RMST 495/520: Long Books

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 were affiliated with the movement see it as an embarrassing past, almost like what we call “cringe” today — embarrassing things we said or did in high school etc. Barbara and Maria try to warn Rafael and Xóchitl not to mention this past in their meetings with potential publishers, but the subject of visceral realism keeps presenting itself, like a curse that follows the poor poets wherever they go…

I’m happy to see the central members of the movement going into the background now, and we get more light on the marginalized members. Xóchitl’s story is so inspiring, to the point that it doesn’t fit the degenerate tone of the whole poetry scene in the book, but I enjoy reading it! Her difficult road to publication is more of a realistic pathway for a poet who wants to make a living off writing, and I think Xóchitl reflects more or less what Bolaño observed in poets around him, female poets especially. Ulises and Arturo disappear and reappear. They’ve become the ghosts haunting the rest of the visceral realists. They’ve kind of turned into beat poets, and I’m surprised no one alludes to the Beats when talking about them. It’s difficult to see what exactly they are looking for abroad. Writing material? Someone mentioned that they have collected a life’s worth of material for writing poetry, but they are writing less than they do… questionable deeds. We talked about this book as a Bildungsroman, and the two leaders of VR have somehow grown on me, despite not having “grown” or matured. In the end, it’s a little saddening to see their effort forgotten.

Then there’s Amadeo’s records of January 1976. Did they come here immediately after they drove off in Quim’s car? I always thought so, until the group discussion where we tried to put together the timeline. I realized I was probably mistaken. But how did they know to come to Amadeo’s, for the “official organ of visceral realism”, that “only issue of Caborca left in the world” ? How did they even hear of it? If they’ve never read it, how could they know it’s the official organ of VR? Amadeo’s entire house, which he calls a “hell of memories”, is almost surreal, like from a dream. It has the last copy of Caborca and the last two bottles of Los Suicidas left in the world, what else has he got? The poets in Amadeo’s stories feel like a grown-up, more mature version of the visceral realists. They had jobs and even a sponso — the general whose dramatic death has the quality a Hollywood movie from the last century. And Cesárea’s poem! The most surreal of all (though nothing like Breton’s surrealist poems). I can’t help feeling sorry for the rectangle. It’s not having an easy time, but it’s definitely trying to go somewhere. Then, I had to search up the title: Sión means Zion. Put together the two, you get “go to Zion”. Is that why Ulises Lima goes to Israel later? Now that makes sense.

My question for this week is: why do you think of Amadeo’s sections? Did it give you any particular feeling? What could be its significance?

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 happening or to remember where I last stopped reading it. I found myself reading it best when I was commuting between places on transit. Knowing the approximate length of the journey to reach point B from point A, a direct 1.5 hr journey, somehow helped me anchor my thoughts and avoid distractions, eventually enabling me to finish this week’s long reading. To be honest, I have never read this many pages within a set time frame, especially on a book that is not the type of book that would interest me in the first place.

I have to say that I find the narrative is relentless! There are so many shifting characters and perspectives, so many problems, so many petty things, so many decisions! I often felt overwhelmed by the sheer weight of all the suffering that some of the characters face in the text: death, torture, heartbreak, abuse, and despair. Due to the sheer number of voices in the text, I struggled to follow and not mix up the different voices: Rafael, Barbara, Colina, Verónica, Pérez Camarga, Luis, Laura, and others.

Many of the characters’ stories and lives are finally crossing over like Marvel meets DC. Their lives intersect in so many different ways through chaos, danger, negligence, loneliness, madness, lust and intimacy. Despite it being a difficult read, I found myself deeply moved by some of the stories from certain journal entries. The text forces me to sit in extreme discomfort, to witness profound cruelty and absurdity, to understand that humour, tenderness, and pain coexist. I had to slow down, pause, stop, and reflect so many times that I stopped counting. By the end of this week’s reading, I was left shattered, raw, shaken in thoughts, but I am also profoundly more aware of the messiness and strangeness of the fragile lives of Bolaño’s characters.

Focusing on the last couple of chapters, « Luis and Luscious Skin: what a shocking turn of events! Bolaño must have a fixation with these characters because their interactions are so much more gentle, kind and well-written. Bolaño really wants us to contrast our own perceptions of Luscious Skin between Part 1 and Part 2 and form hypocritical judgements. Anyways, the phone conversation in March 1983, the hesitant reconnection, and the wait for Luscious Skin to arrive are emotionally charged with hesitant yearning and reserved longing, desire, lust and fear of intimacy and abandonment. Honestly, at the get-go, I find Luscious Skin a character who is both repulsive and magnetic. His long absence and surprised presence throughout the pages carry a weight of expectation, nostalgia and want. I hesitate to judge him as a character flawedly or intentionally designed to be so repulsive that he would eventually be well-liked by me.

The physicality of Luis and Luscious Skin’s reunion, the intertwining of sex, storytelling, and confessions, creates a sense of fragility and fleeting presence, even if the outside world is indifferent or violent. The narration of these two characters’ interaction removes my conscious mind out of all the other ridicioulness occuring at the same time, especially with Ulises, Norman, etc. To me, their story is a representation of impermanence, longing, memory, and the fleeting fragility of time and life. What struck me the most was the contrast between the intense intimacy and the brutal aftermath. Luscious Skin’s death was uncalled for and unforeseen! The grotesqueness of his body ended this week’s reading on a really bitter note.

Discussion Question:

Alright, a question for you all! Feel free to answer it in any way, related to the text or in your own lived experiences =)

In the vein of human condition, how deeply can we care for a « temporary someone » who may or may not vanish from our lives? And how do our memories, our stories, and our perceptions preserve the softness, the kindness and the gentleness of love, loss and truth?

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… 

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 it as confusing as possible; that takes a lot of effort. With over 250 pages into this part and with more to come, this section continues with the same old fractured stories, giving us descriptive accounts of how these characters first met Bolaño and Lima, what they think of them and what they think of visceral realism. I would like to know why he doesn’t divide these interviews into chapters rather than spread them throughout. I think I would enjoy it more to read one chapter from one person and then move on to the next. At this point, I don’t understand what the point of having chapters is.

It’s interesting to hear more about Arturo and Ulises, though I feel there still isn’t enough context and once again I don’t know whether I need this information. At times, it also sounds repetitive, and like last time it feels unnecessary especially some of the interviews that go on tangents for no obvious reason (at least no obvious reason so far). I must say, I favour Arturo over Ulises. Ulises seems strange, off-putting and quite careless. Both of them seem to be burdens to others, as if friends are helping them out of pity or they are making people’s lives difficult.

What we get from this section is that visceral realism is dead, no one seems to remember it or even know of it at times (or maybe pretends not to). It is barely that we hear good things about visceral realism, Arturo, and Ulises. Alfonso Pérez goes on to say that he doesn’t really see them as poets and that only money mattered to them. Maybe only Garcia Madero truly loved them and thought visceral realism is the greatest thing to ever exist.

We do get some more context about what happened on December 31, 1975. Well, we knew they left, and now we know where: Sonora. When Lima disappears in Managua, though some think he is lost, others think that he is not in fact lost but disappeared on purpose because people are after him which is why he has been on the run since New Year’s Eve in 1975, when he left town with the others. Maria Font says that Ulises and Arturo have been on the run since then. She says they left for Sonora to look for Cesárea Tinajero (as some people said in their interviews) but if I recall correctly, that was not the reason. Someone else says they fled because of their way of playing politics saying the way they politically influenced reality caused this and got them in trouble. Questionable.

I just really hope the ending leaves me stunned. After putting us through this section (there is more left, which I am not looking forward to reading), I will be quite disappointed if this all doesn’t make sense at some point. I’ve been trying to be more optimistic about outcomes, focusing on the positives instead of the negatives so this is perhaps a test.

Hi Guys!

I enjoyed reading Amulet. Right off the bat what stood out to me was:

 “I came to Mexico City in 1967, or maybe it was 1965, or 1962. I’ve got no memory for dates anymore, or exactly where my wanderings took me; all I know is that I came to Mexico and never went back. Hold on, let me try to remember. Let me stretch time out like a plastic surgeon stretching the skin of a patient under anesthesia. Let me see.” 

This reminded me of myself because I have an absolutely terrible memory and I often forget things very fast. For the book itself, I found that it was very easy to read and the language was simple. Compared to the Savage Detectives where I might not understand a lot of it, Amulet felt like even my elementary self could read it. 

The one trait that stood out to me about Auxilio was that very observant and paid close attention to her surroundings. For example, she states,

 “and those clouds covered everything with dust, the books I had read and those I was planning to read, covered them irrevocably, there was nothing to be done: however heroic my efforts with broom and rag, the dust was never going to go away, since it was an integral part of the books, their way of living or of mimicking something like life p. 5.” This part shows how even something small like dust in her eyes is an integral part of books and it shows how deeply she observes the smallest things.

Another example of this is: “Sometimes Don Pedro would catch me looking at his vase or the spines of his books and he’d ask. What are you looking at, Auxilio, and I’d say. Huh? What? and I’d pretend to be dopey or miles away, but sometimes I’d come back with a question that might have seemed out of place, but was relevant, actually, if you thought about it. I’d say to him, Don Pedro, How long have you had this vase? P.6”

Most people would ignore how Don Pedro looks at books or the meaning behind his gaze at the vases. No one would really think that deeply of a vase. Whereas Auxilio wasn’t just noticing things like the vase but she was rather observing every little thing and how frequently Don Pedro would look at the vase and try to think of the hidden reason behind why he does. 

Discussion Question: How does Auxilio’s observant nature help us understand her personality?

Hello everybody!!

I have to say this has been one of my favourite readings of the semester. I like the character’s personality and how she describes everything that it is going on around her ( even the incident at the school). In a way , i find her to be a savage detective for her wit , intelligence and bravery.

She is a really strong female character and these are my reasons behind this idea. She is like an embodiment of memory , passion for literature and courage. She is showing us that memory is a way to pass information to others and that the fight against inequality could be tackled by a common sentiment that in this case students and writers could share.

Literature guides her routines, attitudes and habits as she mentions that when the attacked occured , she was reading in the washroom. She mentions old generation actors as Pedro Armendariz and Maria Felix , who i was not expecting them to see here , but that reminded me of the legacy of actors that that country has.

Even from the first page , we see that she understands there could be some type of discrimination or biases that people might have about her as she mentions ” This is going to be a horror story ….Told by me , it wont seem like that”. She is avoiding to be stereotyped by showing that a woman like her can be smart and resourceful. She is just like the female characters from the movies that she mentioned. Even at desperate times , she confesses to us that she never lost her sense of humour , and she is the first one to make fun of her because in the end she keeps observing , remembering or scanning whats happening around her.

One of my favourite scenes happens in page 39. This is another example of her refusal to be stereotyped. She shows herself to be a frank woman when she talks to Mrs. Belano and points out that even though she is not a mother like her or doesnt spend time with people of her age , she already had hundres of children. She defines motherhood to me in a way that represents protection , witnessing and nurturing of others.

In conclusion ,the amulet that we take from the novel is her. Her charisma , resiliance and inmense source of memory. As she is in this poet world , she knows how to move around it because she knows its like moving between life and death.

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?