RMST 495/520: Long Books

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 Latin American poets (or perhaps, from Romance World), as I hope to get a sense of Latin American poetry. So here is this week’s poem: a collective poetic voice(s) penned by Argentine poet & translator, Suzana Thénon (1935-1991)

why is that woman screaming? 

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY Rebekah Smith 

why is that woman screaming?
why is she screaming?
why is that woman screaming?
don’t even try to understand 

that woman, why is she screaming?
don’t even try to understand
look at what beautiful flowers
why is she screaming?
hyacinth       asters
why?
why what?
why is that woman screaming? 

and that woman?
and that woman?
just try and understand
she must be crazy that woman
look         look at the little mirrors
could it be because of her steed?
just try to understand 

and where did you hear
the word steed?
it’s a secret             that woman
why is she screaming?
look at the asters
the woman
little mirrors
little birds
that don’t sing
why is she screaming?
that don’t fly
why is she screaming?
that don’t intrude 

the woman
and that woman
and was she crazy that woman? 

she’s not screaming any more 

(do you remember that woman?)  

Reflection: a harsh poetic voice. I encountered it reading Selva Almada’s non-fiction novel about femicides, Dead Girls (2014). It serves as the novel’s epigraph.

I read until part 1 of The Savage Detectives. I picked up a Spanish paperback from UBC’s Koerner library last spring equinox. For one reason or another, I put it down after 30 pages and eventually returned it back. Someone had placed a recall. Now that I have read until part 1, I feel…. I don’t have an exact word for how I feel.  A kaleidoscope of nostalgia, for one Arturo Belano ( Bolaño’s fictive self) is back. Readers have encountered him in other stories, mainly those taken from Llamadas telefónicas (1997) and Putas asesinas (2001), with the stories mix-and-matched in its their English translation counterparts, Last Evenings on Earth (1997) and The Return (2010). Alongside nostalgia, I felt fear. I fear for how Lupe and Alberto’s story will unfold…. will she eventually become the victim of a femicide? What is that I am witnessing? I devoured the first part as I tried to find out. Moreover, I underlined my responses to Garcia Madero’s narration on text. It goes something like this (“Prick” as a reaction to his view on women; “Too much sex” in response to all the sexual scenes;  “Giggled” in response to the usage of cannabis… as they laugh “te heee heee…”….. this part this stood out to me here. In Latin America, cannabis is illegal. But something I notice in this hemisphere of the world, cannabis shops are like cactus on a desert. Everywhere. I wonder then, how a story like this could unfold in a contemporary Vancouver. Lost poets in Vancouver? Anyone? What would that entail………. writing poems of snow-covered North Shore mountains?). Additionally, my reactions to the scenes of literary industry references were positive. I love me a good metafictional story. Still, I love me a good diary entry story! Lastly, I will say I have read “Amulet” before (I apologize if I am getting ahead of myself) and am really excited for a re-read. To be fair, I have only wanted to read TDS so as to understand how Auxilio Lacouture’s story fits in. I really enjoyed her maladaptive daydreams manifesting in conversations with Remedios Varos, and besides references to Lilian Serpas…. I suspect one of her poems might be an epigraph for a future blogs.

Question: Sex is an act that drives human expectancy. For some, sexual drive is higher and is classified as promiscuous. Sex then is a main theme in Savage Detectives as it depicts a collective network of promiscuity. In his essay, Toward a Gastronomic Theory of Literature Brad Kessler shows cases the importance of food depiction in realist literature, emphasizing food as a spiritual act of existence wherein the act of eating entails many experiences. How it is gathered, when it eating, the absence of food, etc. Savage Detectives depicts a similar conceptual approach, but towards the act that leads to creature creation. Though Bolaño chooses to defile the act itself and explores an act repurposed for pleasure rather than procreation. There is no middle ground (so far). What then is the importance of intimate acts in contemporary literature and where do you see literature’s depictions of these moments as our current societies see integration of Artificial & Metallic Entities  (pre-programmed machines with capability of holding human interaction but lack consciousness) .

I don’t know if it is the pouring Vancouver never-ending rain or the last half of the first chapter that has left me feeling confused, annoyed, angry and sad. There are so many things to be said but so little space and time to reflect about what I just read.

In this chapter Bolaño forces readers to go through what seems like the coming of age journey of Juan García Madero, our narrator, tourist guide, poet, and miserable? main character. As we go through the pages of his diary we dive along Madero into the world of the “visceral realist” (VRs) or what seems a combination of poetry gang, closed fraternity, and philosophy of life.

There is not strict definition of what visceral realism is, just a bunch of clues Madero can gather along the way. Two main things are clear, though, at the beginning of the chapter: 1. VRs walk backward, “straight to the unknown” (Bolaño 10), and 2. at the moment of writing poetry you have to disconnect “from a certain kind of reality” (Bolaño 7). These two are key to understand what the hell is going on in Madero’s journey.

The only details we know about Madero before joining the VR is that his parents died (how? no one knows), he lived with his aunt and uncle, and he is carrying the duty of studying law as (maybe) a way to pay back his uncle and aunt for taking care of him (guilt?). This is Madero’s starting reality, something that, as soon as he joins the VRs, he begins to alter or step away from.

The more he gets involved in the world of VRs, the more he listens to his deepest desires. His stops going to class and sleeping at home, and starts writing more, exploring CDMX more, fucking more, doing drugs, making other spaces home, other people family. However, the more he detaches himself from his first reality, something that at first glance will be synonymous with liberating himself and opening his mind for change, the more he becomes obsessed with things in his “new life” to stay the same.

It is at this point where he stops walking backwards.

Here is the part that feels like psychological vomit for me (visceral?). As he becomes more aware of how rapidly everything and everyone are changing, both realities collide with each other showing that Madero is actually carrying the same problems and traumas from his past reality making those two realities one, interrupted by what could be a lucid dream? This collision could be seen the moment Madero starts having weird nightmares and getting extremely sick, as if his body and soul were fighting with each other.

There are more things I would like to say about this but I am already talking too much. I will conclude by saying that after Madero comes back to life he starts bit by bit walking backwards again, and decides to escape reality again the moment he hops in the car with Lima, Belano, and Lupe. Is this the creative cycle an artist has to go through, the existential cycle of inspiration?

Do you think Madero, by the end of the chapter, has properly understood what visceral realism is?

Things I couldn’t talk about: Family, Malinchismo, Sex, The end is near.

He said he made Rosario finish 15 times. I wonder how much of his word I can really believe.

The same way half truths and full blown lies have been shared with intimate partners; from lying to Rosario about being a virgin and lying to Maria about not being a virgin, I wonder if he’s lying to me too.

I like how female sexuality is depicted when it comes to the Font sisters because our narrator holds no power. I find myself enjoying how much sexual power the sisters hold over him. He is nothing. I’m also curious about what he means when he refers to “this experiment with rosario.” This relationship with Rosario seems to be where he’s exploring his own power through sexuality and I don’t prefer it.

To Maria: he says I’m not a virgin. His lack of experiences and thus lack of power manifests in him feigning as having more sexual experience than he really does. He postures to have done more than what is true to gain power.

To Rosario: he says I am a virgin concealing his sexual experience. Which demonstrates how he is exploring power through creating the illusion for Rosario that she is the one which holds power.

We get a sense of his ethics in his world. He says to himself I should know the Font maid’s name implying that he cares. He sees the Font’s extraction of labour and how it operates as part and parcel of Maria and Angelica’s lives. However, even though he takes notice and critiques himself for it, slightly, he doesn’t refer to the maid’s name later on. I doubt he learned it. He’s even turned on by the frivolousness to which the girls afford to live. Not needing to make their own beds is tied to his perception of Maria as carefree and altogether desirable.

The ever present knife penis motif is explored through Quim’s perception of sexual violence in Mexico City. The responsibility of protecting his girls from the sexual threat of men like Alberto becomes more obviously a need to protect his girls from himself too.

Quim’s desire to protect his girls is ultimately what prompts the dissolution of Garcia Madero’s relationship with Maria. In handing Juan Garcia Madero money as a way of securing a protector for Maria, he invites Garcia Madero to assist him in the role of patriarch. It’s Maria’s knowledge of the transfer of money that causes her to ice out Garcia Madero.

I wonder what that represents to Maria? Why does she reject him so promptly for that? I m curious what other people think about this? Does it have to do with her exploration of feminist theory, but that feels surface. What does it personally mean to her for Garcia Madero to have received that money? I guess that’s also wrapped up in the question of what her father represents to her—which I cannot say I understand at this point.

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 poetry class, taught by (no one’s favourite) Álamo. As narrator Juan (as he is rarely called) slowly stops going to his classes, I felt a first sense of kinship: here was a character living out an alternative life to mine where he doesn’t go to class and prioritises life outside of the classroom. Later on, I found how Juan described an event as “…after an ordeal that was too long and nerve-wracking to describe in detail (plus I hate details)…” evoked our discussion from last class. And, as we established, since this is certainly a long novel, this line is a touch ironic. For further literary discussion, I was amused at the evaluation of the sexual orientation of short stories, novels, and poetry on page 80 – though listing which type of homosexual different authors were for over three pages, I found to be too much detail. I like how the book started in the classroom, and used the ideas and people in the classroom as a springboard for the rest of the novel, while continually making references to literature.

As he recounts this story, Juan as a character began to remind me of someone I couldn’t place my finger on…aha! Holden Caulfield, the narrator of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger! The falling in love with different women, sardonic first-person narration, coming of age of a prickly teen, feelings of alienation and despair, and, running away from a home-like place. Does anyone else agree? Or had to write a high school essay on this book?

Something else that stood out to me was the obvious inclusion of sex. I always feel a bit ambivalent when books, especially those by male authors, make prolific use of sex and sexual abuse against women. We see this (pretty darn plainly) with the character of Lupe and the stories she tells of Alberto, as well as with characters María, Rosario and Brígida. On the one hand, it adds drama and a kind of realism, in that the world is not safe for women. But also it can lend into a sort of fantasy from the author – what kind of waitress takes a 17 year old unprompted out back for an illicit meeting and then falls in love with him? How does this kid have women falling over him? Some of the sexual nature of the story and representations of women felt a little bit silly, unrealistic, and exaggerated ; it is in this territory that I find it verges on a fantasy more than a sense of gritty realism.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the first 139 pages of The Savage Detectives. As evidenced by this late post, I read those pages pretty recently and in quick succession, but it wasn’t hard to do! It was an easy and exciting story to follow.

P.S. the featured image isn’t the edition I have, but it was my favourite edition I found online!

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 at play in the novel. So far, I think I’m not too far off. Bolaño finds the perfect context to explore this tension: poetry; for poetry is at once High and Low. Poetry is studied in university, but poetic expression does not necessarily require academic background.

Most poets in the book are sensitive beings, using their body and senses to judge the world. Therefore, they are not naturally repulsed by the morally or aesthetically vulgar things as we normally would be. One excerpt illustrates this through writing — the narrator describes a questionable act with beautiful language — “But how could Lima go all the way to the other end of the continent to buy marijuana?” The act of travelling to the other end of the continent is romantic, adventurous, but paired with smuggling marijuana? The juxtaposition is astounding and poetic. I particularly enjoyed reading this sentence. Such juxtapositions of the “low” and the “high” appear often. One moment, the narrator is writing a poem “about the university ([him] running naked in the middle of a crowd of zombies)”, the next, he writes another “about the moon over Mexico City”.

I don’t have a good idea of the visceral realists’ tastes, but it seems like they are grappling with their simultaneous appreciation of the Snobby and the Down-to-earth. On one hand, they are all educated, well-versed in classic and contemporary literature. They defend the “academicist” in Alamo’s poetry workshop. Rescuing Lupe from her pimp Alberto fits into this aesthetic. It is a heroic act, and they are fighting against the very embodiment of vulgarity, Alberto. On the other hand, they steal, deal drugs, and exploit innocent women like Rosario. They have no moral struggle about these actions. Perhaps they consider it avant-garde, using these “low” acts to balance out their literary snobbism, to bring rebelliousness into their poetry, setting themselves apart in the world of literature.

One night, Garcia Madero kissed María, writing: “she tasted of cigarettes and expensive food. I tasted of cigarettes and cheap food. But both kinds of food were good.” I thoroughly agree with him on this. Enjoying both kinds of food is a sign of good taste. It means one is not so easily influenced by appearance. Unfortunately, Madero’s good tastes don’t extend much beyond food. When Rosario asked him to write a poem for her, the night they first met, Rosario began to talk about “a very dear and longed-for family member who had disappeared and come back again.” “But what did a poem have to do with all that?” Wondered Madero.

Well, Garcia Madero, everything. Rosario’s account is probably more poetry than anything you’ll be writing. A natural outpour of emotions, erupting during a night shift at a noisy bar.

I love that Bolaño depicts the proletariat girls as naturally drawn to literature. Rosario falls for Madero, but let’s not forget their first interaction was her asking him for a poem. Later, she says she’ll read books to catch up to him. Her love is not a simple veneration. It’s a belief that something from her life is worthy of being written into poetry, that she is worthy of poetry. It’s powerful. Lupe, in the hotel room with Quim, is also actively proving her literacy. When later Madero read a random recent poem of his to Rosario in response to her commission, I wanted to beat him up. Perhaps they think they are avant-garde poets for fooling around in the “low” world, but there’s an emotional insincerity about the visceral realists.

So, this is the question I want to discuss (I know it’s a little abstract): Which character has the best taste? Although not everyone is a poet, if they wrote poetry, whose would you most like to read, and why?

I would like to read Rosario’s (reasons explained above).

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 moves in with an adult woman. And still no one really cares.

Why do so many adults want to have sex with this teenage boy? Is the author unbothered by this, and is the reader also meant to be? Is there some kind of critique in the fact that Juan leaves it all behind at the end of the first section? While I’m tempted to admit that this is probably not the point of the novel, it does strike me as a prominent element.

Aside from that, I’m quite curious about whatever Visceral Realism is. I like the concept of the visceral: something instinctive, something bound up within the entrails, something that rushes beyond or around the intellect. I’ve never thought of realism (or the forms of it that I’m familiar with, at least) as something that aims to provoke a visceral reaction, but I suppose it could be. Or maybe it’s the creation process that would be visceral. Does creation always have a visceral aspect?

To go back to the “bunch of weird poets” bit, I am (mostly) enjoying how strange a lot of the characters are. And I like that they’re not necessarily strange in a charming way: they’re erratic, and prickly, and lust-driven, and self-centred. I don’t feel strong affection for any of them, but I am interested in them as a group. For Juan García Madero, perhaps the most “normal” character so far, I would say I mainly feel mild-to-moderate concern.

For my official question(s) of the week: Do you find that short chapters make a long book easier or less intimidating to read? What is appealing about short chapters/sections? Do you think there are any drawbacks?

This question comes partly from my recent experience with The Savage Detectives, and partly from an interaction with one of my own students. I do a weekly English/novel study class with this kid, and when we were discussing which book to read next, he requested not a shorter book, but a book with shorter chapters. Is there something satisfying about getting through the chapters faster? Do short chapters make it easier to process information (particularly in a second language)? Is it an attention span thing? I didn’t have time to interrogate the student, so I hope you all will give me answers!

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 mind as I read the first section of The Savage Detectives.

I very much enjoyed the diary-entry style. I think another reason I have enjoyed this part of the book is that I had access to García Madero’s unfiltered thoughts. His disordered and restless thoughts sounded very human and even normal to an extent. To me, they sounded like what might go through a teenage boy’s mind as he explores life. I must admit I was caught off guard at times, but it’s so real and filled with an abundance of emotions. The pages were filled with thoughts that he could not voice out, so instead he wrote them down; Matters that appealed to him as a young boy: his passion for poetry, being a visceral realist, losing his virginity, his desires, his self-confidence, and an overwhelming number of insecurities that he carries within himself, and María…

He is also called García Madero rather than simply Juan as if he is a famous poet and seems to be a respected individual given some level of importance as the story builds. The section is for the most part about him following the visceral realists, his high admiration for Lima and Belano, him writing poems, and his sex life. At times, I did wonder whether I needed to remember or keep a list of the couple thousand names mentioned or the small conversations scattered over 3-4 pages. I wasn’t sure if I needed that information or should note it for future reference. They seemed irrelevant and unnecessary.

Going back to his self-confidence and insecurities, the book starts with García Madero being a virgin and does not seem like one that has engaged with females much in his life and out of the sudden he is getting complimented left and right by women, being desired by them, and jumping from one woman to another. A virgin to a womanizer? His story with María is noteworthy, as it is when we see him distinguish “love” from mere intimacy. A note on his other sexual explorations: how is a 17-year-old boy going around giving these women the time of their lives? I wonder whether he is fabricating what actually happened as what he describes sounds like an exaggeration, perhaps a way to feed his self-confidence by lying to himself? Or maybe he is misinterpreting all these instances, hoping they were real?

Closing Note

As I was reading, every time I stumbled upon the name Arturo Belano, I realized how similar it sounds to the author’s name, Roberto Bolaño. I had that thought in the back of my mind and I was wondering whether that character was him? This became more solidified when we learn in the book that Belano is from Chile and that he came to Mexico after the Pinochet coup. I’m left wondering whether Belano is Bolaño himself. Also, at the end as they leave the city, I am curious to see what happens next. While I enjoyed the diary-entry style, I would not mind a change in the next section and a move beyond the narrow focus on García Madero to explore other characters, especially Belano… The first section of the book appears to be an introduction that provides the reader with some context. I sense that the story is just about to begin.

MEXICANS LOST IN MEXICO. I hadn’t thought much about this title of the first part of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, until the second half of this segment, when I started to truly feel Juan García Madero’s deep feelings of uncertainty and solitude. I don’t know if Bolaño intended on this title being a representation of the young narrator’s feelings of emptiness and loneliness, or if he was trying to make a statement about the feelings shared by many of the characters in the story. Or perhaps he meant something else completely? But near the end of this first section of the novel, all I could feel was a deep sense of loneliness and sadness in my heart. Perhaps this is because I have felt completely “lost” during many parts of my life, especially as a teenager. That feeling of being lost was always enveloped in solitude and a lack of a sense of purpose. Similarly, I don’t get the impression that Juan has a clear sense of direction and purpose in his life. He goes to law school, ends up joining a group of poets (the visceral realists) and completely neglecting his studies, followed by seeking out momentary thrills, which is demonstrated by his many sexual encounters. And yet at the end of everything, he seems unfulfilled. At times, he says he wants one thing, then completely contradicts himself afterwards, such as when he says he doesn’t want to sleep with María anymore but then desires doing that more than anything else. Perhaps he is just completely controlled by his raging hormones, which make him pursue things that he says he doesn’t want to do? I understand that he’s seventeen and that many people at that age are still trying to figure out who they are; teenagers trying to find themselves. He admits that he was “clueless about what to do with my life” (p. 123). This is a part of coming of age, which this novel captures quite well.

I have a great appreciation for Bolaño’s writing style. It’s simple, yet it communicates a lot. At times I found the text to be humorous and entertaining, but most of all, I appreciated the narrator’s way of expressing his thoughts and emotions in an honest and raw manner. The fact that he contradicts himself actually gives us the sense that he is human. I must give credit to Bolaño for constructing such a three-dimensional character, with very real emotions and desires. A lot is communicated by silence. The moments of introspection and quiet contemplation resonated with me. I like how we spend a lot of time in Juan’s thoughts. We get to know him. And we come to realize how unfulfilled he is with his (new) life when he describes “the abyss that opened up behind me if I looked over my shoulder…holding only darkness, silence, and emptiness” (p. 125).

This is how it feels to be lost.

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 absolutely clear, I don’t say that in a bad way, in fact, I found the first part of The Savage Detectives rather enjoyable to read. For starters, I really liked the journal style of writing! Juan García Madero, or just García Madero as everyone calls him (which I believe was brought up both in conversations with Maria and Quim), is an excellent writer to give him some credit. Whenever I’ve tried to write journals or just random notes about my day as a child or teenager, it looked nothing like this. Alas, this is a novel written by Bolaño at the end of the day, not an actual journal written by García Madero. However, I like to imagine that what I’m reading really did in fact happen and that it really is a journal written by García Madero, I find that this is how I can truly get immersed into a book. But don’t misinterpret me, I’m not saying that I want the actual events of the book to have been real. For example, I most certainly don’t want Lupe’s story of Alberto at the “contest” to have been real. As a reader, I just want to kind of “suspend my disbelief” in a way to get the most out of my experience reading. In an ideal world, I could pick up a book, completely engross myself into the book as if it were real, and then put it back down and carry on with my day as normal. Of course, that sounds a bit dangerous, I certainly don’t want to end up like the man from Continuity of Parks!

Anyways, apologies for sidetracking a bit from the task at hand of giving my actual first impressions of The Savage Detectives. I might do that in future blog posts as well, so another apologies in advance! (Although, I do think that the point of these blog posts is to spark discussion, which includes some sidetracking as well) What I really enjoyed the most about this first part were the characters themselves. Not the descriptions of 1970s Mexico, not the numerous references to real-life poets, but the actual characters and how they interact. At the heart of The Savage Detectives (or at least the first part) is García Madero, a 17-year old law student who becomes a visceral realist (the name of the members of this literary movement although I find it difficult to describe exactly what it really is), except he doesn’t really study law, he spends most his days reading poetry, writing poetry, talking to other visceral realists about poetry, going to cafes, drinking, smoking, and later on, a lot of sex.

Yes, García Madero has many flaws, to name a few: his unruly desire for sex, his over-obsession with the visceral realists and poetry, as well as his overall aimless nature and naivety where it’s shown that he’s still figuring out what he’s doing in his life. He’s kind of like a leaf just flowing in the wind, searching for belonging maybe or perhaps some other higher purpose? I believe that’s part of the reason why he becomes so attached to the visceral realists and why he takes it so seriously. García Madero is not somebody I admire, nor somebody I want to be, or even wish to have been friends with. Yet, I like him. Despite all his flaws and things that he had done or said that made me cringe, I still end up rooting for him. It’s not because he’s a mere teenager that I overlook his flaws (I was a teenager once too and definitely wouldn’t act like him), I think it’s because he’s flawed that I root for him. I want him to succeed, I want him to grow, I want him to find whatever he’s looking for. I’m not sure why but maybe it’s because of the way I immerse myself through the pages of his journal that I almost have to root for him because I’m living his life through his journal. I bet if I had read the events of this book from another perspective, I might have even hated García Madero, but that’s not the case here.

So, a question that I perhaps would like for us to discuss collectively would be “Can you find yourself disliking a character like García Madero, yet rooting for him at the same time?” From the above you can probably tell that I think the answer is an obvious yes, yet I’ve had similar discussions with some friends in the past that has got me thinking before. For example, Breaking Bad and Walter White, Walter is an incredibly egotistic drug kingpin who has done and said much, much worse things than García Madero. But despite it all, I think many other fans of Breaking Bad and I can’t help ourselves from rooting for this “bad guy.” However, I also think that this was really what the writers of Breaking Bad intended, maybe that’s not the case for what Roberto Bolaño intended with García Madero. Anyways, I’d be curious to know what you all think!

P.S. Going back to what I said about liking the characters, I also am really intrigued by the Font sisters, Quim, Lupe, Belano, Lima, Pancho, and Rosario, but this blog post is already well over 500 words so maybe I’ll mention them in a future blog post.