POEM OF THE WEEK:

   It is a summary, a regurgitation of an introduction by poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar to an Anglo-Saxon charm Against a Growth. From 975, by Unknown.

A poem, 

divine chant,

activated by its own sound 

virtue of being in the air. 

There will be a part two before next Thursday. When I am done the second-choice book. Thus, this is a catch up post, delayed by procrastination. Lack of discipline.

ON Retrospective….

I am now 230 pages in. I have roughly 200 pages to finish before next Thursday.

THE NARRATIVE

Part two: The Revolution in the Hotel FAUSTO CABREBA and LUZ ELENA are involved in the political scene of Peking. Then at one point, Marinella starts seeing a boy. At the opulent hotel they reside in, the Crooks, a family composed of David Crooks (Spaniard), his wife Isabel, “a blond Canadian with a soft gaze who’d been born in China” (137, online pdf, not my paperback) and their “sons in order of height: Carl, Michael, and Paul” (137) starts frequenting the pools of their hotel. Marienella gradually takes a liking to Paul. Carl is 17 years old. Marienella: 15. She starts reading books, reading Marx as a way of having conversations with Carl, and thus grow closer to him. They eventually go on a few days. Fausto disapproves of the relationship. He is straightforward, commands Marienella to put an end to the relationship.

Then…

Fausto and Luz Elena get an outpost in Colombia. Clandestine work for the Communist party. But they decide that Colombia may not be safe for the children; thus they are to study in China. They get to have a huge hotel with staff just for the two of them. Because the parents think their current hotel would deviate their children to debauchery, if left alone. And they are protected and checked upon by The China–Latin America and Caribbean Friendship Association. Before they leave, they leave an envelope with various written instructions in how to go on about life.

“What is the objective of staying in China? There might be two: a) To study and prepare intellectually to become in the future a “worthy man” as they say. This means trying to stand out, earnmoney, fame, etc. All this, naturally, at the cost of the misery and suffering of others, of the exploitation of man by man. b) The other objective is to achieve an ideological and sentimental proletariat transformation and prepare to serve society, the people, the revolution. Not entering on the road to transformation would mean staying halfway down the road. To be a “revolutionary” with a bourgeois mentality means being a revisionist in practice. Going back to Colombia before having firmly entered into that transformation seems to me to have simply wasted your time in China, and not achieved the objective. In my opinion, if you enter into that authentic transformation, well cemented, you will be ready for a possible return” (146)

“In the capitalist world it is common and even natural for people your age to have boyfriends or girlfriends. Why? In the first place the young have no ideals, no true worries, they spend their lives thinking only of that, dependent on that. It’ s the focus of their interest. It is a corrupted society that pins its greatest hopes on passion and sex. We already know the results: disgrace, solitude, anguish, terror, etc. What is the next step? Either jump in and marry young with no maturity, tying yourself down to duties that will prevent you from fulfilling your life, your ideals, as well as later problems, or enter into an atmosphere around which the basic fact of life is that, gradually falling into a degeneration where the only important thing in life is sex” (151). 

Marienella continues to see Carl, as the kids become aware of the Cultural Revolution overtaking Peking. Sergio joins a party for the Red Army. He observes the fervent vehemence of strong belief, the same that would soon overtake him. The Red Army is present everywhere. Those that are seemed to betray the new ideology are shunned. For instance, page 147 details a teacher who is kicked en masse by his entire class.

“The drafting teacher, a thin, bespectacled man whom all the pupils liked, had begun to discuss in his class the concept of aerodynamics. That’s what he was talking about when he spontaneously compared the Soviet MiG, a combat plane designed in 1939 and produced in small quantities after the war, with the F-4 Phantom II, which McDonnell Douglas had brought into service in 1960. Both planes, Soviet and American, had been used in the Vietnam War, but the teacher had no reason to think of that when he praised the design of the Phantom II and dared to say it was better. An uncomfortable silence fell over the classroom. “But that is the enemy’s plane,” a pupil said after a moment. Sergio didn’t know if the teacher had realized his mistake, but he tried briefly to defend himself: “Yes, it is. But its design is better. For example, it is faster. Why is it faster?” But his attempts fell into the void. The class was indignant. A murmur of disapproval grew ever louder. And that was when a pupil said: “If he prefers the enemy’s weapons, he must be an enemy.”

Mao’s image is everywhere. So is the Red Army and the talks about new ideals. Marienella bonds closer with Carl and starts spending days and nights at their house. A new chapter begins, in the present moment of the second narrative. It is grown up Sergio Cabrera spending a day with his son in Spain. The memory of Carl’s father is involuntarily invoked. David Crooks — and now we learn that he fought in the Spanish civil war. There is mystery. Analepsis: Young Sergio Cabrera. The cultural war causes for their forced leave from their hotel (it must be stressed it is a huge hotel solely for themselves and staff). The Red Army wants to occupy it. And they are kicked out of the hotel from where they are taught because Sergio dates a girl. Smilka. Her father is a “Yugoslavian diplomat” (172). He works for a media translation organization, based in Peking and apparently has libed the Red Party. As for Marienella, she is scolded

“Your duty was to denounce your brother, and you did not. And the party does not know if it can still trust you” (176)

Marinella’s relationship with young intellectual, Carl, ends. The Crooks are to go abroad, on a long vacation granted by the Association.

ON Juan Gabriel Vásquez

The story line is great. It is autobiographical, narrative-heavy, told through exposition, dialogue. It features constant analepsis and prolepsis. It is a story that pulls me in. I am interested in learning more about J. G. V.

Obviously, I am reading in translation. So I am curious of its Spanish form and prose. I want to pick up more books by him.

Also interested in the Cabrera family. In one scene, Sergio recounts the public reception of his film adaptation of Wendy Guerra’s Everyone Leaves. The Cuban public (and his father, Fausto) (I) dislike the source material’s author (II) think the story is anti-revolutionary. It is a story about a girl affected by political violence, no matter the side. Sergio feels strong about the movie, believes it in, thinks it ahead of its time. An underdog in his auteurial filmography. I would be interested in watching some of the Cabreras film in the future.

Now I would be interested to know at what point in the story Sergio decides to become a filmmaker.

I think I’ve been trying to sit with the why of it all. Why is this the ending Bolaño chose? What does ending on a short flashback section achieve for the story? Is it to sandwich the book between two Garcia Madero sections for symmetry? Did he want a chance to play around with the idea of a travelogue/ road trip novel in a more traditional way, outside of the interviews in the middle sections?

This section was fun and I love the idea of a road trip, especially one where you’re out looking for clues, but the mention of all the different spiders they were facing ruined the fun vibes for me (I’ll stay home, thank you): “Night noises: wolf spiders, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, black widows, desert toads” (630). Garcia Madero was as insufferable as ever. He spent so many words making sure we knew he found Cesárea overweight and how he couldn’t believe he was sleeping with Lupe. It doesn’t seem like he likes his friends much, not even Belano or Lima, constantly making comments and sounding annoyed at what they say or how they act.

I was also thinking a lot about the flow of the text/ the pacing as I was reading, mainly how Bolaño slows the text down when it starts to pick up pace. Like when they’re going through the drawings of the sombrero over lines and guessing what was drawn, and Lupe’s guesses are coming quicker and quicker. Then, she gets stumped for one second and suddenly Garcia Madero is commenting on a dead plant he sees approaching in the distance, narrating a bit of the landscape (612). It takes the readers out of the game for those few lines and slows down the narrative before resuming the game for four more drawings. I don’t know what, exactly, his aim was with this but it helped remind me that they’re still on the road and that the journey is still moving forward? Or is it just his placement of an omen, like on the next page when they end on the drawing of “[f]our Mexicans keeping vigil over a body” (613). A little foreshadowing.

Throughout the book, there were certain parts where I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be funny and I just don’t understand the joke, or if the audience is purposefully being left out of the joke and it isn’t supposed to make sense outside of the “in” crowd. An example in this section is when the group was stopped by patrolmen when leaving Nacozari: “Are you from Nacozari, officer? Lupe asks him. The patrolman looks at her and says no, why would she think that, he’s from Hermosillo. Belano and Lima laugh” (602). Or, later on, with “Just the mention of Maximilian’s army cracks us right up… A Belgian head of a Belgian regiment. It cracks us up. A Belgian-Mexican regiment” (638). Literally what are they talking about?

To conclude my thoughts on this conclusion to The Savage Detectives, I enjoyed this section (maybe?) more than the previous ones. It felt like a Christmas special in a tv series. This could have been because it was shorter, or because it was a story where the main characters are all together in an isolated sort of tale. Overall, I’ll probably give The Savage Detectives a 3.75/5 star rating, in that it was good for what it was but I probably won’t reread it or recommend/ lend it out to friends.

Poem of this week is: not a poem, but a phrase, penned by me.

Eje tematico: la Vida

Thematic focus: Life. 

— 

ONCE a university friend, from a different nation, my original nation, said university made him read faster. And so I learned. This is a new technique I have learned from RMST 202 and 495. I have finished the novel now? What do I take out of it: auto-fiction, writing as a means of purpose, life as a thematic focus. The human condition driven by desires of recognition, to be seen and not seen. Sexual pleasures, and poetry readings. The Savage Detectives is a triptych, yet a confusing one. I cannot say whether this novel can be categorized as “hated” or “loved” within my literary taste. All subjectives aside, the novel had to be read.

Part three was interesting. Due to its jokes and the texts aesthetics similar to a thriller movie. A badly made one if adapted by the wrong-hands.

The Visceral Realists (infra realists) now and then:

Xochitl: writes. Publishes. Makes a life with her little Franz.

Maria and Angelica: Unheard of after given a voice.

In memoriam: San Epifanio (what a lovely name), Luscious Skin, Tinajero.

As I read the novel, I think of Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now. 

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Ulises Lima: Mario Papasquiaro. Dies on ’98. Presumably when the novel comes out.

Arturo Belano: lives on. (until when?)

Reading the now and then I feel a pang of what. I don’t know. I desperately seek maturity off this novel, any philosophy that I can tackle onto, so that I can say “I tackle such and such issue after finishing reading the Savage Detectives”

Why is Tinajero portrayed that way? Is she made up? Why does she die, and say not Madero or Lupe. What is the meaning between part two and three? Auto-fiction. Yes, this is a work of auto-fiction (perhaps exaggerated), but reading about adult decisions in part two, makes me think: change is the only constant. Free therapy. A layout of what other adults due in difficult experiences, even if fictional or exaggerated. I look an article of the Viscerealists. Now and then. To soothe my unhappiness as a young man, perhaps.

What’s outside my window? A star. Then nothing? A bird mistaken for a paperbag? to say, false hopelessness?

Why poetic when you can be analytical?

Then I want to say this is novel is also about disillusionment as it is about other themes. Like satire and replication, think of Pio Bajara’s story, La Sima. I look it up as it satirized (or replicated?) in a scene within Savage Detectives. Why do I feel attraction towards a text, towards a character, towards Ulises Lima and A. B., as well as Lupe and Garcia Madero? Is it OK to have crushes on many book characters from the same novel?

This is not therapy. but go on your analysis. 

Well, I wonder what will happen to Lupe and Garcia Madero. An unusual story. Will they end up together? The story has been sliced up here. For the reader to surmise.

How do you feel about Cesarea?

Desperately Seeking Susan.  I wonder if Belano or Bolano saw this film. Cesarea’s avatar, to me, is still Lilian Serpas’ real-life character. I think about the song: Into The Groove. And imagine Cesarea. I hope she was not real, that whatever happened in the novel did not happen to her. That she was not real. But after so much characterization, I think, It would be sad if she was not this real. To me, she seems real. I realize, there is an emotional bond now, between these characters and I.

What stands out most to you?

That in the novel, it is all realist. That they desire humanly, and suffer so. It is about human experiences.

And if you had to analyze it academically?

I would not. I would say that I loved the novel before much, that I loved Bolano’s other works. That I was introduced to his short stories at a young age, and having read a full-length novel by him was a different experience. That you have much to say, but it will stay with you. Until a word is uttered. That you haven’t decided whether you love or hate this novel – it certainly was something. That only Cesarea stays with you.

That I should open my windows, and ask myself, what’s outside my windows besides soil and pines?

I finished the book, and I really liked it. I love how it’s a huge puzzle, instead of a conventional plot with the “introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, resolution”. In fact it’s a huge puzzle missing many pieces – Bolaño doesn’t give us all the pieces. What do Belano and Lima talk about with Cesarea Tinajero? I instinctively want to call Cesarea Tinajero the MacGuffin, but would that reduce her significance?

When the visceral realists met the teacher who taught Papágo, which seems to be an indigenous language, it dawned on me that “savage” would have meant “indigenous” at the time this book was written. Cesárea was human in Part II, but in Part III she’s a mythical figure. A shapeshifter. At one point she was a coral snake, though this was the period when she was a loving teacher who registered the neglected children in elementary school and wanted to reform the education system. Later she looked like “a rock or an elephant”, which was when the visceral realists met her. She’s associated with another animal — the bull. It seemed like she identified with the matador world enough to inscribe her name on the tombstone of Avellaneda. Cesárea is also a trickster, because she leaves “jokes” for her followers to decode, which seem like they are not meant to have meaning attributed to them.

What did you make of the final poem? It looks like the window has melted, and I’m thinking of this window as the one separating trickster-Cesárea and the rest of us. She’s a transcendental figure. She can see the entire world while we have a very limited field of vision. She’s on the outside, giving vague messages to the people inside (among which only the poets are looking outwards and trying to decode). And one day this window melted away, and we face the entire world! The intemperie, the dangerous entire world that we were previously protected from by the window. But this reading leaves so many questions. Who put the window there? How did Cesárea get to the other side of the window? (I think she used to be on our side as well, back when she was with the stridentists.) And when does this window melt away? February 15, 1976? Or the day she wrote this? Or the day we read it (thus varying for each reader)? If it’s the day we read it, then for us readers, it’s the same day we finish and put down this book — which is an act very similar to the fall of a window and entry into another world — we are re-entering reality. But I really don’t want to read the inside of the window as illusion and the outside as ultimate reality, like some kind of Matrix situation. I don’t love the illusion-reality dichotomy. So, even after all this analysis, I come back to the question: what’s on the other side of the window? I must have fallen into trickster-Cesárea’s trap!

Another character caught my attention in this section — Alberto. Isn’t it crazy that a pimp goes all the way into the desert, for a month, to look for one girl – Lupe? This is not just an act of jealousy at this point. The night he talked and drank beer with Belano, Garcia Madero said “they looked like they’re friends,” and I believed that for a second! I thought: Alberto is looking for something too in this desert, something that has to do with his ideals, his beliefs. He’s looking for something important to him too, and Lupe is the symbol of whatever it is he’s searching for, just like Cesárea is the symbol of what the VR are searching for… Then the jerk pulled out his gun again. But this “friendly” moment is what started to change my perception of him. I want to read him as a character with depth too, rather than a simble vulgar bad guy, but I couldn’t come up with much, other than what I wrote above.

I realize I didn’t have as much to say about bullfighting as I would have liked, now my awesome blog title goes to waste. Aww.

Ahhh. This was the easiest that picking up Bolaño has been all semester. I’ll admit I’ve done most of my reading early Wednesday morning and late Wednesday night this semester (so that I can write my blog before midnight and work on things for my two other Thursday classes that are due in the morning afterwards). This ended up being the case this week as well. So I’ll say, having to read 50 pages after mowing through a few-hundred-or-so some weeks felt GREAT.

Thinking about Jasmine and David explaining how they explained The Savage Detectives to their friends, here’s how I would describe the road so far (did anyone watch Supernatural? lol):

“Juan García Madero joins the visceral realists, a poetry group in Mexico in the mid-1970s, where he meets Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, and bums around Mexico City for a while. Then, the three of them, plus a prostitute Lupe, end up in an Impala (Supernatural again?!) driving as fast as they can out of Mexico City to complete a double-headed quest: both escape Lupe’s cruel pimp Alberto and start a pilgrimage to find Cesárea Tinajero, touted as a figurehead of the visceral realist movement. Then, we skip over their journey, and hear from a vast collection of closely- or loosely-related acquaintances of stories.”

And now, Part III, the season finale if you will! Or maybe the second piece of sandwich bread if we think about Part II being a giant whopper of a sandwich – we’re looking at Scooby-Doo proportions here. Okay that’s enough random thoughts…

In Part III, we return to the first days of ’76 as García Madero, Lupe, Roberto and Ulises in Quim Font’s Impala driving out from Mexico City to escape Alberto and to find Cesárea Tinajero. I found Bolaño captured well the mundanity of a road trip, even one with life and death consequences, García Madero quizzing his friends on literary devices and his drawings of birds-eye-view sombreros. This had me thinking of how I spent time on road trips. I grew up in Vancouver but my family is from California (=American citizen, which we uncovered during one class. Not a point of pride) so I’ve spent a lot driving to California, which takes about two days. Plenty of time to pass: usually I read, zone out, or gossip with my mom – we usually have more to gossip about on the way home!

I enjoyed a literary reference I finally got! Hot on Cesárea’s tail (or rather, making something out of nothing), our searchers uncover Pepín Allevenada, a bullfighter, and refer to Hemingway’s sad matadors. I took an American literature class in my second year (uh no not American again) and we read In Our Time, which is a collection of short stories interspersed with little snippets of other stories, many of these of matadors – almost Part II-esque. Here’s a quote that felt Bolaño-esque about a bullfighter who had a poor fight:

“Afterwards I saw him at the café. He was very short with a brown face and quite drunk and he said after all it has happened before like that. I am not really a good bull-fighter” (p. 95).

Both aspects of the quest unite when the quartet find Cesárea and at the same time are found by Alberto. I was a little ambivalent about Cesárea’s death: on one hand, that’s sad both that she died for herself and also for the visceral realists, but at this point I was down for whatever Bolaño had written to get to the end. It felt like he was playing with his reader again though; all that just to have her die.

Going back to John v Ava on whether we like endings or not, I will yell it from the top of a hill that I am happy to have ended The Savage Detectives. My ritual of finishing a book: I put my bookmark in my bookmark tin, I mark it off as “Finished” on GoodReads, and then I decide if I want to keep the book or pawn it off to a local lending library. I think I would like to reread this book on my own time; having to cram it all in for late Wednesday nights was not optimal reading for me. But I’ll give it a year or two to simmer.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Even though I didn’t love this book, I did enjoy reading it.

Photos: Front cover of the novel « The Savage Detectives » and image of author Roberto Bolaño

First immediate reactions after reading Part III

First of all, I cannot believe that we are finally at the end! We’re finally done reading this 600-page something book! This has been one of the longest-awaited moments since the start of the semester. I have to say that part of me is relieved that I made it through all that wandering and searching.

However, at the same time, the ending did not give me the closure I expected. It was abrupt, violent and honestly a bit unsettling the way Bolaño wrote it. Cesárea’s death was unforeseen and unfair. I mean, like, common now, everything built up to this part and to find Cesárea, only to slip away at the last minute.

Overall, I noticed that I read this best in in-between spaces, such as on transit (especially on the #84 bus, which gives me 50 minutes to lock in and read), at home with a cup of decaf tea at night, and even while waiting in the dentist’s lobby. From Page 1 to the last page, I find myself consistently taking breaks and reading the assigned readings in parts, and I always find myself filling my time (like transit and waiting for the dentist) with The Savage Detectives.

General Reactions:

So, we finally get back to the end of part 1! The four of them, Lima, Belano, Lupe and of course García Madero, went to Agua Prieta to check around the cemetery for the bullfighter’s grave, who’s potentially connected to their search for Cesárea while being on the run – classic storyline! And guess what? It’s basically nothing, and so it is with many other towns they’ve gone through. After all that driving and sneaking around, I start to get puzzled about what is so great about this search for Cesárea? Is she real or is she a myth? Anyways, I feel as if the quest to find Cesára is less about her and more about chasing meaning, obsession and their own restless desires.

Afterwards, they reached Sonora, talking to old teachers and locals related to Cesárea. Honestly, I was getting frustrated, like, are we getting closer to finding her, or is this just a ruse while escaping from Alberto? Well, they finally find her… she is real. However, she is not what I expect her to be as described or expected from the words of Lima, Belano and Lupe. She was far from ordinary – super ordinary? It appears to me that she is this one great Mexican poet, but now she has detached herself from poetry and the world, as if she is in her own little world. Furthermore, the unexpected characterization of Cesárea challenges my assumptions, as the reader, informed and shaped by Lima, Belona and Lupe (all through the book), highlighting the false expectation implanted in the reader’s mind.

Suddenly, Alberto enters !!! This is it – the climax! And it was a climax that I did not see coming. I cannot believe murder was committed by Belano and Lima – they are truly unhinged. What is even more shocking, Cesára dies! SHOCKED, SHOOKED… So unfair, so abrupt, so unforeseen… like why!!!! Moreover, I find that the abrupt deaths of Cesárea and Alberto function importantly as a brutal commentary on fate, truth and justice, forcing me, as the audience, to confront the consequences, subverting my expectations and the buildup from the narrative tension.

Discussion Question:

Feel free to answer it in any way =)

First question related more to the phenomenology or experience of reading The Savage Detectives:

How did your personal experience of reading the 600-page novel evolve over time? Did you feel immersed, entranced, repulsed,  frustrated, confused, lost, or disconnected when reading it? How did those feelings shape your interpretation of the story and its abrupt ending?

The second question is related more to our long-awaited ending:

How do García Madero, Lupe, Belano and Lima change throughout their journey? Which of the characters’ reactions to the final scene felt the most revealing to you?

Well, my friends, it’s finally over. But actually, I did not feel relieved or happy when I finally reached the end of the novel. In fact, I was wanting more. Not necessarily more pages of the book to read. What I mean to say is that I wanted more details as to what happened to García Madero and Lupe. But instead, it just ends. And it ends with a bunch of pictures, which are probably meant to represent García Madero’s drawings. I do recognize that Bolaño could have chosen to end the story at any point. As we discussed in class, the choice of where to end a novel is fairly arbitrary, and this type of ending demonstrates that. We all knew what the ending would be since we read the last page together in class (I had actually accidentally glimpsed at the ending prior to that day because I had wanted to see how many pages were in the book), so there was no surprise today when I reached the last page and saw the dotted outline of a rectangle with the caption “What’s outside the window?”. However, I was expecting there to be some sort of lead-up to this image of a rectangle, which I expected to provide context that would explain the author’s decision to end the novel in this manner. But no. Instead, we are provided with three short lists (VERY short lists if we were to compare them to the other lists in the book), each one as a separate diary entry on three different dates, followed by a couple other rectangles with the same caption for García Madero’s next two entries. So what does this all mean? I’ve been asking myself that question over and over, unable to come up with a sufficient answer. The ending is cryptic. As I said in one of my previous blog posts: “That’s Bolaño for you”. I will say that I enjoyed certain aspects of the final section of the book. As I was reading it, I thought about how we had finally entered the “detective” stage of the novel, as the characters were engaged in a thorough investigation of what happened to Cesárea Tinajero, similar to the work of detectives. To tell you the truth, I did not expect them to find her. I was expecting them to search in vain, and to eventually give up and return to Mexico City. For that reason, I was surprised and excited when they finally found her! I did find it to be a bit bizarre that Bolaño made a point to constantly remind us of how large she was. But we all know that Bolaño doesn’t shy away from unusual descriptions. His writing is anything but ordinary. And the ending of the book fully demonstrates that.

Even though we hardly get to know Cesárea Tinajero as a character, I was (surprisingly) very touched emotionally when she sacrificed her life to save Ulises Lima. It felt like how I usually feel when I become very attached to a character in a film, and then I watch them die in the end and I usually start crying. I didn’t cry this time, but I felt that stinging sadness in my heart. That was my favourite part of the novel. It was the part of the narrative that stirred up the most intense emotions in me. Honestly, I wish Bolaño had chosen to end the novel soon after that moment. It could have been a highly impactful, emotionally charged ending. And it’s not like García Madero’s diary entries after that actually provide us with that many details about what happens to the characters. Although I haven’t criticized the novel that much in any of my previous blog posts, I do feel the need to mention that I found the ending to be rather disappointing. And when I refer to “the ending”, I mean the last few pages (basically February 2^nd onward). What is the point of these last 14 diary entries?

Am I missing something here?

Questions for the class: How do you interpret the ending of the novel? What do you think these “windows” represent?