RMST 495/520: Long Books

I left my last blog post uncertain as to whether Zeno would marry Ada or not. I thought there was a chance, but really given the nature of the book it was also fair to assume that something would go wrong, and Zeno would not be able to marry Ada, the one he has been pining for. However, in true Zeno fashion, he proposes to Ada, who rejected him, then he proposed to Alberta who also refused, and then finally proposed to Augusta who accepts the proposal. I guess third times the charm. However, she is in fact his third choice, and in the start of this section of the book, he described her as “unattractive and dull” and wondered how anyone could be attracted to her, a great way to start a marriage. Despite the dissapointment, Zeno also references the stability that Augusta provides him in their marriage, which he is fond of. Yet again, Zeno’s recollection seems to be very misinformed and blind to what is actually happening in real life.

Then he goes on to write about the balance of his marriage with Augusta, and his affair with Carla, who is described as a shrill voiced aspiring singer. The tone in this part of the book is slightly different than the first few parts. In this part, Zeno writes much more passively about these events, compared to when he wrote about his pursuit of Ada, or when he was trying to quit smoking. Yes, he was making excuses and finding ways to avoid facing his addiction, but his language describing the details of his affair really emphasize the lack of agency Zeno has convinced himself he had in this time. That’s the most important part; that he has convinced himself, not that the events actually transpired like that. He is just as unreliable as ever in terms of explaining what has happened, because reality is being reconstructed to his liking. It is very interesting and also frustrating to read because you as the reader know this is not true, or it doesn’t make sense, yet this is what you are left with. His description of Carla as fresh and healthy shows this obsession with sickness he has, that has carried from the illnesses he has experienced in the past and his smoking addiction as well. It poses a question of whether he saw his affair as a cure to something, because he is rather bleak about his own outcomes. I found it quite ironic, because Zeno also notes that Augusta’s health is stable as well, and moreover she is his wife, yet he chooses to lean into the unstable affair as if that will be a cure all to his troubles. It is very selective morality that always seems to pardon him. Again, very frustrating to read, but also made me reflect on the fact that morality is moldable and very personal to everyone. At some point, everyone has probably bent their own morality and values to justify something, and so really the question may be how often we do this, or how serious the consequences are of this. Zeno is unapologetic of the affair that eventually ends and then he states he has been cured, quite similar to his self-proclaimed status of “cured” with his smoking habit. One of my blog posts is titled “Nothing Comes Easy for Zeno… According to Him” but I am revisiting this idea because really he seems to have a simple method of refusing any other perspective, which lets him do immoral or bad things so comfortably. I wondered then, why don’t more people live like this. Is it because we are socialized in a way that refrains us from being so self motivated, or do many people live like this and just do a better job of hiding the deeply self-centred motivations that dictate what we do.

Part three of Our Share of Night, which is the section that I finished this week, is called “The Bad Thing About Empty Houses.” Although it’s not stated directly, the bad thing about empty houses seems to be that they might actually be full of magic and human remains and one-way doors to hellish dimensions. And that they might swallow up one of your friends and leave you with soul-crushing guilt. That’s basically what happens to Gaspar. And then his father dies. It’s all very uplifting.

In general, I feel like the horror aspect kind of intensified in the second half of this section. Aside from the experience of Gaspar and his friends in the “empty” house, the parts that stood out to me the most had to do with Gaspar’s father, Juan, who was both dying from his heart condition and becoming increasingly violent. Based on the conversations between Gaspar and Juan following the last few episodes of violence, I got the impression that Juan’s actions were out of his control in some way — that something was forcing him to do what he did, or that it was all out of magical necessity somehow. In contrast to the abuse, there were some brief moments in part three when everything seemed to be fine. At one point, Gaspar and Juan went out at night to scatter Rosario’s ashes in a swamp, and there was such a quiet beauty to the scene that I almost believed the peace would last. It felt like they were finally “sharing the night” in a way that was worth remembering.

On the bright side, Gaspar now gets to go and live with his uncle, who seems to be relatively easygoing compared with Juan. Will this uncle be able to protect Gaspar from his mother’s Darkness-worshipping family? Not forever, I suspect. But maybe he’ll at least get a break from people performing rituals on him and drinking his blood.

Leading up to my question of the week: In the latest session of the novel study class that I teach, I found out that my student had read beyond the assigned chapters in our current book. As a student at the university level, how do you feel about reading ahead? What would you say are the advantages and disadvantages?

O homeland,
which generation of your children
will see you free, flourishing, and proud
with eyes that truly believe?

– Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

What a strange experience it is to read. What a strange feeling to read about the history of one country and think of another. The events, the small details, the history of dictatorships, their fall, their rise, public perception, the struggle of civil societies, the power of media, censorship, the regime’s distortion of events, the silencing of dissent, the control and the suffocation of a nation by the hands of a regime. Oh Vargas Llosa!

From the beginning, I have felt strange when reading Conversation in the Cathedral (not in a negative way). Even though I was reading a novel about Peru it seemed like I had heard these stories before, though not about the Peruvian experience but about the Iranian one. Political prisoners, universities portrayed as the space for leftist movements, the “open-minded” ones, the revolutionaries. Print shops used for printing clandestine anti-government fliers, the designated “meeting houses” that had to be switched from time to time, and out of all of this, your words becoming your own death warrant. It is so similar that it sometimes blows my mind. It helps my reading because I get vivid visual images of what is happening in the book, thanks to how greatly I was exposed to the history of the Iranian revolution (the movies/shows have helped with that for sure). I would say my imagination helps me read this book. That is what I enjoy most about it.

What puzzles me the most when reading is Santiago’s relationship with himself. He has a lot on his mind. I don’t know if he knows it himself. Self-criticism, doubt, and his empty performances of independence, though I think he would classify his choices as revolutionary acts against his family, the rejection of “privilege”, a way of standing up to them. Once again, I know this was also the case for many of the younger generations leading up to the revolution in Iran in 1978. It makes me believe Vargas Llosa more. With Santiago, I think he is determined to be independent and never go back home to see his parents or do what they want him to do, because that is all he can stand up to; that is the only thing in his power. He lacks the power to stand up to the Odriístas and to take part in the movements against the dictatorship or to even make concrete decisions in his life other than not going back to his parents’ house. When there are talks about the possible fall of the dictatorship, he seems to distance himself from what is happening. He is hopeless as if he doesn’t care about the future, who will replace Odría, or what would happen if Odría switches to a military dictatorship. On that note however, it is interesting that when there are talks about the fall of Odría, the only character who expresses great concern is Señora Lucía whom I think is his landlady. She experiences a lot of distress, fearing the country will fall into the hands of the Apristas because as she puts it, they are atheists and communists. Does this mean people preferred Odría to stay on? Well, Señora Lucía…Odría did not fall; instead, he shifted to a full-on military rule, a rule goverened by the Constitution of repression.

On my reading experience now: It seems that the fractured stories follow me to every book, though I enjoy what Vargas Llosa has done here. His format makes much more sense than Bolaño’s. It is smoother and better blended with one another.

When talking about power, people, and politics, I must mention the masterful work of Vargas Llosa in this book. The way he has been able to portray life under a dictatorship, especially the family dynamics at play. You get to sense the tensions that exist, the worries, the disagreements, the heated conversations, the differences in political opinions, even the sacrifices and how that affects a family. I know so many stories of people who did not talk to their families ever again in Iran, especially in 1977 onward because of their ideological differences and to either keep their position, gain a position, or they were revolutionaries, and as their differences multiplied, they grew apart even more. Just like in my story with Don Fermín and Santiago, the feud is usually between fathers and sons while the mothers (sometimes the siblings) are caught in the middle. Once again I can’t emphasize how amazed I am by how well the climate at the time is described, though it may not be immediately apparent to every reader, perhaps, or maybe it is because I know of another revolution very closely, with details that were not just read in history books or in shows made later on but accounts I was told by many of the people who lived through it. And with that, I go back to the epigraph that I mentioned in my first blog: “One must have explored all of social life in order to be a true novelist, since the novel is the private history of nations.” It could not get more accurate than this.

I have many other points in my notes to cover, but I’ll stop here for everyone’s sake. My question this week is: what is one thing that puzzles you about your book? Or is there nothing that puzzles you?

Reactions

Reading the third part of Quiet Chaos has been an intense and immersive experience. So much has happened in such a short span! It’s starting to feel as if everything in Pietro’s life is beginning to unravel, leading towards the long-awaited grief. Things are taking a turn!

Commentary

In the third reading, Pietro continues his usual routine of sitting on a park bench, waiting for his daughter Claudia to finish school. His stillness has become a ritual, a quiet attempt to hold onto what remains while processing what is lost and what is grief. Samuele, a coworker, finds him there and goes over a report on the company merger, revealing the psychological trauma it imposes on employees versus the financial gain for shareholders. The report identifies only 3 groups of employees who can endure such upheaval: the faithful, the traitors, and the collaborationists. Metaphorically, I believe the corporate turmoil mirrors Pietro’s personal grief, whereby both require endurance (with faith), moral navigation (to betray or to stay loyal), and confrontation with loss (grief and change don’t have to be coped with alone but shared and empathized together).

Interestingly, Pietro leaves the bench to have lunch with Thierry at a nearby cafe, who pressures him to take over Jean-Claude’s position. Pietro refuses, suspecting Thierry’s manipulation in Jean-Claude’s departure. However, Thierry accuses Jean-Claude of betrayal, company theft, and falsifying financial accounts, blurring the lines between loyalty to the company and their friendship. Later, Pietro brings Claudia to Jean-Claude’s home to confront him, only to intervene in a heated marital argument. I think the couple’s argument illustrates how the process of grief can intersect with unexpected social intrusion in life.

In the novel, it switches to a dinner scene, focusing on Pietro’s brother without Pietro. The brother learns that Pietro has become locally famous as “the father who sits outside his daughter’s school after an event of both trauma and heroism” from his dinner guests. He discovers that Eleonora, one of the dinner guests, is the woman Pietro rescued at the beach. The next day, he goes to the park and tells Pietro about this. Interestingly, Pietro learns that Eleonora owns Brick Chocolate, a company connected to the company merger. Here, I believe Eleonora represents someone who links Pietro’s past heroism and trauma to his present corporate chaos and struggles to outwardly grieve.

Near the end of the third reading, Pietro found himself at a meeting teaching parents to discuss death and separation with children. Here, Pietro epithanizes that Claudia’s lack of grief over her mother’s death may reflect his own incomplete mourning (or not grieving enough), as shown to hear. That is, Claudia is learning from him, seeing how he doesn’t grieve, so she copies that. Overwhelmed by this realization, he faints at the meeting. Later, while driving home, the floodgates open! Pietro cries profusely in his car, finally confronting the depth of his loss, his wife, his sense of normality, his past world of love and family, his past self. Honestly, I believe it is all about to begin unravelling: Pietro’s identity, once suspended in limbo, is beginning to reorganize around what is present, what is absent, and what is the truth.

Discussion Question

You can answer the question in any way you like, whether related to literary works or personal experiences.

Can keeping grief, betrayal, or disappointment hidden actually teach something to children (or others) intentionally or unintentionally? When we withhold, remove ourselves from, or control difficult emotions, are we protecting others from these emotions, or are we failing to help them learn and go through these necessary emotions healthily?

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 took the reading break to finish Book 3 of Conversation in the Cathedral, and I feel completely drawn into the world. Somehow, the fragmented narrative which disregards chronology did not take away from the immersion — though occasionally, I had a smug feeling about being able to piece together the puzzle, as if I was a detective, or an investigating journalist, to stick to the theme of the novel.

Does your book respect the chronological order of events? Why might an author choose to break up chronological order, and what are the effects?

Vargas Llosa presents the insides of a political power struggle between senators under Odría’s rule of Peru. As if pulling out a weed in the ground, he unearths its roots — stories hidden from the public eye — which includes a Bildungsroman (Santiago), a 9pm soap opera (Amalia and Ambrosio), a murder mystery (Hortensia)…(Digression: the mix of genres reminds me of Star Wars — the first six movies.) Truth is revealed a little at a time, and the reader has to actively work on piecing it together, which makes it such a satisfying read.

Don Cayo is the Minister of Public Order, known for being cold and cruel, oppressing Odría’s opposition forces with an iron hand. He is portrayed a pathetic and distrustful. Don Fermín (Santiago’s father) is a senator, patron of Odría’s rise from the very beginning, but merely for business reasons, portrayed as a gentleman, a loving father. They were once friends, but Cayo refuses to accept stocks from Fermín, and refuses to use Public Order funds for Fermín’s building projects. Fermín nearly goes bankrupt, but his Coalition succeeds in expelling Cayo. He escapes Peru, leaving his mistress Hortensia “the Muse” broke. She was also Fermín’s previous mistress, and she blackmails Fermín to “get back on her feet”. She was later killed in her apartment. Santiago’s boss is an experienced journalist with many underground connections, and together they investigate the story, to find Fermín behind the murder. Santiago has a nervous breakdown. Losing faith in everything, he makes up with his family. However, the author later reveals that Fermín’s driver Ambrosio committed the murder on his own accord, out of loyalty. Ambrosio is the person with whom Santiago is having a conversation in the Cathedral bar, trying to figure out at what point in his life he fucked himself up.

Santiago was an idealist boy, leftist, lover of literature. When his dad fishes him out of prison, something in him extinguishes. He feels incoherent: he can’t fight for communism while taking advantage of his government-sourced privilege. This is the reason Santiago explicitly gives us, but I believe otherwise. He’s disillusioned because he realizes his revolution, his ideal, is only a children’s game in the eyes of politicians like Fermín and Cayo. “Let them play the revolution game,” Don Cayo says. They never saw Santiago’s group as worthy of their attention, never thought their voice worthy of hearing. They just throw them sloppily into jail. Only the revolt of their fellow senators mattered to them.

He breaks with his family and becomes a journalist, drinking to his own sorrows with Carlitos, on a road towards a mediocre life as revealed in the beginning of the book, a life which I could not put into words better than Trainspotting. This life pains him, but only discretely, suppressed most of the time until too many beers washes away the invisible painkiller, and leaves him throbbing in the Cathedral.

[Trainspotting end monologue]

HOWEVER. This lucky privileged young man still has a family that loves him. His brother and sister go through troubles to find where he lives, and they have some friendly siblings’ nights out, catching up on family matters, which warms my heart. Not to mention Fermín who dropped all work within 30 minutes of Santiago’s call to meet him and make up with him. Vargas Llosa could have depicted a mean, unloving family that forces Santiago to be religious and conservative and “good”, but no one really did that. He instead brought out the side of conservativism that values family. I can’t help being touched by the complex love and hate within this family (digression: the same way I love the Skywalkers).

There are other compelling characters in the book. I’ll talk about them next time.

583. That’s the number of pages I’ve read so far of Bolaño’s books, which were assigned for this course. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve finally become accustomed to his style. As I’m reading, I find myself often thinking to myself “What do you expect? That’s Bolaño for you”. Bolaño’s style is, well, there are a few words that come to mind: “unconventional”, “experimental”, “poetic”, “creative”, “weird”. I’ve appreciated his writing style since early on in The Savage Detectives. However, at times, I found certain passages to feel a bit tedious. He seems to enjoy listing things. For example, when he writes “[…] about the poetry of Liu Hsiang, Tung Chung-shu, Wang Pi, Tao Chien (Tao Yuan-ming, 365-427), the Tang dynasty, Han Yu (768-824), Meng Hoa-Jan (689-740), Wang Wei (699-759), Li Po (701-762), Tu Fu (712-770) […]” (p. 209). This list goes on for a little longer, but I don’t have much of a desire to continue typing it up, for that is far more tedious than reading a list in a novel. This is one of the shortest lists that he’s included in The Savage Detectives. But I’m not citing this part of the novel because I want to criticize Bolaño’s writing style. I’m bringing it up because it’s a passage that demonstrates how I’ve had to modify my expectations, as well as stretch my imagination, in regards to what should be included in a novel. This also brings to mind our discussion in class about why long books are long and why short books are short. If Bolaño hadn’t included these lists, or the many tangents that he likes to go on, would a shorter version of this novel have as strong an impact on its readers? Are these parts considered to be what people often refer to as “filler”? And if this is the case, is “filler” inherently bad? These are questions that I’ve been pondering over as I continue to read Bolaño’s writings, which have lead me to sometimes feel a bit perplexed, yet my usual reaction is that of satisfaction. I wanted Amulet to be longer than 184 pages. And now I’m wondering if I will feel the same way after finishing The Savage Detectives. The “tangents” I refer to are parts of the novel that diverge from what was being discussed right before. The section of the novel that we read for class this week contains three tangents that I greatly enjoyed. One of them was when Michel Bulteau and Ulises Lima were discussing the band The Question Marks (p. 247), another one was when Norman Bolzman was describing how Ulises Lima was questioning the accuracy of a biblical translation (p. 305-306), and the last one was when Hugo Montero was expressing the superiority of strong tobacco (p. 357-358). I realize that the reason that these tangents made a strong impression on me is because they pertained to topics that greatly interest me (rock bands, translations of the Bible and tobacco), while the list of the Chinese dynasties, although it was a much shorter section, was one that didn’t resonate with me on the same level. However, I still appreciate every list that Bolaño chose to include, as well as every instance in which he diverged from the main plot. Why is that? Well, as someone who prefers watching independent films over Hollywood movies, I have a very strong appreciation for parts of a narrative that don’t advance the plot, but which provide us with more depth, even if others might argue that the depth is useless because it’s irrelevant to the story. These moments allow us to spend more time with a character. We get a glimpse at their inner workings. We learn about what matters to them, what experiences they’ve had and what their thoughts focus on. They make the characters appear as if they are real people; individuals with their own interests and ideas, which exist outside of what we typically refer to as “the plot”. These parts demonstrate the notion of a “slice of life”, which Bolaño captures and presents to us through his writing. As human beings going through life, there are many instances in which we will have thoughts and experiences that don’t advance the “main plot” of our life story. And yet, these tangents, these moments of contemplation, are part of what makes us who we are. Bolaño is writing about the human experience. And he captures it so well.

Question for the class: If you were Bolaño’s editor for The Savage Detectives, would you have shortened the length of the book? If so, which parts would you have chosen to exclude?

I personally liked the beginning of the novel better than where we currently are for a number of reasons. I had enjoyed Garcia Madero’s journal entry style of writing as it felt like we were almost in his head and it felt intimate and easier to follow along. Even though there were still aspects that made it hard to read or understand things, his journal entries made it easier as it felt like the book had a backbone or something holding it together. I feel like it kind of gets confusing as to who is talking sometimes. Additionally, I feel like there are a lot of names whether of people or cities and it gets hard to remember all of it. I also feel like there are a lot of small interactions that become hard to keep up with as well. It also feels different because considering we think of Belano and Lima as one of the main characters or protagonists of the book we would assume we get more access to their thoughts. However, it feels like we are starting to hear about them more so from other people’s perspectives or memories. 

What stood out to me the most was how the importance of characters has changed throughout the book. For example, in the beginning it seemed as if Garcia Madero was the main character and he would always be there and also narrating for the entire book but that was not the case. Similarly, the perspective on Belano feels almost the same as I can see his significance shift over time. Earlier in the book, he felt more important as if he was a central character however, as the book goes he slowly becomes more and more insignificant. The part that I found really interesting about this was that he was called a night watchman. At first, I did not understand who even was being called that but the way I saw it was that Belano was just a night watchman in someone’s perspective which felt kind of weird. I feel like him losing his name was one of the factors that show he was slowly becoming insignificant. I think the difference in perspective is interesting because if I had to describe Baleno I would say visceral realist or something to do with Latin literature but to see he is just a night man in someone’s eyes was different. 

Discussion Question: How do you view identity in this book?

Back at it again with The Savage Detectives! Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable and productive reading break, I would say mine was only so-so because unfortunately I was feeling sick for part of it, but luckily I was able to get some actual reading done during this reading break. This week’s (or I guess last two week’s) reading was just under 200 pages in the Picador edition which is quite a bit, but strangely enough after finishing reading the selected pages today, I felt that both a lot of stuff happened yet not really much at all. I think as I was reading over these past two weeks, the professor’s mention of this period of sort of “waiting” during part II of The Savage Detectives became very apparent. We’ve already discussed in class and in our blog posts about these stories within stories and what’s really “important”, and this section of The Savage Detectives still begs those very same discussion questions so I won’t keep beating that dead horse. Instead, I’ll just point out some portions that stood out to me (let’s just say parts that I found either interesting, important, or both)!

First and foremost, we get the very slightest of mentions of what happened to Belano, Lima, Garcia Madero, and Lupe (though still no actual, explicit mentions of the latter two). It happens in one of Luis’ accounts where Luscious Skin basically sort of theorizes about Lima’s disappearance in Managua. Not much is said that we don’t already know though, the group heads up north allegedly in search of Cesarea Tinajero (who by the way is still kind of an enigma), Belano and Lima flee Mexico City to Europe, and years later Lima returns to Mexico City but “the killers” show up and are still looking for him which is why he decides to stay in Managua and not come back. Who are those “killers”? Well it would have to be Alberto if I had to guess, assuming these “killers” even exist. Remember, this is just Luscious Skin’s theory which I don’t really believe in the first place, and a couple years later Lima does in fact return to Mexico, so maybe this whole Nicaragua story was just a big nothingburger. Though that’s probably a poor way to put it, I just wanted to use the word nothingburger to be honest. I really think that the whole point of Lima’s disappearance in Nicaragua was to show us the other people’s reactions to his disappearance and current views on visceral realism in the following accounts. Although, visceral realism is essentially dead and frowned upon by most apart from a couple of the realists and that one young poet, Efren Hernandez.

I would like to take a moment to give a shoutout to one of the characters that I admire the most, Xochitl. You know, a lot of the times I feel like the visceral realists don’t really have their own sense of purpose and just kind of go with the flow of their daily lives. Xochitl on the other hand works two jobs (at the expense of losing many hours of sleep), works on her poetry whenever she gets a chance, takes care of her son, Franz, and gets both her poems as well as Jacinto and others’ poems published (which seems like more work than Belano or Lima ever put in when visceral realism was a thing). She definitely seems like one of the more “grounded” or “normal” characters (not sure if that’s the best way to put it) and I definitely at least admire her work ethic.

Some of the other accounts that I enjoyed reading were Joaquin’s accounts where it appears he’s slowly getting better (less crazy) at the psychiatric hospital, Mary Watson’s mini-hitchhiking adventure, as well as Norman Bolzman’s and Heimito Kunst’s experiences with Lima. The most confusing and perhaps my least enjoyable accounts were Amadeo Salvatierra’s. I mean, it doesn’t help that it’s like the only account that’s scattered throughout the rest, but you can also really feel that these are recollections from a drunk man (on top of that his accounts are set further in the past than the others)! I guess I’ll pivot from there to my discussion question for this week: “Whose accounts did you find the most confusing? What did you find significant from them and why?” Speaking of Amadeo’s accounts though, in the final one of this week’s reading, we get to see a glimpse of the enigmatic Tinajero’s “poem” (if you can even call it that). I’ll be completely honest, I’m not really sure what to make of it right now (Amadeo has been looking at it for more than forty years and neither does he). I guess I fall into the same boat as Amadeo where I’m left wondering what it really means. Maybe it ties into what we’ve discussed on what’s really “important”, maybe the point of it is that it’s not supposed to be important or have any meaning. I definitely thought of the square that we saw on the last page in class, but that just raises more questions than answering any of them. This also isn’t the first time I’ve seen Bolano use “drawings” in his books because in my last blog post for 2666, there are also strange geometric figures with names of philosophers. Strange, strange indeed…till next time, folks!

P.S. You probably didn’t notice but unfortunately I posted this blog post past midnight on Thursday. More unfortunately, the reason was because I was too caught up studying for a midterm tomorrow (technically later today), so please wish me luck! The good news is that after tomorrow I’ll only have one more midterm in March and I believe that one is on a Monday!