Tag Archives: teaching

The Savage Detectives III: A Joke Covering Up Something More Serious

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Jon

A little over half-way through The Savage Detectives (on page 369 of 648), it feels as though things may be starting to come together. According to Luis Sebastián Rosado, it is Luscious Skin who at last outlines the structure of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Bolaño and the History of the Future

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Jon

Bolaño’s fiction, whether set in Chile or Mexico, is as much about a memory of Latin America as it is about the region’s actuality, even if that memory is sometimes also a memory of the future. Audio | Transcript | … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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2666 III: Order with the Possibility of Suicide

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Jon

“The Part of Amalfitano” is, at almost exactly eighty pages, the shortest of the five parts that make up 2666. It expands on the character, circumstances, and history of Oscar Amalfitano, a professor at the University of Santa Teresa and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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2666 II: Machine Reading

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Jon

Upon reaching the end of “The Part of the Crimes,” it is hard to see how it could have stood on its own. And yet, according to the note that prefaces the entire novel, that was Bolaño’s plan, communicated just … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Savage Detectives II: The Limits of Heteroglossia

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Jon

The second part of The Savage Detectives is itself entitled “The Savage Detectives,” with the addition of the dates: 1976–1996. What then is the relationship between this part and the book as a whole? Is this the core, the essence … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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2666 I

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Jon

This blog post is something of a placeholder… I admit that for various reasons I have yet to get fully into Bolaño’s novel. I am a little past page 100, almost exactly halfway through the first of the five “parts” … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Savage Detectives I

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Jon

The first part of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, just under 140 pages (in the Picador edition) and entitled “Mexicans Lost in Mexico (1975),” is presented as a series of diary entries written by one Juan García Madero between the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Reading Fiction is Back?

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Jon

Man Carrying Thing on YouTube, in a video entitled “Self-help is dead. It’s time to read fiction”, is quite amusing and acerbic on literature and how it is framed (h/t Daniel), and he also says a thing or two germane … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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AI, The Savage Detectives, and Verbosity

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Jon

My wife, Fiona, is reading The Savage Detectives. In fact, she was given the book, by a friend, some seven or eight years ago, but at the time–perhaps a little intimidated by the novel’s length–she didn’t get much further than … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Long TV, affect, and mortality

Posted on October 29, 2025 by Jon

Some thoughts on long TV from another old Harpers article, this time Adam Wilson’s “Good Bad Bad Good: What was the Golden Age of TV?” (vol. 339, no. 2033 [October 2019]:43–53): One reason that TV shows develop cult followings is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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