I have to admit that I had no idea what to expect going into this class. I had spoken to Jon beforehand because I had to choose between this class or SPAN 495 (my course load wouldn’t allow me to do both this term) and when he told me there would be no final exams, essays or presentations I thought… How could that be? Especially for a Research seminar? 

It seemed I wasn’t the only one with this question because of the class we had when we discussed, What is research? I enjoyed this class very much. It was interesting to hear everyone share their own ideas of what that was but the biggest one that we all had in common was that research starts with a question. We ask a question and we search for the answer, and our question was: What makes long books long? And also: What makes short books short? I also appreciated this discussion because it opened my mind to doing research in a different way.

The interesting thing is that a professor is one of my other classes helped answer this question, without having asked her. In my Spanish Lit & Culture class, as we were discussing pieces of literature from the 19th century, she shared that long books are long because the authors include every. single. detail. I couldn’t help but laugh because I thought back to all the conversations we had in this seminar, as well as my own frustrations (mostly with The Savage Detectives), because our complaints were usually about just that: can we just get to the point already?! In this sense, a long book is like that friend of yours that blabbers on and recounts every detail of the story before getting to the point. Sometimes it’s annoying and we don’t have the time for it but other times it’s humorous, is it not? And they make for great story-tellers! That is certainly how I feel about Bolaño, especially with a book like The Savage Detectives: What an incredible story-teller… he certainly has a creative mind.

One of my other favourite discussions was when Jon posed the question of, Could the book (The Savage Detectives) have been shorter? Longer? And did the ending make sense? (Apologies that I don’t remember word-for-word what the question was). I liked pondering on how we would have changed the story and I liked hearing different (but also similar) opinions about the ending. It was really fun to be able to read a book alongside so many other people and I honestly can’t remember the last time I did that. It must have been high school (17 years ago for me) and I can’t remember a single book that I enjoyed reading in my language classes during that time so this also felt like a first in some ways. It was also a very fun experience to read something of my own choosing (and to find others who chose the same book!), to share that experience and read about other experiences with their own books. *I have to admit, there were some blogs where I had to skip over some of the story details because I want to read the book myself and not have any spoilers!

The course has inspired me to not only read more long books in general, but to also read long books in Spanish. Thank you to everyone, it’s been such a pleasure being on this ride with each and every one of you!

I am happy to say that the book made a quick turnaround. I expressed my disappointment in my last post because the story of why some people wanted Carax dead just seemed too dramatic and unrealistic. One thing I had been confused about (and expressed in my previous blogs) finally made sense: I had been wondering why Daniel’s first encounter with Coubert had been so threatening. He was very clear that if Daniel did not give him the last of Carax’s books, then he would not only go after Daniel, but also after his love interest at the time, Clara Barceló. But then Coubert suddenly disappears for a while… and even when Daniel has a couple run ins with him, he never did anything (sometimes he wouldn’t even speak to Daniel). And this is because… Coubert is Carax!

As I mentioned in my first post, Coubert is described as a terrifying-looking (and seeming) man, especially because he has bad burn marks on his face. So as soon as I read that Carax burned all his books and got stuck in the fire, I thought, holy shit! What if Carax is Coubert?! And sure enough he was… I loved this plot twist. 

Carax decides to burn all his books because when he finally comes back to Barcelona, in hopes of finding his one-true-love, Penélope, he finds out that not only had she died shortly after Carax escaped to Paris, but that she was pregnant with his child and she and the baby died during childbirth (*what happens to Penélope while she’s pregnant was extremely traumatic and incredibly hard to read so I’d rather not share the details of it). What Carax never finds out is that Penélope is his half-sister (same father, different mothers), which also explains why Penélope’s father took such an interest in Carax’s education and career as a young teen. Carax is so devastated by the news of Penélope and their child, especially because he had dedicated all of his books to Penélope, that he wants to completely erase his existence. For this reason, he burns all of his books and even wants to erase himself. 

Before moving back to Barcelona, Carax had developed a relationship with Nuria Monfort (on a visit she took to Paris), but since they can never be together because of Carax’s undying love for Penélope, Nuria marries Carax’s best friend Miquel instead. Since Miquel dies in the place of Carax, Carax lives with Nuria for a while and pretends he is Miquel, since the two of them switched IDs before Miquel died. Carax eventually starts living in Penélope’s old house but he would still visit Nuria from time and time and this is when he tells her about the fact that he’s discovered a boy named Daniel still has a copy of one of his books. Nuria begs Carax not to harm a child and so Carax spends his time observing Daniel and his life. Carax begins to appreciate Daniel, his friend Fermín, and believes that the love Daniel and Bea have was similar to that of he and Penélope. 

What I find so beautiful about this ending is that Daniel somehow softens Carax, and brings Carax back into the man he used to be. He ends up helping Daniel and Bea and even gets back into writing, after Carax finally kills the evil Inspector Fumero. I enjoyed the book so much that I’ve already started reading book 3 in the series of 4 (they are not sequels and can be read separately, but book 3 is the only one that keeps Daniel and Fermín as main characters). 

While the creative style of the Spanish was sometimes difficult to follow, it was still a book that kept me hooked the entire way. I was very invested in what was happening with all of the characters and, as I mentioned in previous blogs, I always love a good historical fiction. I appreciated reading about something historical (even though most of it was sad) and I loved the added mystery to it. I plan to read the other three books before the end of summer, and I can’t promise I’ll read them as slowly as I read this one!

Question for the class: Are you going to read any other books by the same author of your choosing? If yes, which one and why? If not, why not?

I have to say that this is probably the strangest book I have ever read. Bolaño’s style of writing in general (based on the other short stories we read of his) is definitely unique. I can’t say I have ever read anything quite like it, and especially not in a long book.

I have to admit that I enjoyed it, however I didn’t feel this way throughout the whole book. I went from disliking it to liking it (or maybe appreciating it is a better word) over the span of reading it this semester. It definitely brought up a lot of feelings (of frustration) and questions for me, most of which being, what the fuck is the point of any of this?? And yet at a certain point I felt like I was able to let go of that question and just enjoy the ride, and this was probably around the time that I realized that Bolaño was most likely not going to answer the questions we, as readers, would have. I found the experience quite humourous and I often wondered what Bolaño himself was thinking when he imagined people reading his book. What was his intention of writing this? 

That being said, I’m not sure if I would read another one of Bolaño’s long books. I enjoyed the experience while it lasted but I didn’t come away from it wanting to read more Bolaño. If he didn’t always write with that style, I would definitely consider it, but based on what we’ve looked at so far, it seems that he always writes like this. My favourite books are historical fictions – I really love learning through the books that I read so when it’s told in a fictional way, it adds this interesting element of getting hooked into a story. I get the sense that Bolaño also tries to write about history, politics or things that he’s reflecting on in the world. For that reason, I really appreciate him, however the way he writes about it can just be confusing sometimes. 

I always appreciate new experiences and Bolaño certainly brought that to my reading journey this semester! 

In terms of what happened in Part 3, I have to admit I’m glad that García Madero didn’t die (since I was beginning to think that maybe he had). As I entertained other ideas of why García Madero wasn’t mentioned in Part 2, I had also wondered if maybe he had ran off with Lupe (which it sounds like he did, to some degree). It makes sense as to why no one talked about him because he was really only a part of the visceral realists for a few months before he left CDMX. I imagine the other members were part of it for much longer, which is why they were mentioned and García Madero wasn’t. Perhaps he was also seen as the annoying teenager that tried to make himself into a bigger role than he had. 

Overall, it was an interesting experience and definitely a story that I won’t forget!

While I still have about 90 pages left to read, I can tell that the book is starting to wrap up. I had a feeling that the famous author Julián Carax was not dead, and while this hasn’t actually been confirmed yet, we did find out that on the night that everyone thought Carax died, his best friend (Miquel Moliner) switched identities with him and died that night instead. We will find out shortly if Carax is still alive, or died in another way at a later point. 

I have to say that I’m a little disappointed with the grand mystery of Julián Carax. I was expecting some bigger (and maybe more credible?) reason for why someone would want to kill him. Inspector Fumero is clearly evil, so the fact that he wanted to kill Carax just because Carax and Penélope were lovers (and Fumero loved her too, even though he never told anyone about this) could make sense but the fact that Jorge Aldaya (Penélope’s brother) wanted to kill Carax just because his father asked him years ago to do so? And that he blamed Carax for the reason why his family fell into poverty? It just seems too dramatic and unrealistic to me. Also that Nuria Monfort fell in love with Carax before she even met him? She loved him just because of stories she had heard about him? I don’t know about all of that. 

Having said all of that though, it is still a very engaging story. I was hooked from the beginning and have found it difficult to put down at every moment. I am still interested to find out if Carax is still alive and if Daniel (our main character and narrator) will get to meet him. What is the connection between Daniel and Carax? And what about what I read back on page 373, that Daniel would be dead in seven days? There are still some questions left unanswered so I hope they will be answered before the book ends. 

 You can feel the darkness of the Spanish Civil War, and the following dictatorship, throughout the book (especially in the second half of it). They do mention some things happening in the country but you can mostly feel it throughout the stories of the characters. It’s hard to read sometimes, especially because my family would have lived through some of it (they came to Canada in the 40s/50s). It’s impossible not to think of them, wherever I read about this time period, however it always surprises me that it somehow helps me understand myself better. It seems that each time I gather information about my family (including who they were, what they lived through, etc), it’s like I gain another piece of my very own puzzle of identity. 

A question for the class: Off the top of your head, are there any books you’ve read that led you to a deep reflection about life, and therefore felt like it changed your life as a result of it? Please share the name of the title and why, if you can think of any! 🙂 

I have to start by expressing my excitement that there was finally a mention of Juan García Madero, in the last chapter of Section 2. This “expert” of Visceral Realism, Ernesto García Grajales, believes that García Madero was never a true visceral realist, which makes the most sense since he is never mentioned by anyone throughout Section 2, however there is a mention of a 17-year-old boy, so was he perhaps mistaken by his name? But why doesn’t anybody else mention him? I would like to say that we might get an answer to this question in Section 3 but I get the sense that Bolaño doesn’t answer (at least not directly) most of the questions we have as readers.

My favourite part of these last 200 or so pages we had to read for this week was definitely chapter 23. I loved how each author from the Feria del Libro wrote something different about how comedies end: as tragedy, as mystery, even as “graphic exercise” or “triumphal march.” It gave different perspectives of how people express their art; how they believe that stories should end. It made me ponder how Bolaño thinks a comedy should end, and is this story considered a comedy? Whether it is or it isn’t, I wonder how this story is going to end and I appreciate that Bolaño has challenged my ideas on how a good story should be written. I get the sense that he writes for pure enjoyment and that he finds this way of telling a story quite humourous (and perhaps hopes his readers will feel the same way), but that he also leaves a lot of hidden messages throughout the story – perhaps we are meant to find them and put the pieces together ourselves (and I will admit I have probably missed most of them). 

However, through the character of Pere Ordóñez, he points out that Spanish and Latin American writers used to take up writing to revolutionize the world; to set it on fire; to reform it. He said that “to write was to renounce, to foresake, sometimes to commit suicide,” and argues that writers today don’t renounce anything, but they do it to move up the “social ladder” (514). I thought this was interesting and again, made me wonder about why Bolaño wanted to be a writer. Was he simply pointing out a change of culture throughout history or was he challenging writers and himself to write for a bigger purpose? It’s evident that politics are of interest to Bolaño and so for that reason I come back to the point I made earlier: maybe Bolaño has left us many hidden messages throughout this story, or at least things to reflect on in our own lives and our society. For that, I can appreciate Bolaño and this story. 

I am intrigued to see what has happened to García Madero, and how Bolaño has ended this story.

I have been reading about 90 pages in this book every other week and so since we haven’t made a post on our Selected Reading in a while, this post will be on the last 180 pages that I’ve read. Oddly enough, every time I stop before writing in this blog, Daniel is about to meet with Nuria Monfort.

I finally got to read about his first encounter with Nuria but he goes to see her again because everything she told him the first time was a lie. Everything she said about Carax wasn’t true, her husband Miquel isn’t actually in prison, and she’s the one who’s been picking up mail from Carax’s father’s old apartment. I am starting to wonder if Carax is still alive and if Nuria and Miquel are helping Carax in some way, since we also found out that Miquel and Carax were childhood friends. Surprisingly enough, Carax also used to be friends with the evil Inspector Fumero, so I’m also starting to wonder if Coubert (the guy with the burned face) is also a childhood friend, perhaps Jorge Aldaya (Penelope’s brother)? We find out that Penelope and Carax were in love but they couldn’t make their relationship public so their plan was to escape Barcelona and run off to Paris together but Penelope never met him at the train station so he went alone. We know that Carax comes back to Barcelona and apparently dies shortly after arriving but nothing feels certain anymore. There are many holes in many stories and Daniel and his friend Fermin are trying to get to the bottom of it all. 

Daniel falls in love with his childhood best friend’s sister, Bea, but since she is engaged to be married, we find ourselves with another example of a forbidden love. Their love is very short-lived and after a creepy encounter that the two of them have in an abandoned house, where Daniel sees Coubert and urges Bea to run (they both make it out unharmed), he doesn’t hear from Bea again. Right after he shares that a week has gone by without hearing from her, he says,

“En siete días, estaría muerto¨(In seven days time, I would be dead).

This shocked me. Bea’s father certainly wants to kill Daniel, maybe her brother does too, and while Coubert seems creepy and dangerous, he hasn’t done anything to Daniel yet and honestly just seems to want Carax’s book more than anything else. It also seemed strange that Ruiz Zafón would kill off his main character (and narrator) of the book so did he mean this in a metaphorical sense? Or does he experience some kind of Near-Death Experience? As I mentioned, nothing seems certain anymore but all the questions are keeping me very engaged in the story. It’s always a struggle for me to put the book down and wait for another week, before I can continue with the story. 

Discussion question: How many of you are interested in murder mysteries? Do you like guessing what happens in the end and if so, are you often surprised or are your guesses usually correct?

I really enjoyed reading this section of Savage Detectives. It was maybe the first time I felt like I didn’t want to put the book down and also wanted to keep reading into the next section. 

While there are still new characters being introduced and I’m still wondering why some of them have a central role (like who is guy Amadeo Salvatierra and why does he matter? Does anyone else find him to be the most boring?), it does feel like we’re finally being given some more information about the visceral realists, like the fact that they are dealing drugs. I’m not sure why this had never occurred to me before but this makes a lot more sense to me how they were getting by without a job (and even though it seems that Ulises and his Austrian pal Heimito sometimes beat people up and rob them, this is maybe still not enough to live off of). I am wondering too if Ulises got tied up in something bad and this is why he stayed in Nicaragua for so long. And I still really want to know what happened to all of them when they took off with Lupe!

On page 369 we are teased with some information… “Everything had begun, according to Luscious Skin, with a trip that Lima and his friend Belano took up north, at the beginning of 1976. After that trip they both went on the run. First they fled to Mexico City, together and then to Europe, separately.” But that’s all we get. We are left with a bit of hope that we will receive some more information about what really happened that night but then… nothing. 

Reading about Lima’s adventures in Israel were strange, especially since Heimito is such an odd character (on many of these pages I wrote why and yikes). I found myself laughing at his random accounts of how many Coca-Colas he drank in one day and how he kept referring to Ulises as “my good friend,” when I’m not so sure how good of a friend he really is from Lima’s perspective. It was hard to follow which parts of his story were in the desert and which were in the prison since they seemed to blend together, though this is probably the intention (since Heimito himself seems a bit out of it). I enjoyed reading about all of Belano’s adventures while he was in Europe too. 

It’s interesting how Lima seems to be disappearing though… María informs Xóchitl not to mention the visceral realists in her interviews and Jacinto also said that Lima was “dead as a person and a poet.” I wonder if Lima feels a bit lost without Belano and I’m wondering why they separated, or if that had been planned for some particular reason. 

I look forward to continue into the next section as the weeks follow… 

While I enjoyed the beginning and the end of Amuleto, I did not enjoy the book overall. 

Most of the time I was annoyed or bored. I just wanted the book to end but the process got dragged out even longer for me because my mind kept wandering and so I’d have to go back and re-read pages. For some reason, this style of writing doesn’t bother me as much in Savage Detectives, maybe because the first part was written in a different way (more journal-style entries) and maybe because we have different voices in part two, but I found Auxilio’s repetition extremely annoying (how many times did she say she was the mother of Mexican poetry?). At first I found it funny, but after a while I got annoyed. It felt like a weird way to fill in the words but Amuleto is a short story, so why the fillers? I provide an example here:

“Tal vez más delgada, pero en realidad no estaba más delgada. Tal vez más demacrada, aunque en realidad no estaba más demacrada. Tal vez más callada, pero me bastaron tres minutos para darme cuenta de que tampoco estana más callada… (Maybe more skinny but she wasn’t less skinny. Maybe more haggard [is this the correct translation?] although in reality she wasn’t more haggard. Maybe quieter but it took me three minutes to realize she wasn’t quieter either…)” (Bolaño 38-39).

The stories all seemed the same and so it felt like it was all blending together. I also hated the dialogue-style of writing, the back and forth of “I said and then she said and then I responded”… Sometimes it made for such long sentences and I just found it dull to read that over and over again. I named this post pulling teeth because that’s how it felt for me to get through this book… and what was with the two-pages of her prophecies?? It seemed unnecessary to me. 

However, as I mentioned above, I did enjoy the ending. I found it more interesting to read about these “dreams” she was having, conversing with other artists, such as Remedios Varo and Lilian Serpas. Since she continued to talk about being in the bathroom, on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, you could really see how traumatic of an experience this was for her (and I’m sure would have been for anyone). There were moments in which I thought maybe she had actually died and she was conversing with these dead artists in the Otherworld. It was interesting to notice as well that she seemed to be acknowledging more of her Uruguyan side, rather than just being the mother of Mexican poetry towards the end of the book. She is even surprised to find that her escalofríos (shivers) are Uruguyan and the guardian angel of her dreams is Argentinian, and we see more use of “vos” rather than “tú.” It seemed like an interesting coming home for her, perhaps as she was on the threshold of life and death? Did anyone else feel this way, when they were reading this story?

I will admit that I’m glad this book is over though, and we can continue with Savage Detectives and our book-of-choice. 

I stopped reading at the end of chapter 19 of The Shadow of the Wind and oddly enough, it feels like I finished in the same place I finished last time. 

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I stopped right as Daniel had received information about Isaac’s daughter, Nuria. Isaac told him that Nuria and Julián Carax were involved with one another and he gave Daniel her address. I had assumed that the following chapter would have started with Daniel going to Nuria’s place to inquire about Carax, however this never happened. I found it strange, and a bit hard to believe, that the “creepy man” with the burnt face (Coubert) would not have come after Daniel, since he seemed pretty desperate to get his hands on the last copy of Carax’s book. However, Daniel does not go to visit Nuria until almost another 100 pages later (which is where I stopped). So once again, I am left wondering what information Nuria will give us about the mysterious author Julián Carax.

I truly love this story so far though, and it’s been interesting to change to its original Spanish version. I am following all of the conversations pretty well, however I get lost sometimes when Ruiz Zafón is describing scenes and background info, so sometimes I have to refer back to the English version to make sure I don’t miss anything. I am enjoying the challenge though, and always appreciate adding new Spanish words to my dictionary. There is so much I love about the Spanish language, I could write an entire blog about everything I love about it, but for today I will share a word I came across on page 142 that brought me such joy: palante. For the non-Spanish speakers, this is a blend of the two words para and adelante and I love when the Spanish mash two words into one like this! 

Getting back to the story, Daniel is well into his adolescence and early-adulthood now and it is interesting to see how his character has changed. He seemed like a timid boy at the beginning but his wild side is coming out now, or as Doña Aurora would call him, “un demonio – a devil.” She is the concierge of the building that Carax lived in and she refers to him this way because when he finds Carax’s old apartment suite (before he fled to France), he goes right on in and snoops through it. It seemed that Daniel had forgotten about Carax again, until he notices the shadow of Coubert when he is at the theater one night. Daniel is taking a deep dive into the mystery of Carax and has begun to involve his new friend and coworker at the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Fermín Romero de Torres, into the mystery as well. 

We discover that Fermín has a criminal record and is wanted by an Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero Almuñiz (whom they just call Fumero). We begin to see traces of the horrific events that were happening during the Franco dictatorship: we find out the the scars over Fermín’s body were from being tortured and the watchmaker next door, Federico, is also wanted for “engaging in homosexual behaviours”. They ended up arresting Federico and it was really awful to read about what was done to him, especially because we know these are not fictional events. 

Fermín has become my favourite character because he is always giving me something to think about. He is quite opinionated and I will share an example of something he said that gave me pause:

“Not evil, moronic, which isn’t quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up anyone he perceives to be different from himself…” (pg 186)

I really liked that and think it’s a precise distinction that he’s made there. I’m not sure why, but I sometimes wonder if the opinions shared through Fermín are opinions that the author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, had himself. Either way, what is being communicated here is that some of the acts committed throughout the dictatorship were not necessarily evil (though I think we can all agree that some acts definitely were) but many were also moronic. It hopefully causes people to reflect on actions they’d taken where they did not stop to think and that in future, they should.

I can feel the tension rising in the book, not only with the political situation happening in Spain, but also with the discoveries that Daniel is making about Carax. I am still not sure why Coubert has not taken action yet – it was obvious last time that if he did not get his hands on Carax’s book then there would be hell to pay, though this certainly adds to this tension. 

I’m curious if anyone has any opinions about why this seemingly dangerous man Coubert hasn’t done anything yet? 

Just as I said that I liked the journal-style writing in the first part of the book, I also really like the writing style of the second part. I am assuming that all the different voices talking are to represent these people being interviewed. In the first paragraph of section two we see:

“Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City, DF, January 1976. My dear boys, I said to them, I’m so glad to see you, come right in, make yourselves at home, and as they filed down the hall, or rather felt their way, because the hall is dark and the bulb had burned out and I hadn’t changed it…” (Bolaño 143).

It reminds me very much of the way that someone would speak, as we tend to ramble or have side conversations sometimes, when telling a story. They are also mentioning not only the speaker but where the conversation took place. I liked having a backstory to some of the characters mentioned in the first part though I have to admit I was starting to lose track of who all the people were. I had to keep flipping back to previous chapters to remember who everyone was. Was Perla Avilés the one who went horseback riding with him? Or was that another woman?

I got really confused when I got to chapter 4 and started reading about Auxilio Lacouture (it sounds like this is the story we’ll read in Amulet?) It was definitely a much longer interview and I didn’t quite understand why she had her own designated chapter, unless she becomes a more central character later in the book. 

The interview that I found the most interesting was the one with María Font. I had been waiting to find out what exactly happen to Lupe and the visceral realists who had fled the city with her so I was eager to read what she had to say, about a year later. As you all know, we aren’t privy to that information yet but it was still interesting to read that her father is now in an asylum, and that Ulises and Arturo had gone to Sonora. Is this where they took Lupe? And what exactly happened to García Madero? When we were given backstory on the older visceral realists, it made sense why García Madero wasn’t included in these stories but why did María Font still not mention him? Did he stay behind with Lupe? I liked also getting inside of María Font’s head, since all information we had of her before was from García Madero’s perspective. It was interesting to read that having sex and/or being nude with others provides her with comfort, security and tranquility (pg. 194).

I feel much more interested in the story now and I am looking forward to continuing in a couple weeks.

I also find it interesting and I am sure I am not the only one who noticed a new connection between Arturo Belano and Roberto Bolaño, since Belano is apparently moving to Spain (and the same happened for Bolaño).