Monthly Archives: January 2026

I AM A SELF-PROCLAIMED BAD POETRY READER. But through experience, I have come to learn all skills can be sharped with discipline. Henceforth, I propose for all my blogs to start with a poem. Apropos Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, it is a novel about poets, poetry and lost poets. I suspect I will only be adding […] Continue reading →

They say not to judge a book by its cover – and in this case, that’s pretty easy: the cover doesn’t give away much! I do like the black on white and the disrupting lines, very arresting…anyway, on to the reading! I was interested in how the story started in a university setting – a […] Continue reading →

The novel begins with Garcia Madero explaining to his poetry teacher what a rispetto was. When I read this, I had a hunch that tension between the High and the Low, or between the Snobby and the Down-to-earth, would be Continue reading Week 2: The High and the Low — What is Good Taste?→ Continue reading →

I know my title is just an obvious statement, but I haven’t been able to figure out how else to describe the first part of The Savage Detectives. Juan García Madero gets adopted by a bunch of weird poets and stops going to law school. And no one who knows even really cares. And then he … Continue reading →

First Impression? I was quite frightened at first to start reading the book but soon after I read the first couple of pages, I felt relieved and a bit surprised. I was locked in as one calls it and was enjoying it more than I had anticipated. There are many thoughts that lingered in my … Continue reading The Savage Detectives: Part I Continue reading →

As someone completely unfamiliar with Bolaño’s works and The Savage Detectives, I really went into this first part blind, not knowing what to expect. Yet still, any of my faint preconceived notions went out the window as soon as I started reading. I certainly found this first part to be quite interesting, and to be … Continue reading The Savage Detectives I (pp. 3-139) Continue reading →