The Savage Detectives
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Read between July 15 - July 31, 2017
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In a brief moment of lucidity, I was sure that we’d all gone crazy. But then that moment of lucidity was displaced by a supersecond of superlucidity (if I can put it that way), in which I realized that this scene was the logical outcome of our ridiculous lives. It wasn’t a punishment but a new wrinkle. It gave us a glimpse of ourselves in our common humanity. It wasn’t proof of our idle guilt but a sign of our miraculous and pointless innocence. But that’s not it. That’s not it. We were still and they were in motion and the sand on the beach was moving, not because of the wind but because of ...more
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Iñaki Echevarne, Bar Giardinetto, Calle Granada del Penedés, Barcelona, July 1994. For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it’s the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new ...more
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Aurelio Baca, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I’m building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn’t have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn’t have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I ...more
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Pere Ordóñez, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. In years past, the writers of Spain (and Latin America) joined the public fray to subvert it, reform it, set it on fire, revolutionize it. The writers of Spain (and of Latin America) were generally from well-to-do families or families of a certain social standing. As soon as they took up the pen, they rejected or chafed at that standing: to write was to renounce, to forsake, sometimes to commit suicide. It meant going against the family. Today, to an ever more alarming degree, the writers of Spain (and Latin America) come from lower-class ...more
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Everything that begins as comedy ends as a cryptographic exercise.
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Everything that begins as comedy ends as a horror movie.
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The best are the homosexuals, but be careful: you have to know when to stop and exactly what you want, or you’ll end up taking it up the ass for nothing from some random old leftist faggot. Three times out of four it’s the same thing with women: the Spanish women writers who might be able to lend you a hand are usually old and ugly. Sometimes it just isn’t worth it. The best are the heterosexual men over fifty or approaching old age. Whatever it takes, you must get close to them. You must cultivate a garden in the shadow of their grudges and resentments. You have to study their complete works. ...more
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What begins as comedy ends as a triumphal march, wouldn’t you say?
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Everything that begins as comedy inevitably ends as mystery.
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Everything that begins as comedy ends as a dirge in the void.
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the trinity of youth, love, and death was revealed to them, like an epiphany.
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Then he laughed. He gave me a kiss on each cheek and left. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a comic monologue, but we aren’t laughing anymore.
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Did you used to get drunk? I asked him one morning. Of course I did, he said, like everybody else, although usually I preferred being sober. I could have guessed that, I said.
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I said to him: what matters is your son and your health. Worry about your son and worry about your health, and stop getting yourself in these messes. It’s hard to believe that such a smart guy could be so dumb.
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I’ve always been a sociable person, I like to talk and get to know other people, and I’m not a bad listener, although sometimes when I seem to be listening I’m actually thinking my own thoughts.
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Juan García Madero? No, the name doesn’t ring a bell. He never belonged to the group. Of course I’m sure. Man, if I tell you so as the reigning expert on the subject, it’s because that’s the way it is. They were all so young. I have their magazines, their pamphlets, documents you can’t find anyplace. There was a seventeen-year-old kid, but he wasn’t called García Madero. Let’s see…his name was Bustamante. He only published one poem in a mimeographed magazine that came out in Mexico City, no more than twenty copies of the first issue, and that was the only issue there ever was. And he wasn’t ...more
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The first mention of the original protagonist in a few hundred pages and they're denying his very existence!
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“You know a lot,” said Lupe. “He really does,” said Belano. I was seized by laughter again, laughter that was expelled instantly from the car. Orphan, I thought.
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The car headed down dark avenues, through neighborhoods with no lights, down streets where there were only women and children.
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Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength, up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beam-like spears. Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show, nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.
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This is exactly how both Belano & Lima approach life. Like hollow shadows of King Arthur & Odysseus, their successful namesakes.
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Archilochus of Paros had been, a poet and mercenary who lived in Greece around 650 B.C., and Lupe didn’t say anything, which I thought was an appropriate response. Then I sat there half asleep, my head against the window, and listened to Belano and Lima talking about a poet who fled the battlefield, caring nothing about the shame and dishonor that the act would bring upon him, in fact boasting of it.
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For a moment it seemed impossible to me that I’d ever made love with a girl like Lupe.
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