. Each diarist, or detective, holds a tiny splinter of the truth that, when combined, makes up a still fractured whole. These "detectives" investigate the crime, but as "savages", they are also implicated. The poetry of Arturo and Ulises may be in the perceived reality of their existence (aggregated across all the testimonials of their diarists), and in their fates, but not in their actual creative production, or in the intellectual content of their points of view. The poetic lives of Arturo and Ulises are, possibly, their visceral realist poems.

One diarist suggests the "creative work" always lives on, while readers and critics die off. Perhaps Bolano is saying that living a poetic life, right up to the end, is a means to salvation. Or, maybe Bolano is offering immortality to the poet co-conspirators of his own youth, through his excellent book.

(less)

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Roberto Bolano's ...: Who are the Interviewers and/or the Savage Detectives?	28	40	Mar 18, 2013 08:27pm
Roberto Bolano's ...: Short Stories	2	8	Feb 16, 2013 04:46am
Roberto Bolano's ...: Comments on the Poetry	10	31	Feb 10, 2013 03:32pm
First film adaptation of Bolaño	3	127	Jan 06, 2013 04:05pm
Roberto Bolano's ...: Music to Listen to While You're Reading and Reviewing "The Savage Detectives"	134	89	Nov 20, 2012 07:52am
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About Roberto Bolaño

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.

Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

H...more For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.

Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

He continued with poetry, before shifting to fiction in his early forties. In an interview Bolaño stated that he made this decision because he felt responsible for the future financial well-being of his family, which he knew he could never secure from the earnings of a poet. This was confirmed by Jorge Herralde, who explained that Bolaño "abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence" because the birth of his son in 1990 made him "decide that he was responsible for his family's future and that it would be easier to earn a living by writing fiction." However, he continued to think of himself primarily as a poet, and a collection of his verse, spanning 20 years, was published in 2000 under the title The Romantic Dogs.

Regarding his native country Chile, which he visited just once after going into voluntary exile, Bolaño had conflicted feelings. He was notorious in Chile for his fierce attacks on Isabel Allende and other members of the literary establishment.

In 2003, after a long period of declining health, Bolaño died. It has been suggested that he was at one time a heroin addict and that the cause of his death was a liver illness resulting from Hepatitis C, with which he was infected as a result of sharing needles during his "mainlining" days. However, the accuracy of this has been called into question. It is true that he suffered from liver failure and was close to the top of a transplant list at the time of his death.

Bolaño was survived by his Spanish wife and their two children, whom he once called "my only motherland."

Although deep down he always felt like a poet, his reputation ultimately rests on his novels, novellas and short story collections. Although Bolaño espoused the lifestyle of a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible for all his adult life, he only began to produce substantial works of fiction in the 1990s. He almost immediately became a highly regarded figure in Spanish and Latin American letters.

In rapid succession, he published a series of critically acclaimed works, the most important of which are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the novella Nocturno de Chile (By Night In Chile), and, posthumously, the novel 2666. His two collections of short stories Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas were awarded literary prizes.

In 2009 a number of unpublished novels were discovered among the author's papers.(less)

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“There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.” — 67 people liked it

“Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.” — 51 people liked it

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