Here is the clever conceit of the novel: although The Savage Detectives is apparently about poetry – the school of “visceral realists” led by Belano and Lima – not a single line of verse appears in its pages. The novel’s opening paragraph starts the ruse with a diary entry by an aspiring teenage writer. “I’ve been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.” And though, in the ensuing pages, the visceral realists bicker and banter, disrupt writing workshops, scrounge for money, drink and hop from bed to bed, the poetry itself never figures in the story. It is much like what screenplay writers call a “MacGuffin” in a suspense film, a pretext for action and adventure that serves as motivation without ever being explained or validated
Through much of the novel, Belano and Lima travel in search of a missing poet, Cesàrea Tinajero, from the 1920s, who was involved in an earlier movement also called visceral realism. The fact that the “detectives” have never seen a single line of Tinajero’s work merely adds to the bizarre quality of Bolaño’s novel, where poetry is a posture rather than a literary endeavor. When they finally uncover a single example of her poetry, from a forgotten literary magazine, the protagonists are surprised – but not the reader, by this point — to see that it uses no words, just a few childish drawings.
The Savage Detectives is a rich, rambling book that ends up almost exactly where it begins. Even the chronology is circular – the narrative starts in the 1970s, advances to the late 1990s, then returns to the 1970s. But again the analogy with Ulysses is an apt one. The wandering here is more exciting than any final destination. And Bolaño, like an experienced travel guide, knows how to keep his audience captivated by even the wildest detour.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!
2 - Rodney Welch
Ted, my good man, what in the world did you see in this dreary stuff?
The action is chaotic, the writing is bland and uninteresting, and the final resolution is such a groaner that I almost expected to hear a rimshot from a drunken drummer in the background.
I wrote a review myself in which I just half-jokingly suggested that it's all a big post-mod hoax. (With your knowledge of jazz, you might at least like my opening paragraph.)
I respect your opinion and always read your reviews, but what did you use to keep going through this thing? Excedrin?
P.S. It's not correct to say "not a single line of verse appears in its pages." There's at least one poem in Juan Garcia Madero's journal -- the one that winds up making him so horny.
3 - Ted Gioia
Rodney, I checked out your review. Yes, we differ in our opinions on this book. But I am glad that someone remembers good ol' Buck Hammer. Someday I'd like to write a piece on the "Buck Hammer" syndrome in criticism. But that, of course, is another story . . .