Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

My earlier Bolaño experience, namely 2666, created two expectations vis-a-vis The Savage Detectives: to finish with a dearth of understanding, and a wealth of impressions. In neither expectation was I disappointed. Nor was I disappointed.

Synopsis: A poet gets lost, then another poet gets lost, then lots of poets talk about two poets who didn’t really get lost.

Happily it is not necessary to grasp the finer points of Bolaño’s vision in order to be bowled over by the grandeur of its scope, its magnificence.

A story of poets and lost poets, and a pursuit across the Sonora desert which is mirrored in a frenetic flitting across the globe, the whole story could be related, arguably, without fear of the spoiler. The suspense is created by the structure, of which I will endeavour not to reveal too much.

Why poets? Typical Bolaño, he sneaks some real ones in amongst his fictional creations. But do we know what is real and what is not? In Bolaño land, very rarely. I have a theory about the poets. It’s not a very good theory. This is a literary novel and the readers will know literary stuff. But not all literary types are hot on poetry. Amongst the latter, poets are a great way to create a feeling of familiarity in the face of hopeless inadequacy. Which may or may not be what the novel is all about.

The first part of the book is the diary, set in the December 1975, of a very young poet, newly initiated into the ‘visceral realists’ movement, one Juan García Madero. García Madero also gets initiated into sex and meets a large cast of poets, visceral realist and otherwise. Part One ends on December 31st as García Madero, and the two inaugural visceral realists, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, set off into the desert, accompanied by a young woman, and chased by her gun-toting pimp. They are both pursued and pursuers, as they hunt for Cesárea Tinajero; technically a ‘stridentist,’ credited as the founder of the visceral realists; and they run from the vengeful Alberto.

The second part is some three hundred pages long. Upon grasping the implications of the second part it is almost impossible not to turn anxiously to the back, to ascertain firstly that there is indeed a third part and, secondly, just how many pages of Part Two are there…?

Part Two strikes with shocking force. It is composed of the testimonials of many people, most (all?) poets, some familiar, some old, some new. But like Cesárea Tinajero, García Madero has vanished, and nobody seems to have noticed. It is January 1976, and an old poet, Amadeo, is telling how Lima and Belano came to interview him about Cesárea.  Lima and Belano have emerged from the desert, but where is García Madero? It’s a brave move. Bolaño hasn’t just offed a character, he’s offed the narrator. I am aware that the novel loses readers in the second part, and I think the missing narrator might play a part. (Incidentally: Bolaño/Belano? It’s no coincidence.)

What follows is a huge number of testimonials, tracking the progress of Lima and Belano over a span of twenty years and several continents, through the lives of their contemporaries and those they meet on the way. This is hugely complex writing, raising more questions than answers.

The middle section is divided into chapters, and each begins with a segment of the Jan ’76 Amadeo interview. (Apart from those sections which instead end with Amadeo, or do not feature him at all…) Otherwise the testimonials are chronological, Jan ’76 through to Dec ’96. But the content does not seem to be strictly chronological.

It appears that the testimonials are being collected and sometimes shared with the next interviewee. Is this a narrator? Is it the narrator? But any comfort which might be derived from a possible pattern is rudely shattered by a testimonial delivered directly to Belano…

The following quotes illustrate both the connectivity and Bolano’s range:

Rafael Barrios, sitting in his living room, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, March 1981. Have you seen Easy Rider? That’s right, the movie with Dennis hopper, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. That was basically what we were like back then. But especially Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, before they left for Europe. Like Dennis Hopper and his doppelgänger: two dark figures, moving fast and full of energy. [...] I’m sorry if what I’m saying doesn’t make sense. lately I’ve been feeling a little bit confused.

Barbara Patterson, in her kitchen, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, March 1981. Dennis Hopper? Politics? That son of a bitch! [...] I was the one who said: take up politics, Rafael, take up some noble cause, goddam it, you’re a freaking man of the people, and the bastard would look at me like I was shit, some piece of trash, like he was looking down from some imaginary height, and he would say: cool it, Barbarita, it’s not so easy, and then he’d go to sleep and I’d have to go out to work [...]

Bolaño’s virtuoso story-telling eventually works its magic. His wealth of characters and voices, their compelling stories, form a collage of young South American poets growing old, which is both beautiful and melancholy. (Sometimes extremely funny.) There is a lovely sense of liminality, represented physically by a narrowing focus, on South America, Mexico, the Sonora Desert, and finally the US boundary, which perhaps reflects the choices which are lost with youth.

Bolaño also imbues the whole with a sense of menace (which subtly implicates Mexico: there is an alien culture at play which never seems quite accessible to a European.) The missing narrator is a part of this. The anxiety over his fate never entirely subsides. And there are hints that Belano and Ulises are pursued: not so much by a former aggressor, as by fate, an impression heightened by a shadow motif which seems to lurk in unlikely places, waiting to ambush the reader.

[...] and then he would reshuffle the pieces of his story and talk to me about those shadowy figures, his occasional brothers-in-arms, the ghosts populating his vast freedom, his vast desolation.

At the time I thought it was a sad story, not because of the story itself, but because of the way he told it.

These are both quotes that seem to sum up my response to the novel. But then there is…

[...] hand in hand we slowly traverse the patches of blazing sun and icy shade, her shadow dragging my shadow after it [...]

She doesn’t see, she never sees, the fool, the idiot, the innocent, this woman who’s come too late, who’s interested in literature with no idea of the hells lurking below the tainted or pristine pages, who loves flowers and doesn’t realise there’s a monster in the bottom of the vase [...]

…which throws you into another novel. It is stretching the point here, perhaps, but there are unmistakable references to 2666 throughout.

And then you hit the last part and it is both more and less than you might have imagined. (When you flick to the back do be careful. It’s better as a surprise.) Loose ends are to some extent tied up, but there is something funky about the chronology. (This is a novel which requires close and attentive reading, possibly note-taking. And a second time round you might know what to look for.)

I suspect that there are websites devoted to minutely analysing this novel. And rightly so. There is a wealth of detail, and I have only touched on the tip of the iceberg, in a fairly tentative kind of way. Did I understand it? No. Did I love it? Yes.

Finally, no. I’m damned if I’m any the wiser in respect of visceral realism.

The Savage Detectives readalong was hosted by Richard at Caravana de Receurdos. Very timely for me. Big thanks to Richard.