"The Savage Detectives"

“…there are books for when you’re desperate.”

In the beginning of Roberto Bolaño’s 1998 masterpiece one of his many characters speaks at length at the variety of books there are and their various uses. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that there are various progressions of a reader. One begins as an adolescent (or to quote Bolaño a “fucking idiot”) who reads slowly then begins to read with such a ravenous fervor that they become a desperate reader. This reader eventually becomes exhausted, ceases reading and eventually returns to it as a serene reader. There are books written and designed to specifically attend to each level of reader, books for the novice, the savage, and the serene. “The Savage Detectives” is written for desperate readers. It is written for those who loose sleep over what is happening in their literature. It is written for those who intend to track down every allusion, every literary reference. It is meant for the reader who draws every available symbol and metaphor that he can. More than anything the book is written for anyone who is desperate.

This book can be summed up in this manner because it is a book about desperate characters. It is about characters hungry for knowledge, hungry for experience, hungry for life. Unfortunately, they have reached a point in their lives where that hunger has been satiated. Satiated in an incredibly unpleasant manner. Our two protagonists are involved in some incredibly unfortunate business in the Sonora desert; a businessman watches his family crumble; others watch as their friends succumb to the perils of age. This fulfilled appetite has left the characters lost. They are as unsure of what to do as they are of themselves.

The reader is able to see this fall thanks to Bolaño’s brilliant plotting. The first section takes place in the latter months of 1975, the next from 1976 until 1996, and the last piece retells the events of early 1976. This large expanse of time allows the reader to witness the potential and energy drained from these youths. We are literally forced to sit and watch as the creative drive is sucked out of them. Then at the end we are able to go back in time and see the genesis of their demise. We are allowed a glimpse into what created the void that eventually consumes their ambition.

The story centers around the visceral realists, a group of avant-garde poets in 1970’s Mexico City. The name comes from another group of Mexican poets from the 1920’s who stand as enigmas to the latter group. The leaders of the group, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, (both likely based upon the author) fund their magazines with money from drug deals. They stage protests of poets who they view have sold out or are phonies. Eventually though, Ulises and Belano must leave and the group is put to the test of whether it can stand on its own minus its leaders. The reader also witnesses the demise of the ideals of Ulises and Arturo without any sort of support mechanism for their ideas.

Two of the most harrowing and telling events come near the end of the book as Lima and Arturo have been physically and emotionally pushed to the edge. The first is a duel over a review. More, it is not a review that has been happened but a review that is likely to be written. We see two modern literary characters attacking one another with swords in a feeble attempt to wound the other. The act is such a self-aware display of literary idealism and romanticism that is concurrently sweet and repulsive. Eventually the reader is left pitying Arturo and his opponent for the absurd reaches they have gone to in order to settle their scholarly argument. The other occurrence is Ulises Lima encountering Octavio Paz (the sworn enemy of visceral realism) in a public garden. Both men recognize (Paz much less so) the other across a square walk in circles, approaching each other like two men entering into a duel. In the end, Paz must be reminded of Lima’s identity via his personal assistant and Lima is left speechless. He is left alone with his artistic doppelganger and he can say nothing.

“The Savage Detectives” is nothing short of work of genius. It is a big book full of nuance and characters that are only briefly mentioned but could be discussed for pages. One would be tempted to call this Bolaño’s magnum opus, but he wrote a bigger (and reportedly better) book “2666”. To only add to this is the fact that Bolaño led this life. He was a visceral realist (actually called Infrarealist), who with his compatriots disturbed the status quo of Mexican poetry. He also traveled around Europe in the same manner as his characters. “The Savage Detectives” is an important book meant to be read and re-read.