RMST 495/520: Long Books

I just finished reading Amulet by Roberto Bolaño. It must say, it was quite the experience. I was expecting the story to unfold in a very different manner than it did. I thought that it would be a more typical survival story that focused on how Auxilio Lacouture managed to survive during that time and descriptions of how the invasion by the army unfolded. Auxilio did describe some of her survival techniques, such as the detail about how she ate toilet paper, however, the details pertaining to her methods of survival were more or less the same as what was revealed in chapter four of the second part of The Savage Detectives. Putting expectations aside, I was captivated by Amulet and very much enjoyed reading it. About halfway through, I realized that this will not turn into a typical “survival story” in which the narrative is focused on the experience of trying to survive a life-threatening situation. Instead, Amulet is a portrait of the life of a woman, filled with stories that are intricately woven into the main story. The portrait is surreal. It’s oneiric. It warps time. Bolaño plays with the notion of temporality, as the narrative moved back and forth in time, revealing to us the past and future of Auxilio’s life. When Auxilio states, “[…] as if time were coming apart and flying off in different directions simultaneously […]” (p. 30) and “[…] images rose from the bottom of the lake, no one could stop them from emerging from that pitiful body of water, unlit by sun and moon, and time folded and unfolded itself like a dream” (p. 32), I thought to myself that these were apt descriptions of how time moves in this dream-like novel. Although sometimes I found it to be a bit hard to follow and (I tried my best to create a timeline in my head), I found this aspect of the book to be intriguing, as if I had stumbled upon a puzzle that needed to be put together. I didn’t have time to reread much of the book, but I plan on reading through several parts again, since I still haven’t put together every single piece of the story. There were times when I was asking myself, “Is she dreaming?” or “Is she hallucinating?”. At the beginning of the book, she mentions that she has a very active imagination, but I figure that she probably also started to hallucinate at certain points while she was stuck in the bathroom. Dream-like sequences, such as when she was trudging through the snow on the mountain, were inserted into the narrative and these parts caught me by surprise. I very much appreciated how Bolaño weaved in and out of stories. It was if there is a story inside of a story that is inside of another story; several layers of storytelling in an enigma. But the most impactful part of the book was the ending, when Auxilio describes how she hears the singing of the “children”, representing the students that were protesting at UNAM. It was chilling how she describes them marching towards their death as they sing, as well as how she perceives them as “ghosts”, demonstrating the tragic endings that many of them had.

It was an ending that was both haunting and beautiful.

Now I want to read it all over again.

Here is my question for the class: How did reading Amulet compare to the experience of reading chapter 4 of The Savage Detectives? Were you satisfied with how Bolaño expanded on Auxilio’s story, or did you have unmet expectations?

What is an amulet? Do you have any amulets in your life?

I tend to ask myself, in the case my apartment gets consumed by the flames of a fire, what would I take with me? If you could only take one thing, what would that be? I usually have a vague list of things you cannot buy with money. Letters, rocks, blankets, pictures, diaries, dry flowers — my amulets. It is impossible to choose. What would you take?

Reading Amulet was like being on a small shroom trip with a crazy woman. I quite enjoyed it. Reading this short book made me understand Bolaño’s writing style better. I remember someone asking if authors can purposefully make readers feel confused. Now I am 100% sure this is the case of Bolaño. Accompanying Auxilio’s narration feels like jumping in a broken time machine. The years, the people, and the places around her fuse with each other; what is happening already happened, and what will happen in the future also happened too.

She is a conflicted person, free but conflicted. As if she was born at the wrong time. Because similar to Belano, she also identifies herself as a “child of the sewers.” Just like Madero in Detectives Salvajes, Auxilio avoids completely talking about her life before coming to Mexico. An empty slot. We know her dad died and a few other small details. Who is she? Why does Bolaño like to erase the past of his characters?

Auxilio is also an orphan. Orphanhood as a consequence of violence extends beyond Mexico and appears to be a pattern across much of Latin America in Bolaño’s books. Personas sin patria ni matria, product of broken countries. Bolaño/Belano seem to become orphan once he comes back from Chile, after the coup. He has changed, says Auxilio, he looks the same, but something is definitely different. He doesn’t want to talk about it though.

What happened in Uruguay before Auxilio left?

Ghost children

Missing children

Grieving mothers

Hi everyone, likewise to what I have read from everyone else’s posts so far on Amulet by Roberto Bolańo, it is kind of hard for me to pinpoint how I feel about the book. I don’t think I loved the book, but it did leave me a lot to think about. One of the main takeaways for me from Amulet was the construct of time. Bolańo’s construction and deconstruction of time is also very prevalent in The Savage Detectives, but I will come back to more of my thoughts on time later on.

First, I want to touch on Auxilio as a character and why I think she is very powerful agent in her own story, as well as in other people’s lives as well. She notes that she lives somewhat of a nomad lifestyle where she never really stays in one place for too long, I don’t think it can be denied that she makes lasting connections with the people she meets and generally has a positive impact on them. Moreover, I appreciate her personality because I think there is an unapologetic attitude to her that I find admirable. For example, her friendship with Elena highlighted her undeniable ability to make friends anywhere. She mentioned how Elena would always talk about how philosophy and theatre were closely related. Even though they don’t seem to have very similar interests or personalities, Auxilio finds a common ground with her, and when she goes missing for awhile, she makes it her mission to find where Elena went, and goes as far to get her home address from the faculty. Maybe one could argue she was so concerned for selfish reasons, for companionship or looking for someone to stay with, but there is no explicit mention of her staying with Elena and based on my reading, Auxilio puts a lot of her soul into her relationships which is why she always shows a level of care. On page 43, Auxilio states she never lost her humour, which is another part of her personality that shines throughout the book. From her viewpoint, even the bleakest moments can have some humour, like when she jokes about UNAM with Arturo’s mother. It is aspirational to be resilient to the point where you can allow positivity to infect even the most tragic or upsetting realities.

Back to my thoughts on time in this book, the way Auxilio frames time, claiming she sees events that happen in the future far decades ago. On page 31, she states “The birth was over” when she is recalling what happened when she stayed in the bathroom stalls when the soldiers left. This really stuck out to me for a couple of reasons. First, we obviously know this is not her actual birth, because she is an adult woman. But similarly to García Madero with being introduced to visceral realism/realists, this was a definitive moment that felt like birth. We don’t remember being born because we are newborn babies, but with monumental moments like what happened in UNAM, our memories, cognition and perspective are able to actually comprehend what birth means, and then we prescribe our birth to something else besides the actual act of being born. My personal opinion, Auxilio’s birth is much more significant than García Madero’s if we had to judge from an objective standpoint, but I get that the value assigned to these life changing events is personal, I’m just being a bit of a hater.

Overall, I really enjoyed the element of time in this book, as well as the balancing of bleakness and random tidbits of her bohemian life.

The first two lines of Amulet that I read were the first, as I opened the book, and the last, as I flipped to see how many pages I should pace myself for each day this week: “This is going to be a horror story” (p. 1) and “And that song is our amulet” (p. 184). Very intriguing! I don’t feel like they are connected, but I look forward to finding out.

As I read, I recognized lines, passages and ideas from Part II of the Savage Detectives – like when Auxilio berates herself for forgetting her paper supply in the bathroom, or Arturo Belano returning from Chile after the coup. It really does read like an extra chapter, and, since Auxilio’s voice and story were the most appealing to me from Part II, I was excited to learn more.

What initially captured my attention was the writing style, which kept me reading through events and narratives that for the most part I did not find inspiring. I love the descriptions and use of language: “Let me stretch time out like a plastic surgeon stretching the skin of a patient under anaesthesia” (p. 2), the possibilities of a Pandora’s Box-like vase, how the younger generation of poets make her shudder, “as if they weren’t creatures of flesh and blood but a generation spring from the open wound of Tlatelolco” (p. 77), “Then the moon changed tiles” (p. 168). I love the little details all throughout the text, like a silver frog or Mexican feline lineage, which, though we might consider these as what makes a long story long, I find fit in here much more easily than little details would in the Savage Detectives. I cannot quite put my finger on why: perhaps the narrator.

Two themes I found interesting are temporality and companions. I enjoyed the use of temporality in the novel, the 13 days being measured from moonlight on tile – two images found on the cover of my edition. The moon is mentioned so often throughout the book that it evokes the idea of a companion during Auxilio’s isolation. Reading is another companion for Auxilio, “I knew that I had to resist,” (p. 32) she explains, turning to her book of poetry as the companion to resistance. For a question relating to a major theme in class, how can reading be a form of resistance? What is the difference between resistance as an author versus as a reader?

For these reasons I did enjoy reading Amulet, but honestly, I don’t feel like I got that much out of it. Maybe I would have found it more impactful without having read the Savage Detectives, but I found it to be about characters that I did not really care too much about, and too flighty/loose/airy (I really cannot find the right adjective!) to ground me in the solid reality of the horror of being trapped in Auxilio’s situation.

As for the opening and concluding sentences, I suppose being isolated in fear in a washroom for days on end is a horror story. I find in the children singing a protective song in the end evokes the ideas of what the university students were pushing for: reform and resistance.

Thank you for reading!

I find myself struggling to know what to write about this week’s reading. This was one of those books that I’ll finish and probably not really think about again (besides our incoming class discussion). I neither loved nor hated it. I don’t really feel any particular way about Amulet, I just read it and now it’s over. I did like the prose, and I enjoyed the slightly more bouncy(?) writing/narration style to what we see in The Savage Detectives. By bouncy, I mean like:

Where maybe your most straightforward non-nonsense author (maybe an author really into historical accuracy) might tell the story like the black line, our narrator’s voice is the pink, where everything is a “yes, but…” or a “maybe, while also…”

I found love to be a strong theme throughout the chapters, a love of poetry, of Mexico, of young poets, of language and words and slang, of her friends, and of storytelling.

I also thought a lot about Poulet’s writing on the phenomenology of reading as I was reading. The narrator talks about how much she loves the poets León Felipe and Pedro Garfías, and while she says she worked with them in Mexico before they died, it’s unclear how much of her “knowing” poets is from meeting them versus reading their poetry. It’s Garfías’ poems she’s reading in the bathroom when UNAM was seized, and she then spirals into her stories about various poets she knew. In reading Garfías’ words in this scene, it’s like a part of him (as author) was with her (as reader) in the bathroom stall; her act of reading inspiring the literature to become “a sort of human being,” and linking “a common consciousness with the reader” (Poulet 59).

One idea I underlined to share this week was her mediation on movement towards the east: “To where night comes from. But then I thought: It’s also where the sun comes from” (Bolaño 54). I have never thought about the night coming from the east, because I guess I’ve always been so fixated on the sun setting in the west.

Then, I’d love to hear people’s thoughts about who the narration is for. When the narrator says “you” (like “I still have to tell you about her”) (41), is she speaking to a generally undefined audience, as in everyone who reads the book, or is she addressing it to something/one more defined (like the young poets she loves and mentors)?

First major reaction:

I can’t believe I finished Amulet in four sittings across the weekend! There’s something almost compelling about this short novel by  Bolaño. With this book, I felt that pull from the first few pages, and I kept turning pages, curious about where Auxilio Lacouture’s mind would take me next, page after page. Every moment I read, whether on transit, waiting for my laundry to finish, or in brief breaks between other tasks, I notice how normal my day-to-day moments feel compared to the intensive experiences of Auxilio’s. Waiting for my laundry to finish, I would sit on a sofa, book in hand, and suddenly an hour felt like minutes!

Interesting Points in the Novel

What I found most fascinating was how time seems to exist differently in Auxilio’s world. It doesn’t flow in a simple linear line; rather, it stretches, folds, and loops back on itself. One moment she’s in the women’s bathroom on the fourth floor of the Philosophy and Literature faculty at UNAM, the next she’s recalling events in Tlatelolco, and then imagining futures or alternate realities. Time in Amulet feels living, changing and expanding, almost like something Auxilio carries with her, shaping her perception and the narrative itself: Auxilio’s narrative world appears like a piece of history, an obsession, and a dream. I would say that Amulet is disorienting at times, contradictory and dreamlike, yet it somehow works and stays as an interesting read. Reading it, I kept asking myself: what would you hold onto in a world that dismantles your sense of time, memory and rationalization after staying locked in a bathroom in fear for your life? For me, Auxilio’s story is on resilience, memory, and being present in a moment that’s larger than oneself, and to imagine and escape into a world when facing fear and danger.

Moreover, there’s the lyrical quality of Bolaño’s writing. Certain passages stayed with me long after I read them. I kept thinking about one description of happiness, where Auxilio reflects on looking at herself in mirrors when she senses joy. Small details like this, or the way she meets Arturo Belano in 1970 (coincidentally, his age matches Bolaño’s own), made me curious about the metafiction connections between Bolaño’s two novels and between fiction and the author’s life.

Discussion Question:

So, I leave the question to you: what intrigued you the most in this novel? Did you find yourself drawn into its dreamlike patterns, or did you prefer the sprawling adventure of The Savage Detectives?

From my point of view, I found myself completely drawn into the dreamlike patterns of Amulet. Something is mesmerizing about how time stretches and folds around Auxilio, how past, present, and daresay fantasy collide in her washroom refuge. While I appreciate the sprawling, energetic adventure of The Savage Detectives, with its many voices and chaotic momentum, I think what captivated me in Amulet was how Bolaño compresses historical backdrop into a lyrical, almost hallucinatory experience during the reading.

No catchy title here folks! All my previous blog posts simply are titled with the title of the book, the part of the book, and the corresponding page numbers. I kind of felt an obligation to come up with a catchy title since this week’s reading was the entirety of the short novel, Amulet, but I decided to keep it consistent and every title that I was thinking of kind of fell short. Let’s actually talk about titles a bit! I feel like they have to be short (obviously) yet they have to capture the essence of the work (be it a book, movie, blog post, etc.). Most importantly though, titles have to capture the reader’s attention/curiosity because it’s really the very first impression that they get of the work. In the case of The Savage Detectives, I’ve seen some discussion floating around about the significance of the title, personally I’m not 100% sure yet, but I’m guessing we’ll figure it out soon enough (perhaps it’s the group of Belano, Lima, García Madero, and Lupe who have gone North to do who knows what). In the case of 2666, it’s actually pretty interesting because just from reading 2666, I had not a clue of the significance of its title. However, thanks to Amulet, there’s actually a mention of 2666 in this line: “Guerrero, at that time of night, is more like a cemetery than an avenue, not a cemetery in 1974 or in 1968, or 1975, but a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else.” (86) Now I would love to discuss this further on its significance to the book 2666 but let me not stray too far since this is supposed to be a blog post about Amulet, not The Savage Detectives or 2666.

Anyways, in the case of Amulet, I really loved the title and the symbolism of the amulet at the end as a song of hope and love for the young generation of Latin Americans encompassing “youth and valor…violence and exile…memory and history” (Bolaño) (I’m actually not sure how exactly to cite the blurb on the back of books). I thought that this was an excellent ending to this short novel and I found the last couple chapters of Auxilio’s visions sort of fantastical or dreamlike, which I enjoyed. When I say “fantastical” or “dreamlike”, I don’t mean to downplay the student movement and massacre in Mexico, but I think it perfectly reflects Auxilio’s intended narrative. The very first lines of this short novel begin with: “This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller.” (1) Rather than hiding the horror, Auxilio, or I guess deep down Bolaño, is framing it through their own poetic lens. Not just as a cold part of history, but instead as a memorable song of resistance, their amulet.

Now for some more general thoughts and impressions I had of Amulet. To be completely honest, I thought it was only okay. I didn’t love it but nor did I hate it. I definitely enjoyed reading certain portions of the book, especially the chapter where they confronted the King of the Rent Boys. I also liked Coffeen’s recount of Orestes and Erigone. However, in classic Bolaño fashion, there are tons of shorter stories within the larger story, some of which I just straight up didn’t find myself enjoying reading. For example, even perhaps the most important one of Auxilio being stuck in the washroom didn’t really interest me. Perhaps that’s due to the point made earlier on how Auxilio is not trying to frame it as a horror story. Additionally, I don’t think I’m quite the target audience that would really get a lot out of reading Amulet. Hell, a few blogs ago I mentioned that I wasn’t really familiar with the Mexican student movement to begin with. On another note though, as someone basically just reading Bolaño this term, I felt that his tone or maybe style of writing in Amulet felt more “lyrical” or at least more similar to his poetry than his other long books (maybe it’s because he’s writing through Auxilio, maybe because it’s a short book, or maybe even because it’s a different translator). But again, if I am to be completely honest once more, I kind of enjoy Bolaño’s writing in his books than his poetry (at least from his poetry we’ve read in class). So, my question to you all this week is: “Do you find any difference in Bolaño’s style of writing between Amulet and The Savage Detectives? If so, which one do you prefer? And what about his poetry?” I know that for the last question a couple of us have already shared our thoughts in class, but I’d like to know what more people have to say!

P.S. I really liked the cover of this Picador edition, so shoutout Michael Schmelling and Mike Adams (the cover designer and illustrator)!

The “King of the Rent Boys” episode was one of the few parts of Amulet that I recalled semi-clearly from my first read through, and I kept wondering when I would get to it. The section during which this encounter takes place reads like a fairytale to me. Maybe it’s because of how Auxilio describes the key scene in Colonia Guerrero, or maybe it’s the way that Ernesto and Arturo are said to behave leading up to and following the confrontation; or maybe it’s both. I think the fact that they rescue the sick boy, Juan de Dios Montes, also contributes to this impression: Auxilio’s narration of the section ends with, “Our hidden purpose had been to stop him from being killed” (Bolaño 103).

Overall, I enjoyed my second reading of Amulet. At times, Auxilio Lacouture sort of reminded me of Juan García Madero from The Savage Detectives, but it was in a way that held my attention, not in a way that made me cringe. Also, whereas Juan García Madero‘s narration makes me feel a little like I’m being forced to follow him around and observe what he gets up to, Auxilio’s narration seemed to carry me.

What did make me cringe a little bit was Auxilio’s encounter with the son of Lilian Serpas, Carlos Coffeen Serpas. I think moments of their interaction were just so viscerally (ha ha) awkward to me, even if Auxilio herself didn’t necessarily feel that way. I also really wanted to know what it was that she was connecting between the story of Cronus and the story of Erigone (assuming there was, in fact, something). Then again, maybe it was the feeling that was the important thing; if so, it certainly made an impression.

On the subject of the materiality of the book, I feel obligated to report that I have had some minor mishaps with my copy of Amulet over the last week: first, I managed to get it wet; then, I placed the damp book too close to my heater, and the plastic on the cover started to warp. The pages are mostly dry now, but they sort of look like the gills of a mushroom.

For my questions of the week (to be taken as seriously or as unseriously as you like): What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a physical book? What’s the worst thing a book has ever done to you?

(My answers: 1. Probably what I did to Amulet this week. 2. Les Misérables tried to crush my ribs.)