Customer Reviews

Savage Detectives

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

First, a note to those readers who found the book slow: well, it is and it isn't. The first part moves along at a fairly fast clip and ends in the midst of a car chase. The very long second part, called "The Savage Detectives," presents forty-odd narrators, some recurring, some not, who take us through about thirty years of life, love, madness, poetry, children lost in caves, Latin American poets lost in Africa, and people generally (even savagely!) lost in their own lives. About fifty pages into this section, I too was getting annoyed, wondering where all this could possibly be going and what the point could possibly be. Then, the slow accretion of narratives and themes began to reveal the grand melancholy at the multi-layered heart of this brilliant book, and I was enthralled. The novel's third and final section is brief and brutal. I'll avoid spoilers here, but the ending conveys an inevitable and exhausted disillusionment only comparable, to my mind, to that of Sentimental Education, although Bolano is perhaps not quite so cynical as Flaubert. Or is he? His poets seem to be either anti-heros in spite of themselves, or sincere and manipulative poseurs; and yet, for as much as we may know about them, some mysteries about these characters simply cannot be solved. Formally, the book challenges our expectations of a novel (and although Bolano is compared most often to Borges, whose work and image he praised in interviews, formally he reminds me more of Julio Cortazar, although without quite the same ludic bravado as in, say, Hopscotch); thematically, it challenges ideals we may hold for art, especially if we are artists. And if my review makes The Savage Detectives sound like a long and somber read, trust me--it is exuberant and heartbreaking in its pursuit of both comedy and tragedy.

Well into The Savage Detectives, one character says to the other: "The visual arts are ultimately incomprehensible. Or they're so comprehensible that nobody, first and foremost myself, will accept the most obvious reading of them." Substitute "written" for the "visual" arts and you get a taste for what you are in for in this book: a combination of wisdom, puzzle and in-joke.

I loved the book and am now hunting down other Bolano novels. The Savage Detectives is not easy - two sections of conventional narrative set in Mexico about our poet heroes are split by nearly a 400 page section of oral history, almost like witness statements, from those who encountered them over the subsequent 20 years. The knowledge gained in this intervening section colours and adds a sense of melancholy when the initial narrative resumes. An obvious reference point is the film Y Tu Mama Tambien because of its Mexican setting, its young protagonists on a road trip, and the ephemeral nature of youth's passions (and lots of sex). While the novel's structure is challenging, it holds together because the voices are compelling. The characters ramble, digress, talk your ear off and engage in bawdy, violent and colourful adventures. There is a sense of urgency about their testimony, as though their experiences had to be recorded. While our picture of our main protagonists is never complete, often contradictory, there is a real power here. Bolano wrestles with representing the fullness of a life, while at the same time acknowledging the impossibility of ever doing so. We may be the centre of our own individual universes but in the end we are just dust in the wind.

This is a book to read at a good steady pace - too fast will mean you will not savour the words and small clues left along the way, too slow and you will lose track of the multiple threads. One of the best books I've read in the last five years.

Bolano is a a master storyteller. Best book i've read in years.

THE STORY: Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano are the young leaders of literary movement they call the Visceral Realists, think BaaderMeinhoff Literary Brigade. The movement is part-gag -- a sendup of Andre Breton's surrealist movement and its "purges" -- but also an attack on the old guard of Latin American literature, people like Octavio Paz (who they jokingly/seriously threaten to kidnap) and Garcia Marquez. They show up with their teenage cohorts at literary events and heckle the sacred cows as the old men of letters attempt to recite their poetry! They threaten their critics with duels (as any self respecting man of letters must do)! Some of the Visceral Realists don't even appear to read! The motley group of Mexico City street kids -- Ulises, Arturo, Lupe, Garcia Madero, Maria and Angelica Font, Luscious Skin, San Estifanio -- are bonded by their belief in poetry, the poets life, their alienation, and their youth.

The story follows this gang from their beginnings in 1970s Mexico City through their wanderings throughout the world (Spain, France, West and Central Africa, Latin America, San Diego)and into the 1990s. The realization that the life of a poet is both the happiest and the saddest thing. And it finds Arturo, Ulises, Garcia Madero, and Lupe lost in the Sonora Desert running from an angry pimp and searching for a lost poet, the first Visceral Realist, a woman who disappeared into the desert some forty years before.

Oh yeah, there's alot of sex and drugs, some violence, poignancy and irreverancy. And there's a lot of poetry.

I can't recommend it enough, especially for those who believe that books can offer more than entertainment, for those who dream the naive and true dream that books and the people who write them are revolutionary.

First of all, Natasha Wimmer does a great job with this translation. Considering the author's poetic style, I'm sure it must have been difficult.

Bolaño tells the story of a fictional poetry movement, the 'visceral realists', an anti-Octavio Paz group based in Mexico City (apparently modeled on Bolaño's own experiences with a similar movement called the 'infrarealists' ).

What's so great about this book , for me, is not so much the story but rather how the story is revealed: through so many unique voices (over 50?); one of whom being Juan Garcia Madero, a 17 year old student of poetry and one of the original anti-Paz "gang". His diary, which elevates the tale to a mythic quest, frames the novel in the 1970's.
The middle section of the book reads almost like a documentary; a sort of literary verité. It masterfully patches together the experiences of the quixotic figures, Arturo Belano (Bolaño?) and Ulises Lima, leaders of so-called 'visceral realists', from the reminiscences of tangential characters in their lives.

This is a novel you can read over and over and still pick up something new each time. I am looking forward to the upcoming Bolaño translation (thankfully by Wimmer as well) called "2666".

Not since Borges has a Latin American writer placed literature itself as the central concern of his fiction as Bolano so explicitly and touchingly does in The Savage Detectives. "Life put us all in our place or in the place that suited her, and then forgot us, as it should be," Bolano writes, and, by the time you finish this unique novel, you too will share the belief of its protagonists, that being forgotten is a fair price to pay for following your love of reading to the end of the world.

Mr. Bolano is writing from the grave, having died in 2003. This English translation by Natasha Winner of "The Savage Detectives" will earn the Chilean writer more fans. The novel does not have much of a plot, other than the two characters searching for the fate of a mysterious poetess who disappeared in the Mexican desert decades ago. "The Savage Detectives" is more of a Spanish literary and social satire, as various characters comment on the actions of the two heroes over a two decade period in non-chronological order. This book needs to grow on the reader who gives it a chance.

I hesitate to criticize Roberto Bolano too much, because many people find great enjoyment in his work. You might be one of them. I simply did not like this novel.

Much has been written about the brilliance of The Savage Detectives, but I found it merely unusual, not brilliant. There are parallels to The Dharma Bums, with the aimless wanderings of the characters, their deliberate bohemian lives, and their radical ideas about literature, politics and sexuality. There is extensive discussion about literature, but it is mostly an absurd discussion, often written for laughs that I could not appreciate. The nihilism of the author, reflected in his characters, may strike a cord in those of similar outlook. Unfortunately, I did not like the main characters. They steal from helpless people, smoke dope, sell drugs, and occasionally write poetry which you never get to read. Worse, I have the impression that Bolano did not care for them either.

Reading this novel was a depressing experience. I find it difficult to enjoy a novel unless I care about someone in the book. Great literature does not have to be enjoyable, but there was more missing from this story than enjoyment. His wandering, discursive style is difficult to follow. Perhaps Bolano was making a point about pointlessness, but after several hundred pages, I didn't care anymore. I don't believe that this book deserves all of the praise that has been lavished upon it.

This novel is about two young poets who lead a literary movement of poets from Mexico City in the course of a decade.

This novel is an English translation of the prizewinning novel that made Chilean Roberto Bolano famous. The book was rated in top 10 by NY Times, Amazon and every other major rating service one can find as one of the best books published in 2007.

I found it a real struggle to keep up with all of the characters - a struggle to stay with the many many different narrators - a struggle to find the plot line. Not being at all familiar with Latin American authors and poets and literature, I found myself skipping many sections and pages where there were literally hundreds of references.

I found myself reading 10-15 pages at a time and having to put it down. There were periodic flashes of brilliance when the author stayed on a path with vivid descriptive pictures and character profiles. However, these gems were soon lost with zig-zagging randomly into side pockets. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for the book to turn. (It has to turn - so many raters can't be wrong.) 250-300 pages in and I still couldn't find the white light. Sorry, this book wasn't for me.

Bolaño is undoubtedly a very important writer, and the reasons for this are expressed in the book's introduction by the translator of The Savage Detectives, Natasha Wimmer. The Savage Detectives is also one of the most critically acclaimed novels to come around in a long time.

Maybe you'll love it-- lots of people do, clearly. And it's worth a try if you're really into Latin American literature.

For me, the large number of narrators turned me off. After the first part, each one speaks for a few pages only, for hundreds of pages. Once in a while a certain voice would grab me, and I felt compelled to read, but then two or three pages later, Bolaño shifts to another voice. This kind of structure has always been a turn-off for me, and if it is for you too, you may have trouble appreciating this novel.

I also realize that I don't really care about the poetry and literary scene in Mexico in the 1970's. There are tons of "in" references to Mexican poets, critics, and places in Mexico City that will be completely cryptic to most lay readers.

Some of the sex scenes are over the top. Like the woman with the outrageously smelly vagina that would smell up the apartment. I guess that was intended to be funny, but I'm not really sure.

Well, I'm sorry to be in the minority here. I regret missing this train. I will try 2666 soon.

It's tough to write this review given that i've read, loved, and reviewed with profuse enthusiasm several other Bolano titles. but The Savage Detectives, I agree with several recent reviewers, lapses into spectacular and permanent tedium less than half-way through. Bolano has never lost me, until this book. When I reached page 400, knowing there were still a couple hundred pages left, I experienced something akin, I think, to torture?