Monthly Archives: February 2026

Getting back into The Savage Detectives after about three weeks off was not as difficult as I had feared – I recognized the first voice, Amadeo Salvatierra, from his references to the Suicida Mezcal, and the rest of the pieces linked together from there. It helped that some of the chapters began to grow into […] Continue reading →

“How long is this going to take?” (King Julien from the Madagascar movie). That is kind of how I felt reading this chunk of the book. Because there are so many voices and stories, that are coming from all ends of the world, and are semi-relevant but are also displaying the ways in which these […] Continue reading →

I must say, I don’t feel that my title for this week’s post really captures my impression of the last 200 pages or so of The Savage Detectives. It’s striking me more and more that the search for Cesárea Tinajero is only the silvery thread tying the episodes of the middle section together; and for … Continue reading →

It was a long break. I’ve decided to try an exercise, a writing exercise mentioned in the book. I am going to do some automatic writing. I know it is probably going to be horrible no idea how this is going to turn out. This might be completely unproductive. Why are we so obsessed with […] Continue reading →

If The Savage Detectives was a movie, we’d have seen “Ten Years Later” across the screen. Suddenly we make a jump ahead of time, bigger than any other so far, and no one remembers visceral realism anymore. Most people who Continue reading Week 8: Ten Years Later→ Continue reading →

Photos: Front cover of the novel « The Savage Detectives » and image of author Roberto Bolaño This week’s reading felt extremely long and dragging, and it was sometimes a gruelling experience. I had to stop, re-read, and return to certain passages several times over the course of two weeks just to begin to comprehend what was […] Continue reading →

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 […] Continue reading →

And the Interviews continue… How will all of this make sense? Will it ever? To start off, it’s satisfying that the pages I’ve read finally outweigh what’s left. I must give Bolaño some praise for his writing. It may not make much sense to me, but he clearly knows what he’s doing by deliberately making … Continue reading The Savage Detectives: Same old, Same old Continue reading →