lucas73's Blog

Since this is my final blog post for this course, maybe to mix things up I’ll keep it short this time. Eh, probably not, we’ll see. I think I might’ve mentioned before that when I type to friends or write informally, like in these blog posts, I do it as if I were speaking, which ends up making it overly verbose. Although, I also think it does a great job at capturing my feelings (arguably more important than brevity). I’m really not sure how to start off my final reflections, so maybe it’d be best to literally start at the start (my introductory blog post) alongside my expectations and feeling before taking this course. As you all know, I’m our resident science student, so even before the first class, I had my doubts about sticking out like a sore thumb or feeling some form of impostor syndrome. That brings me back to a memory of our first class where Professor Beasley-Murray said something along the lines of “I assume you’re all in arts, or arts-adjacent” to which I sort of instinctively started shaking my head. Then the professor asked what I was studying and of course I told him “science”, and at that point I did indeed feel somewhat out of place. Thankfully those worries washed away quite quickly, to a bit of my surprise, Professor Beasley-Murray not only welcomed me but also encouraged me to stay in the class!

Another worry I had was the amount of reading I’d have to do for this class. I’ve mentioned in my introductory blog post that I currently don’t read as much as I would like, and in my computer science classes there’s much, much less reading involved. Also, 2666 is a fairly long book, even when compared to other long books. Although, I was very committed from the get-go fully knowing that I’d have to manage my time well over the term juggling my other courses as well (even in my last term I decided to take four courses when I could graduate with just three). Luckily, I was able to successfully finish both The Savage Detectives and 2666 without too many hiccups… I do admit that I was late by an hour for a previous blog post as well as my blog post last week when I was sick 🙁 Hopefully that doesn’t count as a severe breach of contract, I blame my overly verbose writing style (just kidding, that was just poor planning, oh well…) But anyways, yeah, in the end I didn’t have much trouble completing both of the books and I’m quite happy with myself at the end of the day. What was the point of all that worrying then? I don’t know, maybe I’m just naturally a worrywart (I love that word “worrywart”, it’s really fun to say too, apparently it comes from some American comic from the 1900s). Regardless, I bet in the future I’ll look back on my final days of university and these blogs posts fondly, especially if I do a rereading of The Savage Detectives or 2666.

Worries aside, what did I actually hope to gain from taking RMST 495, apart from answering the question “why are long books long”, which I’ll get to later? Well, the answer to that question can be found in my introductory blog post: “I wanted to take some interesting electives that really differ from my usual computer science courses. Luckily I stumbled upon RMST 495 and the course description and trailer really piqued my interest… this course would be an excellent way to get invested in a couple good, long books to escape our busy world of social media filled with short-form content. Ideally, maybe I would fall in love with reading these kinds of long books and I could take that passion with me after I graduate!” Indeed, indeed, I found this course to be thoroughly interesting and I had a lot of fun discussing in class and writing these blog posts too! To be honest, just having fun simply would have met my expectations, it’s not like I needed this course to fulfill some requirement. However, RMST 495 also surpassed that by providing me with an excuse to get invested in a couple books and definitely reinvigorated my passion for reading! Instead of like my other blog posts with the discussion question at the end, I think this will be a good place to put it this time. So for my final discussion question, I’d like to ask you all: “What has been your biggest takeaway from RMST 495? And how will you carry that forward with you?” Maybe it was from one of our peers’ presentations (the theory of the novel, or the phenomenology of reading, or narrative discourse, I don’t mean to exclude any or say I favour any of these ones in particular, I just don’t want to write them all out :P), maybe something from Bolaño, maybe something from your self-selected book, maybe just the term “MacGuffin”, or maybe, just maybe, the legendary question “why are long books long?” Let’s talk about that for a bit now!

Why why why why why (a song by SAULT that I listened to recently and liked). Why are long books long? Before taking this class, I’d probably say something like “it’s trivial, the author simply wanted to make it that length” but that’s not really a good answer because we can keep asking that “why” question over and over. Why did the author choose to make it that length? Why did the author choose to end the book where it ends? I also really liked the flipped version of the question “why are short books short?” We’ve seen that there are many possible answers to the question “why are long books long”: for commodification purposes, or maybe because readers are seeking long form content over binge-reading, or maybe they really want to build an immersive world with shorter stories within the larger narrative, or maybe the author just said f it I’m done with this work now, or maybe the author’s just overly verbose like the author of this blog post. There isn’t just some be-all, end-all, conclusive answer. It really varies between time period, between author, and between the books themselves. So, instead, allow me to answer the question for The Savage Detectives and 2666. To begin with, I do believe that Bolaño is a fan of writing those shorter stories within the larger narrative that I’ve mentioned countless times, so that point applies for both books. For The Savage Detectives specifically, a large portion was dedicated to all the accounts in Part II which I think Bolaño was using as the sort of “period of waiting” we’ve mentioned. While I’m not entirely convinced that it had to end where it ends (sorry professor), with the conclusion of García Madero approaching that “void”, the more and more I’ve thought it over, the more and more I’ve realized that it was probably the best place to end book. I’ve become a Bolaño fan though, so maybe I’m just looking at his books through some rose-tinted glasses. Anyways, for 2666, as was mentioned before, Bolaño first intended to release it as five separate books (which is what I’ll talk about next!) thinking “it would be less of a burden and more profitable, both for his publisher and for his heirs” which certainly would answer the question of why it’s so long (had it been released separately, the longest book would have been less than 300 pages) (895). Strangely enough though, unlike The Savage Detectives, I am much more firm on the belief that the ending for 2666 had to end where it ended. I talked a bit about it in my previous blog but it’s really an excellent ending in how it connects back to Part I while also leaving us, the readers, with unanswered questions and loose ends (which is interesting because some might use that as the very same reason why they didn’t like the ending).

Okay, so if you read my last blog post, I promised that I would talk about the “Note to the first edition” at the end of 2666 containing a few insights and notes from Bolaño. Apologies for making you all wait this long to get here! As was mentioned earlier, the editor who wrote the note did mention the whole kerfuffle (another word I love) about the division of 2666 into five separate books. They said it seemed “preferable to keep the novel whole” but they also claimed that the five parts could have been read independently, which I wholeheartedly disagree with (895). To each their own. The editor also claimed that even though 2666 was published posthumously, “the novel as it was left at Bolaño’s death is very nearly what he intended it to be” which I was really happy to read, but I do still have doubts and wonder what 2666 would have looked like in an alternate universe where Bolaño had truly completed it (895). On a lighter note, the note also mentions the references to the title of 2666 in The Savage Detectives and Amulet, which we’ve all read (neato)! Finally though, I’ll officially end here, leaving you all with a little message from Bolaño himself included in the note to the first edition:

“A final observation is perhaps in order here. Among Bolaño’s notes for 2666 there appears the single line: ‘The narrator of 2666 is Arturo Belano.’ And elsewhere Bolaño adds, with the indication ‘for the end of 2666‘: ‘And that’s it, friends. I’ve done it all, I’ve lived it all. If I had the strength, I’d cry. I bid you all goodbye, Arturo Belano.'” (898)

P.S. The title of this blog post, “And so farewell.”, is simply the last line of the note to the first edition. Unofficially, I’d like to end by thanking you all for reading my blog post(s) and for all of your wonderful blog posts as well. It was a great experience reading about your self-selected books and all our different thoughts on The Savage Detectives and Bolaño. I also really appreciated our discussions in class, and of course I want to thank the professor for taking us through this journey! I bid you all goodbye, Lucas Hu.

I’ve noticed recently that I don’t really know the best way to start off a blog post, assuming that a best way even exists. When I was about to start typing I was going to write something like “Well folks, we’ve finally reached the end of 2666!“, and then I took a moment and looked at like my last three blog posts and they all started in a similar fashion. So… instead of thinking of a better way to start off this blog post, I just decided to start it by commenting on my poor starts to blog posts, making an even worse start to a blog post… Anyways, yes, here we are, the end of 2666, concluding with The Part About Archimboldi, whom we haven’t heard about since the first Part, The Part About The Critics. I have so many initial thoughts about my reading that I’d like to share, but first as with all my blog posts on 2666, I’ll have to start with a brief (and sort of “scuffed”) summary (luckily for you guys, this will be my last one you’ll have to read). Similarly to The Part About The Crimes, The Part About Archimboldi spans well over 200 pages, however, I feel like lots more actually happens as it doesn’t follow that repetitive pattern of detailing the femicides in Santa Teresa. Anyways, let’s just dive right in!

The Part About Archimboldi begins with the introduction of Hans Reiter (the real name of our mysterious Archimboldi), who was first mentioned in The Part About The Critics when our critics were on the trail for Archimboldi in Mexico and came across the name “Hans Reiter” in a hotel’s records. Hans Reiter, born in Prussia to a one-legged father and one-eyed mother, is a pretty tall and interesting child who likes to swim and is kind of obsessed over this book Animals and Plants of the European Coastal Region. Later when Hans is 10, his parents have a daughter named Lotte whom Hans adores. Hans quits school and works some odd jobs but eventually works with his mother in a house belonging to a baron. He befriends the baron’s nephew, Hugo Halder, and remarks upon the baron’s daughter, Baroness Von Zumpe, who brings home many friends for parties (she’s actually quite important so keep her in mind for later). Hans is later drafted to fight in World War II and a whole bunch of things happen including: staying at a castle with some generals and Baroness Von Zumpe (no, this isn’t the later I was talking about, keep waiting), meeting a strange girl kind of in love with him (Ingeborg Bauer, also important later) when he was on a brief leave looking for Hugo Halder, finding the hiding place and reading papers of this guy Boris Abramovich Ansky (stories within stories abundant here!), nearly dying several times, coming across one of the generals from earlier crucified and naked, and finally returning to Germany and surrendering to some American soldiers. Oh, and one more thing to note, in Ansky’s notebook he reads about “the Italian painter Arcimboldo, Giuseppe or Joseph or Josepho or Josephus Arcimboldo or Arcimboldi or Arcimboldus” which perhaps inspires his pseudonym Benno von Archimboldi later (729). In the prisoner-of-war-camp, Hans meets a man named Zeller (actually Leo Sammer) who was in charge of “disposing” a group of Jews… Zeller is found dead one morning (strangled, specifically). Hans is later allowed to leave the camp and goes to Cologne where he works at a bar. He meets Ingeborg Bauer again and they begin a pretty happy, romantic relationship. Hans confesses to her that he was the one who had killed Zeller and worries about the police coming after him one day, though Ingeborg doesn’t mind. It should be noted that throughout this Part Ingeborg suffers from some sicknesses and at one point she’s even told she has only two or three months to live, but she miraculously recovers (she eventually does die but we’ll cross that bridge in a moment). Ingeborg works at a seamstress shop and Hans begins to write his first book after renting a typewriter under his new pseudonym, Benno von Archimboldi. They’re pretty poor at the time and Hans sends the copies of his manuscript (of which he only has two, the original and typed carbon copy) to a few publishing houses, one of which belongs to Mr. Bubis!

Now let’s pause for a moment. You might be wondering “Who is Mr. Bubis?” Well, in my very first blog post on 2666, before writing the summary, I said “I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible without missing any important details, but I’m sure I’ll miss a few and there will also most likely be some details that I will have left out thinking they were unimportant now, but realize that they were very important later.” Now just like the book, my blog posts have even come full circle in a sense. In The Part About The Critics, the critics do actually take a visit to Mrs. Bubis’ publishing house (Mr. Bubis had passed away by then) in hopes of getting into contact with Archimboldi. They were actually somewhat successful in the sense that they even got to speak with Mrs. Bubis, but I deemed this unimportant and didn’t include it in my summary because it didn’t result in any leads to Archimboldi. Maybe this isn’t actually an important detail, but it’s at least a relevant detail that I have to pay the price of bringing up now. Anyhoo, Mr. Bubis takes great interest in Hans’, or as he knows him, Archimboldi’s book and agrees to publish his work. Hans goes to Hamburg to meet Mr. Bubis and sign the contract. Then, in what I would consider a pretty funny series of events, Mr. Bubis presses Hans on his fake name “Benno von Archimboldi” to which Hans insists is his real name and wants to just leave with his manuscript. Mr. Bubis still wants to publish him, fake name or not, and wants him to meet his wife, Mrs. Bubis. Now you can stop the waiting because guess who Mrs. Bubis is? That’s right! Baroness Von Zumpe! Hans and Baroness Von Zumpe talk privately and catch up on their lives since their last encounter. They end up making love and continue to do so many times when they meet in the future. But anyways, Hans’ book does get published by Mr. Bubis, he returns to Cologne, writes many more books which receive only a little success, but by no means complete failures (Mr. Bubis also remains very resolute to keep publishing Hans’ books and even sends Hans advanced sums larger than he probably deserved). Ingeborg suffers from a pulmonary condition and she does eventually die now, but not before travelling around Europe with Hans. Although, Mrs. Bubis or Baroness Von Zumpe (I’ll be using Hans/Archimboldi and Mrs. Bubis/Baroness Von Zumpe interchangeably from now on) finds out from some villagers that she had allegedly died from drowning (not really an important detail so don’t put on your detective hat or anything, I just added it for fun, my blog, my rules). Archimboldi’s books begin to gain more success and popularity but he goes radio silent for four years. After those four years, Mr. Bubis receives another manuscript from Archimboldi, Mrs. Bubis visits Archimboldi again, Archimboldi visits Mr. Bubis, Archimboldi sends a few more manuscripts to Mr. Bubis, Mr. Bubis dies, Mrs. Bubis takes over the publishing house continuing to publish Archimboldi’s books, and Mrs. Bubis becomes the sole person Archimboldi contacts, only sporadically though.

Now we’re almost done the summary portion of this blog post, with about 30 pages to go, we switch to Lotte’s perspective, Hans’ sister. Note that they have lost contact with each other and the last time Hans visited his family was sometime after the war. We start with a bit about her childhood, a bit about her time during the war, and then her dating and eventually marrying Werner Haas! Haas? That sounds familiar. Indeed! Lotte and Werner Haas’ child is Klaus Haas from The Part About The Crimes. Klaus is a bit of a problem child and he later moves to America and loses contact with his parents. Werner Haas dies of heart disease but Lotte later receives a telegram form Santa Teresa informing her that Klaus had been imprisoned. Then Lotte visits her son multiple times in prison over a few years with his case being postponed, found guilty, and then appealed, still pending another retrial. Lotte grows older and of course, weaker, so her travels to Mexico are a lot more strenuous. Then one time, in a hurry at an airport bookshop, Lotte buys a book by Benno Von Archimboldi about “a one-legged father and a one-eyed mother and their two children, a boy who liked to swim and a girl who followed her brother to the cliffs” (887). Upon rereading certain parts about the family in the book, Lotte becomes confident that Benno von Archimboldi is in fact her brother, Hans. She calls the publishing house and gets into contact with Mrs. Bubis. Lotte tells Mrs. Bubis that she’s Bennno Von Archimboldi’s sister, or Hans Rieter’s sister, and Mrs. Bubis takes note of Lotte’s address. Three months later, Hans finally visits his sister at her place and they talk for a while. In a kind of heartwarming moment Hans “touched his books with the tips of his fingers. There were all different kinds of editions: hardcover, paperback, pocket-size” (perhaps Bolaño also had a moment like this in his life) (891). Lotte mentions her son and she says “Will you take care of it all?” to her brother a couple of times. Finally, and I mean finally for real this time, in the last three pages, we have Hans talking to this guy Alexander Fürst Pückler who in classic Bolaño fashion goes on about the history surrounding the Fürst Pückler ice cream (or as we know it, classic Neopolitan ice cream), right before Hans is about to leave for Mexico.

Wow, that was a long summary! And you know what, I still felt like I left out a lot of shorter stories within this Part, the shorter stories that I’ve grown much accustomed to reading in The Savage Detectives and 2666, I would even say I’ve grown fond of them. Now here’s the fun part! The part where I ramble endlessly on my initial thoughts… For starters, I will say this was probably my favourite Part among the five Parts, maybe it’s just recency bias, but it felt like I was really immersed in Archimboldi’s entire life. Also, compared to The Part About The Crimes, even though quite a large portion of this Part was during World War II, overall the actual story was a lot more lighthearted and maybe even “happy” at times, although don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, especially during Zeller’s story. Speaking of Zeller’s story, at one point he says:

“I still had more than one hundred Jews and everyone was exhausted, my policemen, my volunteers, and the Polish boys. What to do? The work was too much for us. Man wasn’t made to bear some tasks for very long, I said to myself as I contemplated the horizon from my office window, striped in pink and a cloacal murk. It was too much for me, anyway. I was doing my best, but I couldn’t stand it. Nor could my policemen. Fifteen, all right. Thirty, fine. But when one reaches fifty the stomach turns and the head spins and the restless nights and nightmares begin.” (765-766)

I immediately thought of the parallels to The Part About The Crimes with just the sheer number of femicides and how we were kind of made to feel numb to it. Okay, let’s move on from that topic though! I became really aware of Bolaño’s love for super long sentences, I was already aware before, but I felt like he used them significantly more (I noted down pages 681-682, 779-781, 806, 820-821 in the Picador edition). I forget the context but I think I recall last class the Professor said something like “can you really fill the void?” (I think it had to do with our discussion on what’s outside the window) so it was kind of cool to see a part that kind of answered it here:

“‘What for?’ asked Hans Reiter.
‘To fill a void.’
‘Voids can’t be filled,’ said Hans Reiter.” (657)

A funny note is that one of the generals from earlier was described to be “nearly a foot long” when erect or half erect which reminded me of Alberto in The Savage Detectives (691). I guess that’s just some crude humor from Bolaño. Anyhow, in my blog on The Part About The Crimes, I briefly mentioned how Bolaño isn’t writing a classic “whodunit” story, funnily enough, there’s a portion in this part that mentions these very same “whodunits”:

“I’m talking about English whodunits,’ said the old woman, ‘those addictive English whodunits that infected the American whodunits first and then the French and German and Swiss.”
“‘And what mistake is that?’ I asked.
“‘An article of faith,’ said the old woman, ‘an assumption you can sum up in one
word: the killer always returns to the scene of the crime.’ (777)

Nothing more to add there, just thought it was funny. Moving on to something perhaps more “important”, there are a couple times where I think Bolaño is using Archimboldi’s story as a writer to mirror his own or at least tell something about his life as a writer. Maybe the time when Archimboldi first struggles to find success, or maybe when Archimboldi finds much success only later in his life, but here’s a part about fame that really stuck out to me:

“Until that moment Archimboldi had never thought about fame. Hitler was famous. Goring was famous. The people he loved or remembered fondly weren’t famous, they just satisfied certain needs. Doblin was his consolation. Ansky was his strength. Ingeborg was his joy. The disappeared Hugo Halder was lightheartedness and fun. His sister, about whom he had no news, was his own innocence. Of course, they were other things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame, which was rooted in delusion and lies, if not ambition. Also, fame was reductive. Everything that ended in fame and everything that issued from fame was inevitably diminished. Fame’s message was unadorned. Fame and literature were irreconcilable enemies.” (801-802)

It seems like Bolaño’s trying to share with us his feelings on the fame from his books and maybe when he lists those people he’s listing significant people from his life. I don’t really know though. I feel like I’ll never truly understand Bolaño. But isn’t that actually one of the points he’s trying to make?? Bear with me for a second. The critics in Part I studied Archimboldi’s work more than anyone else in the world to no end and were hopeless in finding him and knowing who he actually was. Yet Archimboldi’s sister, Lotte, read that one book (The King of the Forest) and recognized her brother in a moment’s time. What I’m trying to point out here is that we can study Bolaño’s work forever but can we ever truly know him? Certainly not as much as simply his friends and family! I really don’t know! Let’s just transition that to my discussion question for this week: “After having finished reading your self-selected book, do you think you understand your author more?” I feel like I understand Bolaño more, yet there’s so much I don’t understand, and even if I studied him for an eternity, I still wouldn’t (and I say this not in a bad way). There’s just something about his writing… Sorry Bolaño haters, but I’m indeed a fan! 2666‘s conclusion isn’t some neat and tidy wrap-up just like The Savage Detectives, there are still some unanswered questions, there are still some loose ends (looking at you The Part About The Crimes). But that’s the beauty of it! I think I’ve already mentioned in a previous blog post more about not expecting all those answers and coming to that realization. What I loved most about the conclusion of 2666, The Part About Archimboldi, is how it tied things back together all the way back to The Part About The Critics, even though we don’t get any typical resolution. In a sense, we do get answers, but we’re left with even more questions… Some would hate that, I loved it!

Now, originally I would have actually liked to end this blog post on the actual last pages of 2666 which was a “Note to the first edition” containing a couple insights and notes from Bolaño which I think would interest you all (as well as the explanation for the publication of 2666 as a whole or five separate novels). However, this blog post would then exceed 3000 words! So, I’ll be saving that for my concluding blog post next week… look forward to that. Until then, that’ll be it from me this week!

P.S. This week I’ve been suffering from a fever but hopefully that didn’t translate into my blog post to make it even more confusing than usual…

Well we’ve finally done it folks, we’ve reached the end of The Savage Detectives! I’ve only had a few days to really digest it all, so as you read through my final blog post on The Savage Detectives, keep in mind these are just my first impressions on Part III – The Sonora Desert. Also, if you haven’t read my first blog post on Part I, I’m a lot more sympathetic(?) toward García Madero relative to other people’s feelings about him (maybe not sympathetic but definitely less harsh on him than others as I tend to enjoy reading more “flawed” characters, so García Madero’s naivety and faults don’t bother me so much, but you can read more about my feelings in that other blog post). Okay, enough preamble.

Now I don’t recall the exact discussion we had in class many weeks ago, but the general gist was on García Madero and whether he would experience some kind of change in Part III and the professor said something along the lines of “spoiler alert: you’ll be disappointed if you do expect anything of the like.” I definitely didn’t think we would see any change in García Madero for a couple reasons, first off Part III immediately follows Part I so it’s not like a long period of time has passed (with time, people have more opportunities to change, obviously) and also Part III is only like 60 pages (with more pages, people in books have more opportunities to change, maybe not so obviously). To no surprise (for me at least), we return to classic García Madero basically quizzing Belano, Lima, and Lupe on several obscure poetic devices and forms as he sees it as a fun and entertaining way to pass time along their car ride. Now I can see how most people would find this insufferable but in my client’s defence, nobody actually tells him to shut up and they’re at least partially engaged by responding to him over and over, AND Belano says “Keep going” and “we’ll get one” so there ya go, case dismissed (595) (plus both Belano and Lima ask for more questions on page 600)! Anyways, I found it especially funny when Lupe turned the table by quizzing the others on different slang to which García Madero is completely out of his depth. One of the more noteworthy slang was “entrado en la rifa” (which translates to “entered the raffle” according to Google Translate), meaning “you’ve already gotten involved in the problem, you’re mixed up in it whether you want to be or not” (599). Belano asks if they have entrado en la rifa which Lupe affirms, but if I recall correctly Belano and Lima volunteered to take Lupe, it was only really García Madero who got “mixed up”? though maybe it’s referring to Lupe being “mixed up” in the search for Cesárea Tinajero? Something I find hard to believe that she has much interest in, but that’s a good segue to move on.

Ah the wild goose chase for Cesárea Tinajero, as soon as we got to this portion of Part III I immediately thought of how similar it was to Part I of 2666 where “the critics” search for the illusive author Archimboldi in, you guessed it, Santa Teresa. Now, very, very slight spoilers for Part I of 2666: they never ended up finding Archimboldi which made me believe our group’s search in The Savage Detectives would also come to the same conclusion. So, it was kind of surprising when they eventually did find Cesárea Tinajero. But… only kind of. It’s a bit ironic (? there’s certainly a better word to describe it, comical? lackluster?) because when they do find her, she doesn’t appear as some mythical legend, she just appears as a physically immense washerwoman: “there was nothing poetic about her. She looked like a rock or an elephant. Her rear end was enormous…” (639). Also, after finding her, we barely get to hear from her! Her conversations with Belano and Lima are unheard as García Madero awoke in another room, and of course the only perspective we’re seeing is from García Madero’s journal. He enters the room and they allegedly sit there for a long time, but nothing really happens… The only words she spoke to García Madero, which he notes, was to not get out of the car in the confrontation with Alberto and the policeman. As the last cherry on top in a kind of twisted fashion (maybe there should be some expression related to a cherry stem tied in a knot), Cesárea Tinajero straight up just dies, which really comes as an indirect result of Belano and Lima who sought out to find her fully knowing that they were being hunted by Alberto. They themselves admit that “we’d f*cked up, that we’d found Cesárea only to bring her death” (643). And that’s that, Lupe and García Madero split off from Belano and Lima who deal with the dead bodies and go on their escapades in Part II. Lupe and García Madero return to Villaviciosa and even take over Cesárea Tinajero’s house for a few days before leaving to, I assume, the cities listed from February 10th to February 12th. However, we (and this blog post) are not quite done yet though… we get to the final page with the previously-observed dashed line rectangle and are asked the question “What’s outside the window?”

Now here’s where things might get a bit rambly but I’ll try to make my thoughts as coherent as possible. Similar to García Madero’s little picture puzzles from pages 609-613, we’re first presented with a rectangle with a little point on the left side, allegedly a star outside the window. Then just a rectangle, allegedly a sheet. So what’s outside the window in the final dashed line rectangle? To me, I feel like the window kind of represent us, the reader, peering into Bolaño’s story of The Savage Detectives. The more and more I thought about it, the more I was reminded of the series of accounts in Part II that end in “everything that begins as… ends as…” Just as we each read The Savage Detectives differently (as seen from our many blog posts), we can each imagine something different outside the window, and perhaps that’s the beauty in it. The Savage Detectives and Bolaño’s other works aren’t like other typical books where the plot comes to a neat and tidy end, I feel like it’s less about the destination and more about the journey. I mean, just take a look at the structure of the book, Part II taking up like 70% of the book is all “journey” leaving the climax of the “destination” with Cesárea Tinajero just a few pages long. I don’t know really, I’m rereading my thoughts over as I’m writing this and it doesn’t even make much sense to me so I don’t know how in the world it’ll make sense for you guys. Remember these are just my first jumbled thoughts. Instead of clarifying my thoughts though, I’m actually gonna double down and make things maybe even more confusing. Recently, I was on YouTube just watching some videos about who Bolaño was and came across a short titled “Roberto Bolaño: The Novel That Only Stands on Its Plot is Already Dead” Curious, I looked up the full interview and found the below video (the interview took place in 1999, The Savage Detectives was released in 1998):

Now it’s supposed to have English subtitles as the title suggests, but it cuts out like 20 minutes in so I had to rely on auto-translated English subtitles based on the auto-generated Spanish subtitles (we’re really going to get lost in translation here). The relevant section takes place between 33:20 – 37:06. I would be delighted if anyone fluent in Spanish could give me a better translation and what you understood from Bolaño but what I understood is that he’s critiquing traditional linear storytelling structures relying on their plot while acknowledging that it will continue for years to come. However, he proposes that that form is exhausted and the future of the novel doesn’t repeat the previous authors of the world and take the easy way out. Hm, even if I were fluent in Spanish, I think I’d have a hard time comprehending Bolaño. My understanding (and do tell me if you believe I got it completely wrong) is that through The Savage Detectives, through the polyphonic narration, through the countless short stories within the larger narrative, Bolaño is writing what he thinks the future of the novel should be, whatever that is exactly, I’m still not 100% sure. Regardless, even when we may see things differently, we’re looking, we’re looking at Bolaño’s work, we’re looking at his vision of the future of the novel, and that is what’s outside the window!

Okay, well, moving on, maybe that whole last part I was talking about was baloney. Let me just quickly go over some more miscellaneous thoughts I had reading Part III of The Savage Detectives. To start, another potential reference 2666‘s title was made here (the first one being in Amulet actually):

“But Cesárea spoke of times to come and the teacher, to change the subject, asked her what times she meant and when they would be. And Cesárea named a date, sometime around the year 2600. Two thousand six hundred and something. And then, when the teacher couldn’t help but laugh at such a random date, a smothered little laugh that could scarcely be heard, Cesárea laughed again, although this time the thunder of her laughter remained within the confines of her own room.” (634)

It would be funny if 2666 made a reference to the title The Savage Detectives, but I doubt it’ll happen. Also, please check out my postscript in my previous blog post on 2666 if you’re interested in some potential references to The Savage Detectives (Lupe mentioned? Belano or Lima’s potential child??). Anyhow, I found the amount of times García Madero referred to Lupe, Belano, and Lima as his “friends” kind of funny, strange, and oddly endearing, I mean yeah, I would say they’re friends, but something about it stuck out to me. Finally, I know I mentioned earlier how García Madero doesn’t really change, but in the end, even he laughs at the idea of visceral realism: “Lupe told me that we’re the last visceral realists left in Mexico. I was lying on the floor, smoking, and I looked at her. Give me a break, I said.” (644). To be completely honest, if the book ended right there and then, I wouldn’t be upset, and I would have found it very funny in fact (still is funny but even moreso). So, for my discussion question, I’d like to ask: “Where do you think The Savage Detectives should have ended? How do you feel about Bolaño’s ending?” A bit generic of a question, but it is what it is, I’m sure we’ll all be discussing it on Thursday with the question of the window in mind. If you haven’t already guessed, I liked it, and I enjoyed reading The Savage Detectives. I hope that sentiment came through in my blog post, but I just wanted to conclude by simply stating it to be clear. I sense that I’ll be in the minority here, to each their own.

P.S. I believe this has been my longest blog post for The Savage Detectives, but not my longest blog post (that would be the one for 2666‘s The Part About Amalfitano). Although, I would say this felt like the longest to write, I got caught up writing it while studying with friends even though in my mind I had dedicated a lot less time to write it, but hey, I want to get all of my thoughts out. So yeah, the fun fact is that this has been the only blog post I’ve written outside the comfort of my own room (I wonder if you could tell or if it sounds any different, probably not though).

We’ve finally reached Part IV – The Part About The Crimes, the supposed centerpiece to Bolaño’s magnum opus, 2666, where we finally dive into the crimes that have been briefly sprinkled throughout the first three Parts. I’m not sure exactly where to start, I feel like I have a lot to say but I’m struggling to structure my thoughts, so this blog post may come out (even) more “rambly” than my previous ones. I suppose I should start with a brief summary of what’s happened over this long Part stretching over nearly 300 pages. The good news is that it’s told in a very linear fashion, describing the events month-by-month. The bad news… well, we’ll get into the bad news…

The Part About The Crimes chronicles the many sexual femicides that take place in Santa Teresa each month from 1993 to 1997, from the first page to the very last. Each of these “reports” detailing the deaths read off as very monotonous and objective (maybe there are better words to describe them but what I mean to say is that they simply state things as matter of fact, completely impersonal), they each include the month, the name of the victim if it exists, the condition of the victim’s body, and how they were believed to die. Many were strangled to death (often indicated by hyoid bone fractures), a lot of them stabbed as well, but above all, a disturbing amount of the victims were raped. And when I say a “disturbing amount,” I mean it, based on a quick CTRL+F search on my PDF copy, the word “rape” or “raped” was used 89 times in The Part About The Crimes (of which ~15 were described as “vaginally and anally” or “anally and vaginally”, “strangle”/”strangled” was used ~25 times, “stabbed” was used ~20 times). I didn’t count precisely, but if I had to guess, around 100 victims were described in this Part (at least it felt like damn near 100). Reading through them did in fact feel disturbing… obviously, right? But if I am to be completely and thoroughly honest with you my dear blog post readers (I’m really not withholding any of my thoughts), after a short while, I would feel less and less disturbed and more and more indifferent, simply reading the details almost mechanically and noting the similarities/differences between cases. I firmly believe that this was Bolaño’s intention. Why do you ask? Well for starters I’m not the only one who feels indifferent to these murders, the people themselves of Santa Teresa appear to also be kind of numb to it all (not everyone though, there are still some people and groups that care)! One of the most spot on examples: “When the forensic report finally arrived (the cause of death probably some kind of stab wound), everyone had forgotten the case, even the media, and the body was tossed without further ado into the public grave.” (520) It reminded me of that one phrase that goes like “the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.” This phrase really rang true with me during my reading. The monotony and the sheer amount of the murders that Bolaño describes over and over makes me feel like I’m being consumed by the very same apathy of the citizens of Santa Teresa that I would normally be condemning. I can’t help but move on from each murder because as I literally flip the page, another murder is being described (sometimes multiple on the very same page)! Maybe I’m not making myself clear enough and you’re thinking “wow, how can this guy feel so unsympathetic to these terrible deeds?” I don’t know, in that case, I’d honestly recommend reading the book yourself to see (even then, maybe I’m still talking crazy).

Anyhow, amidst all the crimes, interleaved throughout this Part, we also go over several characters in Santa Teresa all connected to the crimes in one way or another. Some of the notable ones are: Inspector Juan de Dios Martínez investigating the murders (and “The Penitent”, weird guy who pees all over church items), Lalo Cura, a young police officer, Harry Magaña, a sheriff from Huntsville, Klaus Haas, the very tall murder suspect from the previous Part, Sergio Gonzа́lez Rodriguez, a reporter from Mexico City, Florita Amada, a seer who appears on TV, Azucena Esquivel Plata, a congresswoman seeking her lost friend, and Albert Kessler, an ex-FBI agent. Now I could go into detail about each of these characters, but I’ll just do that ad-hoc as they come up. What matters is that by the end of The Part About The Crimes, the murders remain unsolved and will most likely continue for years to come, we also still don’t know how many people are committing the murders and if they’re even connected in some way. I also forgot to mention that technically a handful of the listed murders were solved, but the grand majority remain unsolved.

The Part About The Crimes feels very bleak in the sense that we’ll never get some typical mystery novel resolution like in the classic “whodunits” (no shade at Agatha Christie and others). Although, perhaps that’s the point, it’s just a reflection of real life like the real murders in Ciudad Juárez. Bolaño definitely repeatedly alludes to themes of police incompetence and corruption:

“Those f*cking judiciales never solve a case…Her name was Isabel Urrea. She was shot to death. No one ever figured out who the killer was. They tried to find him, but they couldn’t. Of course, it didn’t occur to anyone to look at Isabel Urrea’s appointment book…” (462-463)

“The capture of Bustos was relatively easy. He holed up in his house in Colonia Mancera…Bustos hid under his bed…Another cop, a man by the name of Cordero, famous at Precinct #3 for the size of his dick, began to urinate, aiming straight under the bed. Seeing the urine running along the floor toward him, Bustos started to sob. Finally Ortiz Rebolledo got tired of laughing and told him that if he didn’t come out they would kill him right there.” (518-519)

“The semen samples sent to Hermosillo were lost, whether on the way there or the way back it wasn’t clear.” (570)

“the police were unable to find this friend or failed to search for him as diligently as the case warranted.” (574)

“The man committed suicide, said Ortiz Rebolledo. Case closed. Later Lalo Cura would comment to Epifanio that it was strange there hadn’t been a lineup to identify the body. And it was strange, too, that the killer’s companions hadn’t come forward. And that the Smith & Wesson, once it was locked away in the police archives, had disappeared. And strangest of all was that a car thief should commit suicide.” (626)

Even the police chief, Pedro Negrete, has ties to narcos like Pedro Rengifo. In addition, pages 552-553 was a bunch of sexist jokes toward women made by cops, probably not people who’d you want investigating femicides, literally “a mental snapshot of the crooked cops and inspectors” (554). Government officials also try to push the narrative to the public that the murders have been solved: “The mayor of Santa Teresa announced to the press that the city could relax, the killer was behind bars and the subsequent killings of women were the work of common criminals.” (508) Whether due to corruption or incompetence, nevertheless they mislead the public and normalize the atrocities by pretending like everything’s okay. It’s a cruel system in which those meant to solve the murders are instead complicit in their continuation. The Part About The Crimes isn’t about finding some mysterious killer, it’s a disturbing reflection of a world built on corruption, incompetence, and misogyny, where the crimes may never be solved.

For my discussion question this week, since we’re almost done our long books, I want to ask: “Do you think your long book could have been written as a shorter book without giving up anything in return? If not, why must it have been long?” In the case of 2666, I definitely think the buildup to the crimes in the first three Parts and the effect of the sheer amount of the crimes in Part IV justifies its length. Curious to hear your guys’ thoughts for your selected books. By the way though, now that I mention Parts I-III and Part IV, what in the world is going to happen in Part V – The Part About Archimboldi (still over 200 pages to go)? How is 2666 actually going to end? I’m really not sure, but am looking forward to seeing. To be continued in two weeks!

P.S. The professor mentioned that there was surprisingly a reference to The Savage Detectives in this Part of 2666! But during my reading I thought I actually potentially found two of them, although I could be dead wrong here. The first one was when sheriff Harry Magaña found (moreso stole) a notebook belonging to a prostitute. On that notebook there was a phone number attached to a “Lupe”:

“Then he called the number of the woman named Lupe and the conversation was even more chaotic than the one he’d just had with Elsa Fuentes’s mother. What he managed to get straight was that Lupe lived in Hermosillo, she didn’t want to have anything to do with Elsa Fuentes or Santa Teresa, she had indeed known Miguel Monies but she didn’t want to have anything to do with him either (if he was still alive), her life in Santa Teresa had been a mistake from start to finish and she didn’t plan to make the same mistake twice.” (447)

Could this be our Lupe in The Savage Detectives? Anyways, this next one might be more of a stretch, it happens when Lalo Cura is giving his strange family line of Maria Expósitos (yes, there’s a chain of like five individuals named Maria Expósito):

“In 1976, the young Maria Expósito met two students from Mexico City in the desert who said they were lost but appeared to be fleeing something and who, after a dizzying week, she never saw again. The students lived in their car and one of them seemed to be sick. They looked as if they were high on something and they talked a lot and didn’t eat anything, although she brought them tortillas and beans that she snuck from home. They talked, for example, about a new revolution, an invisible revolution that was already brewing but wouldn’t hit the streets for at least fifty years. Or five hundred. Or five thousand. The students had been to Villaviciosa but what they wanted was to find the highway to Ures or Hermosillo. Each night they made love to her, in the car or on the warm desert sand, until one morning she came to meet them and they were gone.” (558)

Could these two be Belano and Lima?? Then that would mean Lalo Cura is actually the son of one of them. I’m not going to elaborate anymore because this postscript is wayyyy too long but let me know what you guys think though!

P.P.S. Secret rare post-postscript here! After reading over my post, I know I mentioned how I felt less and less disturbed when it came to the murders, but there are still definitely some really disturbing moments that I don’t really want to talk about. However, if you’re curious, I noted down pages 461, 484-485, 486-487, and 520-522 in the Picador edition.

Well folks, we’re finally approaching the end of The Savage Detectives, yet for some reason, I don’t quite have the same feeling I usually get with other works of fiction nearing their inevitable end. Perhaps this is just the nature of long books, or maybe it’s just how Bolaño writes, or maybe it’s solely The Savage Detectives that produces this unique feeling. What is this feeling you ask? To be honest, I’m not completely sure and it’s hard to put in words… but let me try anyways!

Upon starting this week’s reading on page 400, we were already more than halfway done (pagewise at least, one could argue that a book’s halfway point shouldn’t actually be measured in pages, but that’s another discussion for another day), by this point I’m sure we’ve all realized we have many questions based on this portion of The Savage Detectives. What happened to García Madero? Who is conducting these interviews? What exactly are the purposes of these interviews? Who/what is the meaning of the book and part’s title of “The Savage Detectives”? The list goes on and on. Now I can’t speak for everyone in the class, but for me at least, I expected to get the answers to some of these questions in the latter chapters of Part II. Nothing, nada, zilch. Quite frankly I think the list of questions I have now is longer than that of the beginning of this week’s reading, completely going against my expectations. Yet the feeling I have is not of frustration nor confusion. Why though? Partway through I think I realized that we would never get the answers to most of these questions, and I became at peace with that fact. I know the professor has made references to a moment in Part II where something just clicked for him or he had some revelation (I don’t remember the exact words he used). For me though, it was more like a slow burn over time. It should be noted that I’m not even sure if we’re both referring to the same thing, so just to be clear, I’m talking about the realization that our questions would never be answered, something deep down I always had a slight suspicion of but didn’t want to admit. If I had to pick a moment in my reading when I finally came to that realization, it was around the first mention that Belano had previously had a wife and child: “Have you seen your son? Yes, he said. How is he? Very well, he said, good-looking, getting bigger every day. And your ex-wife? Very well, he said” (491). Who was his wife? Where did they meet? When did he have a child? Why did they separate? All these questions that I would speculate about certainly came to mind, and under different (more normal) circumstances I would expect them to be answered in later pages, but this time I knew… I knew I wouldn’t get those answers. In chapter 24, Belano’s ex-wife and child are again mentioned in María Teresa Solsona’s account, and like I had guessed, no real answers, only more questions. These “answers” aren’t really the point though. Bolaño isn’t writing some grand mystery that will be solved, we aren’t (savage) “detectives”, these many short stories within The Savage Detectives aren’t some kind of Chekhov’s Gun (in fact, quite the opposite), and there is no big climax that we’re building toward in Part III! The uncertainty, the fragments of Belano’s life, we’ll never truly know and that’s the point. Belano is Bolaño’s sort of alter ego, and through the telling of Belano’s life he shares with us the generation of these Latin American poets he belonged to, a documentation of his life. In the real world, life isn’t filled with neat answers and closure like in many books, and The Savage Detectives reflects that, which makes it feel “real” in a sense. I’m not really sure, maybe I’ve gotten it all wrong (can you even be wrong? what each person feels and the meaning they get from their reading is unique to them and inherently right), maybe I don’t mean to say “wrong,” what I’m saying is tomorrow I might feel differently about The Savage Detectives (after all I just finished reading this portion yesterday so I’ve had less than 24 hours to digest), or I might feel differently after I read Part III, or maybe in a year from now. Who knows? (Hu, me, I know) I’m just giving my first impressions of what I’ve read. As for my discussion question this week, I’d like to ask: “Were there any aha moments for you guys this week as you were reading? If so, when?” Maybe that aha moment is still yet to come and actually in Part III. Another potential discussion question I was thinking about was: “Who do you think is conducting these interviews?” Personally, I think it’s a mix of García Madero, Belano, and potentially others, but as I was saying before, I doubt we’ll ever know and I’m content with never knowing. (By the way, in Andrés Ramírez’s account, is he actually referring to Belano directly or just saying his name recounting it as if he were: “I was destined to be a failure, Belano, take my word for it” (406). However, there are also several accounts like the one with Xosé Lendoiro, the lawyer, that would undoubtedly not have been conducted by Belano which is one of the reasons why I believe there has to be a mix of interviewers)

Now I’ll just go over some more random thoughts and parts I found interesting with no real structure to it (my blog, my rules). I really loved the story Felipe Müller told at the end of chapter 19, it was sweet, short, and above all, quite strange. In the last chapter with Ernesto García Grajales, the self-proclaimed expert on the visceral realists, we finally get a mention of our boy García Madero! I like to believe that it’s García Madero himself asking Ernesto if he’s heard of García Madero just because everyone else has seemed to have forgotten him. I might actually be dead wrong here though, García Madero might not even be alive by the very end of Part III… Also, how bizarre was that whole part on the duel? I found it kind of funny and amusing in a way, and I wonder if this was actually based on something that happened in Bolaño’s life. On another note, I felt a bit bad when Norman died and I was very curious to know what that “Everything, the most important thing of all” was exactly (482) (yet another question to remain unanswered). One of my favourite characters has to be María Teresa Solsona, she struck me as very caring, grounded, and someone I’d like to have as a friend. Finally, it was interesting to see a glimpse of Octavio Paz but then sad to see how Ulises Lima was nowhere to be found on the list of Mexican poets (oh the poor, forgotten visceral realists). Okay, that’s it for now! Everything that begins as jumbled first impressions of a book inevitably ends as jumbled first impressions of a book.

P.S. Edith Oster refers to one of Belano’s old lovers as Santa Teresa: “Right away I knew it was one of Arturo’s old lovers. I called her Santa Teresa” (432). If you didn’t already know, Santa Teresa is the name of the infamous city in 2666 so I just wanted to point that out. Feel free to check out my other blog posts on 2666 (where there are plenty more questions that will without a doubt go unanswered)!

The Part About Fate is the third Part out of five for 2666 yet page-wise, we’re not even halfway done (not for another ~100 pages at least). Something I want to mention first is that originally I had thought The Part About Fate referred to “fate” in the literal sense (like destiny) but several weeks ago when I was talking with Professor Beasley-Murray who’s reading the Spanish version it’s titled as “La parte de Fate.” “Fate” is actually the last name of this Part’s central character… well, technically not, Oscar Fate’s real name is Quincy Williams but for some reason everybody at his work calls him Oscar Fate and that’s how he’s referred to in this Part. Anyways, I found it interesting that in the Spanish version it’s clear the title isn’t referring to destiny, but not so much in the English version (upon writing this maybe I’m realizing it’s not so interesting, hey it’s my blog though). This made me wonder why Bolaño decided to name his character “Fate” because I’m guessing he knew it was an English word (though maybe not). Speaking of Bolaño’s character names, last week the professor mentioned a name resembling Amalfitano in The Savage Detectives, but in 2666 the name Ulises is also mentioned (page 259 for reference) and García as well (page 274 for reference). So maybe Bolaño just likes certain names and will use it multiple times across works? Heck, Óscar is actually the name of this Part and the previous Part’s central character (albeit only one of them with an accent on the O)! There are also two characters named Rosa in this Part (one of whom we’ve already met in The Part about Amalfitano), and sometimes I wonder why authors would ever choose to have two separate characters share the same name? It sometimes adds confusion in real life, but there’s nothing to be done about that, no shame to our Davids 😉 Authors can actively choose their characters’ names though, so why would they name them the same? If I were an author I’d probably just name my characters after people I know in real life, how would you guys name your characters (no, this is not my official discussion question this week, I haven’t even gotten into the reading)? I digress…

Okay, back to The Part About Fate, which I quite enjoyed. To give a very brief summary (or at least my best try for very brief), this Part follows Oscar Fate, an American journalist who normally covers politics but is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match (there’s a part a bit before about Oscar Fate interviewing a former Black Panther but I didn’t find it of much importance or interest). And that’s right, he’s going to Santa Tersa, the same Santa Teresa where all our Parts converge and hundreds of women are killed mysteriously. Anyways, once in Mexico, he ends up meeting a Mexican journalist (Chucho Flores), a film fanatic (Charly Cruz), Rosa Amalfitano from the second Part whom Oscar Fate develops some romantic attraction towards (I don’t recall exactly how old she is from the second Part, but I recall her being a teenager, which raised some eyebrows), Rosa Mendez, a friend of the aforementioned characters, and Guadalupe Roncal, another journalist who is covering the mysterious murders (he meets other characters but these are the ones of most relevance). Initially focused on the task at hand of covering the boxing match, Oscar Fate notices several mentions of the murders in Santa Teresa throughout this Part and believes them to be much more worthwhile to report on than the silly boxing match. Sadly, his request to stay longer to cover the murders is rejected. However, he arranges with Guadalupe to meet one of the main suspects for the murders in prison after the boxing match. The actual boxing match is laughably short and uneventful, but the following night eventually leads Oscar Fate giving a savage uppercut to another character and kind of going on the run with Rosa Amalfitano. Oscar Fate meets Óscar Amalfitano, who asks him to send his daughter back to Spain. This Part concludes with sort of fractured snippets of Oscar Fate and Rosa having crossed the border, and of Oscar Fate, Rosa, and Guadalupe just meeting the very tall, intimidating, murder suspect (who speaks German… curious).

What I really liked about this Part in particular is that we finally seem to be “going somewhere.” In Part I, the murders seem like a background detail, no more than a brief mention or a news report. In Part II, we get more mentions of the murders and we can sort of see how it affects one of our characters, Amalfitano. Now in Part III though, it finally seems like things are about to come to fruition, with everything finally building up to the legendary Part IV, The Part About the Crimes. Although, it’s not just the fact that we’re building up, it’s also how we built up that I really enjoyed. All throughout Part III, the mentions are littered everywhere, not in secret, I mean, they’re very clearly explicitly talked about, but the way they keep getting repeatedly mentioned feels like a balloon being pumped up more and more, about to burst. Here are the several mentions of the murders that I noted down in order:

“While Fate was sleeping, there was a report on an American who had disappeared in Santa Teresa…long list of women killed in Santa Teresa, many of whom ended up in the common grave at the cemetery because no one claimed their bodies.” (258)

“‘I’m a reporter,’ he said. ‘You’re going to write about the crimes,’ said the cook. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…'” (268)

“The customs officer asked if he was coming to write about the killings. ‘No,’ said Fate, ‘I’m going to cover the fight on Saturday.’ ‘What fight?'” (271)

“‘What the hell were they talking about?’…’About the women who’ve been killed…Every so often the numbers go up and it’s news again and the reporters talk about it. People talk about it too, and the story grows like a snowball until the sun comes out and the whole damn ball melts and everybody forgets about it and goes back to work.” (285-286)

“‘Fear of everything. When you work on something that involves the killings of women in Santa Teresa, you end up scared of everything. Scared you’ll be beaten up. Scared of being kidnapped. Scared of torture…'” (296)

After that basically the elephant’s been addressed and I’m assuming in Part IV we’ll really get to learn about the details of these mysterious murders. The ending really piqued my interest because the sequence of weaving together Oscar Fate and Rosa’s departure from Santa Teresa and their visit to the prison created some kind of harrowing atmosphere. In my mind, I could imagine the scenes cutting back and forth as if they were shown in a movie. The abrupt ending, with the reveal of the enormous, very blond suspect made me want to immediately jump into the next part to learn more (hold on though this blog post is just about The Part about Fate)! Speaking of learning more, even with all the buildup, we still haven’t really gotten much info about these murders beyond the fact that several hundred women have been killed over the span of multiple years, nothing about how they were killed or if there’s one murderer or several.

Anyhow, as for my official discussion question this week, going back to this Part’s title, The Part About Fate, I wanted to ask “Does the title of your book influence your reading? How about titles of specific chapters? How much trust should we even put in titles to tell us what the book is actually about?” To be completely honest, I haven’t really made much sense of either the title of The Savage Detectives or 2666, but I believe that could change by the end, as seen in Amulet. What are we, some kind of savage detective? (Get it? It’s like the meme of “what are we, some kind of suicide squad?” Never mind then…) I’ll see myself out now…

P.S. I mentioned earlier that the actual boxing match was laughably short and I really meant it. Here it is in its entirety: “The fight was short. First Count Pickett came out. Polite applause, some boos. Then Merolino Fernandez came out. Thundering applause. In the first round, they sized each other up. In the second, Pickett went on the offensive and knocked his opponent out in less than a minute. Merolino Fernandez’s body didn’t even move where it lay on the canvas. His seconds hauled him into his corner and when he didn’t recover the medics came in and took him off to the hospital. Count Pickett raised an arm, without much enthusiasm, and left surrounded by his people. The fans began to empty out of the arena.” (312) I find it especially funny because Bolaño will spend countless time on crafting these shorter stories within his books (including the buildup to the boxing match), yet for the actual boxing match, the reason for Oscar Fate came down to Santa Teresa, he only writes one measly paragraph. I understand that the reason why Oscar Fate initially goes down to Santa Teresa isn’t meant to be important or of any relevance, but I find it funny nonetheless.

Back at it again with The Savage Detectives! Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable and productive reading break, I would say mine was only so-so because unfortunately I was feeling sick for part of it, but luckily I was able to get some actual reading done during this reading break. This week’s (or I guess last two week’s) reading was just under 200 pages in the Picador edition which is quite a bit, but strangely enough after finishing reading the selected pages today, I felt that both a lot of stuff happened yet not really much at all. I think as I was reading over these past two weeks, the professor’s mention of this period of sort of “waiting” during part II of The Savage Detectives became very apparent. We’ve already discussed in class and in our blog posts about these stories within stories and what’s really “important”, and this section of The Savage Detectives still begs those very same discussion questions so I won’t keep beating that dead horse. Instead, I’ll just point out some portions that stood out to me (let’s just say parts that I found either interesting, important, or both)!

First and foremost, we get the very slightest of mentions of what happened to Belano, Lima, García Madero, and Lupe (though still no actual, explicit mentions of the latter two). It happens in one of Luis’ accounts where Luscious Skin basically sort of theorizes about Lima’s disappearance in Managua. Not much is said that we don’t already know though, the group heads up north allegedly in search of Cesárea Tinajero (who by the way is still kind of an enigma), Belano and Lima flee Mexico City to Europe, and years later Lima returns to Mexico City but “the killers” show up and are still looking for him which is why he decides to stay in Managua and not come back. Who are those “killers”? Well it would have to be Alberto if I had to guess, assuming these “killers” even exist. Remember, this is just Luscious Skin’s theory which I don’t really believe in the first place, and a couple years later Lima does in fact return to Mexico, so maybe this whole Nicaragua story was just a big nothingburger. Though that’s probably a poor way to put it, I just wanted to use the word nothingburger to be honest. I really think that the whole point of Lima’s disappearance in Nicaragua was to show us the other people’s reactions to his disappearance and current views on visceral realism in the following accounts. Although, visceral realism is essentially dead and frowned upon by most apart from a couple of the realists and that one young poet, Efrén Hernández.

I would like to take a moment to give a shoutout to one of the characters that I like the most, Xóchitl. You know, a lot of the times I feel like the visceral realists don’t really have their own sense of purpose and just kind of go with the flow of their daily lives. Xóchitl on the other hand works two jobs (at the expense of losing many hours of sleep), works on her poetry whenever she gets a chance, takes care of her son, Franz, and gets both her poems as well as Jacinto and others’ poems published (which seems like more work than Belano or Lima ever put in when visceral realism was a thing). She definitely seems like one of the more “grounded” or “normal” characters (not sure if that’s the best way to put it) and I definitely at least admire her work ethic.

Some of the other accounts that I enjoyed reading were Joaquin’s accounts where it appears he’s slowly getting better (less crazy) at the psychiatric hospital, Mary Watson’s mini-hitchhiking adventure, as well as Norman Bolzman’s and Heimito Künst’s experiences with Lima. The most confusing and perhaps my least enjoyable accounts were Amadeo Salvatierra’s. I mean, it doesn’t help that it’s like the only account that’s scattered throughout the rest, but you can also really feel that these are recollections from a drunk man (on top of that his accounts are set further in the past than the others)! I guess I’ll pivot from there to my discussion question for this week: “Whose accounts did you find the most confusing? What did you find significant from them and why?” Speaking of Amadeo’s accounts though, in the final one of this week’s reading, we get to see a glimpse of the enigmatic Tinajero’s “poem” (if you can even call it that). I’ll be completely honest, I’m not really sure what to make of it right now (Amadeo has been looking at it for more than forty years and neither does he). I guess I fall into the same boat as Amadeo where I’m left wondering what it really means. Maybe it ties into what we’ve discussed on what’s really “important”, maybe the point of it is that it’s not supposed to be important or have any meaning. I definitely thought of the square that we saw on the last page in class, but that just raises more questions than answering any of them. This also isn’t the first time I’ve seen Bolaño use “drawings” in his books because in my last blog post for 2666, there are also strange geometric figures with names of philosophers. Strange, strange indeed…till next time, folks!

P.S. You probably didn’t notice but unfortunately I posted this blog post past midnight on Thursday. More unfortunately, the reason was because I was too caught up studying for a midterm tomorrow (technically later today), so please wish me luck! The good news is that after tomorrow I’ll only have one more midterm in March and I believe that one is on a Monday!

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)!

Returning to 2666 this week with “The Part About Amalfitano”, the second Part out of five, I had a much shorter reading than normal. If I’m not mistaken, this will be the fewest number of pages in a given week for this course at just ~65 pages! Worry not though, longer readings for these long books are to come, I believe Parts IV and V are like 250-300 pages…each! I was considering reading Parts II & III this week because combined they’re actually less than either Part IV or Part V, but ultimately decided not to because I didn’t want to split up the two last Parts into three portions. I would much rather dedicate each of the Parts to one week and not split them up with a break in between, especially since I remember it was mentioned that Bolaño intended on publishing 2666 as five separate books (for financial reasons albeit). That actually leads into one of the points I want to talk about in this blog post: how these parts connect to each other (and how on earth would they work standalone)? Before I get into that though, let me give a brief (and slightly scuffed) summary of what’s happened in “The Part About Amalfitano.”

This Part is completely centered around Óscar Amalfitano, a Chilean professor in Santa Teresa, who was introduced in the first Part already (he’s also familiar with Archimboldi but not quite as big a fan as our “critics” in the first Part). We begin with Amalfitano’s life before coming to the city of Santa Teresa (where all the Parts should converge), where he lives in Barcelona with his young daughter, Rosa, and wife, Lola, who is just departing on a bit of an extended trip with her friend, Imma, to visit her favourite poet who is being held at an insane asylum near Mondragón. Yeah… Lola is a bit of an interesting character to say the least. She claims that she had slept with the poet (who people believe is gay) before meeting Amalfitano, but the thing is the story may or may not even be true because Amalfitano alleges that Lola only became aware of the poet’s existence through him when he had given her one of the poet’s books. Anyways, Lola sends letters to Amalfitano during her journey and quite a few things happen so let me try to rapid-fire it: Lola and Imma originally are refused entry to the asylum but eventually meet him after claiming to be a reporter and poet, they don’t see him the following days because he’s apparently on bedrest, Imma leaves heading to Madrid but said she would come back (she doesn’t), Lola has sex with a driver (his last name is Larrazábal, just noting this on the off chance he makes a return later), she gets kicked out of the boardinghouse she was staying at, she sleeps in a cemetery, she watches the poet who is supposedly ignoring her from afar (the poet also umm “pleases” another inmate with his hand?? not sure what the importance of that was), she stays with Larrazábal for a bit but eventually leaves by train and goes around Europe a bit, there’s a gap of five years where Amalfitano doesn’t receive any letters from Lola, then Amalfitano receives a final letter from Paris telling him that she is working a cleaning job and has another son. Wow, that was longer than I would have liked but we’re not quite done yet because two years after that final letter, Lola tracks down Amalfitano and tells him she has AIDS and is dying but wants to see Rosa once last time. After their short reunion Lola leaves by hitchhiking and that’s that.

Following that, we see a bit of Amalfitano and Rosa’s life after having moved to Santa Teresa (why did he move? well Amalfitano questions himself as to why as well). Amalfitano finds a book called Testamento geométrico in one of the boxes he packed but doesn’t remember ever packing, buying, or even having seen this book before. For some strange reasons, he decides to hang it outside on a clothesline which was already kind of mentioned in Part I when Pelletier and Espinoza visited Amalfitano’s home: “Espinoza went out into the backyard and saw a book hanging from a clothesline…It’s Rafael Dieste’s Testamento geométrico” (133). Amalfitano does some other strange things like drawing geometric figures with names of philosophers and later he begins to hear a voice talking to him in bed, some of the drawings below from page 192:

Apart from that, he lives a pretty standard life as a professor it seems, other things that happen include going to a merendero (picnic kind of place with a pool) with Rosa, Professor Perez, and her son (Perez is the one who actually convinced Amalfitano to take a job in Santa Teresa) as well as meeting Dean Guerra and his son Marco (the latter of which he actually meets a couple times which I’ll mention later). Above all though, just like in Part I, there are stories within this story, real ones like Amalfitano recollections about his father’s love for boxing (and homophobia), other conversations with the voice in Amalfitano’s head, Amalfitano literally reading us a book on telepathic Araucanians (???), and some very strange dreams, one of which is about Boris Yeltsin (a former president of Russia?) which also happens to be how Part II ends.

To be honest, I most certainly could have condensed the above summary by half at least, especially the part with Lola, but I found it interesting so I decided to leave it in. Again a preliminary apology in case it was confusing or I’m missing anything that becomes relevant later in future Parts, but let me get into my actual thoughts now. Speaking of future (and past) Parts, so far Parts I and II don’t seem to connect very much besides Amalfitano being introduced in Part I and the few mentions of the women disappearing in Santa Teresa. Archimboldi, the mystery man from Part I is not mentioned a single time in Part II! We also don’t eventually come back into the “present time” with our original critics from Part I. While I enjoyed reading Part II, I’m still left a bit confused as to how everything connects. Let’s say these Parts were released as separate books just as Bolaño originally intended, by themselves, as standalones I don’t think they hold up quite well, but… since that isn’t the case and they’re released as just one multi-part book, I, as the reader, have to assume there’s much more to come. I mean, just look at the page count, I’m only 200 something pages in out of like a 900 page book (not even halfway to halfway)! As of right now at least, while I might find it tedious, I’m trying to latch onto all these stories within stories in hopes that it will all come together in the end. I doubt everything will be of importance, but surely some of it will. Perhaps we’ve already seen a glimpse of it like Lola and the poet mirroring Part I’s critics and Archimboldi (I just realized I forgot to mentioned that Lola also had some kind of elaborate plan to have the poet escape the asylum with her and to move abroad), perhaps Norton leaving Pelletier and Espinoza is like Lola leaving Amalfitano, perhaps I’m just rambling too much and I’ve made something out of nothing, perhaps it’s like the second Part of The Savage Detectives where it was mentioned in class where we’re kind of “waiting” in a sense. There’s a quote that actually really stuck out to me in Part II of 2666 when Amalfitano reads the front flap of Testamento geométrico: “Testamento geométrico was really three books, ‘each independent, but functionally correlated by the sweep of the whole…this work representing the final distillation of Dieste’s reflections and research on space” (186). Is this not kind of a metareference to 2666 itself? I mean 2666 is Bolaño’s final book just like Dieste’s so I guess we’ll have to see how all the Parts are connected “by the sweep of the whole.” Anyways, I enjoyed my experience reading Part II nonetheless and really look forward to the future Parts and seeing how all the details may or may not tie in.

Now let me talk a bit about Amalfitano. Honestly, I kind of feel a bit bad for the guy, I mean in the beginning of this Part his wife basically just abandons him and their child, and then life in Santa Teresa doesn’t sounds like lollipops or rainbows. He seems to be constantly worrying about his daughter because of the disappearances in Santa Teresa, “Amalfitano called Professor Perez and confessed that he was turning into a nervous wreck…She remind him that the victims were usually kidnapped in other parts of the city.” (198-199). He doesn’t seem to only worry explicitly though, but subconsciously as well like when Rosa leaves the house (or on page 196 when he says “it’s silly to worry about it when much worse things are happening in this city” in reference to the book on the clothesline) and perhaps it’s one of the causes of the voice he hears around the time when he sleeps. Speaking of the voice and Amalfitano’s other strange actions, I realized when I was writing the summary that I made it sound like he was a complete lunatic. Although, I don’t think that’s actually the case, from his thoughts he actually seems quite rational and at the very least Amalfitano is aware and conscious of the fact that he might be going slightly crazy with the voice in his head (he’s also kind of likable just generally speaking, maybe more than the critics in Part I). Also, on a slight side note, the book that he hangs on the clothesline wasn’t completely out of nowhere, it’s from a story about Duchamp (a chess player?) who gives a book as a gift to a newly wed couple and instructs them to “hang a geometry book by strings on the balcony of their apartment so that the wind could ‘go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages’” (191). Now that’s interesting and all but what’s more interesting is the reason Amalfitano gives Rosa on why he hung it up “to see how it survives the assault of nature, to see how it survives this desert climate” (191). Does Amalfitano kind of see the book in some strange metaphorical way as himself and Rosa surviving in Santa Teresa? Just take a look at this passage and consider it for a moment:

“he didn’t plan to stay long in Santa Teresa. I have to go back now, he said to himself, but where? And then he asked himself: what made me come here? Why did I bring my daughter to this cursed city? Because it was one of the few hellholes in the world I hadn’t seen yet? Because I really just want to die? And then he looked at Dieste’s book, the Testamento geométrico, hanging impassively from the line, held there by two clothespins, and he felt the urge to take it down and wipe off the ocher dust that had begun to cling to it here and there, but he didn’t dare.” (196)

Hmm, I’m not entirely sure but that’s just some food for thought. Maybe I’m going a bit crazy myself considering this blog is wayyyyy too long already. Before I end though, one last thing to note is that Amalfitano shares a drink with Marco Guerra (the dean’s son) called Los Suicidas. Sound familiar? Well it should because that’s the drink that Amadeo Salvatierra gets at the beginning of Part II in The Savage Detectives. I tried looking it up online but couldn’t really find much so I guess it’s just a mezcal drink that Bolaño made up. Do I think that this drink has any importance to either story? No, not really, just like I’m sure a myriad of other things might not be so important, but it’s cool to note. It’s also cool to note the section breaks or dinkuses(?) in this Part, some of which are very brief like on page 190, “The idea, of course, was Duchamp’s.” or even moreso on page 195, just “Help.” The first discussion question for this week that came to mind was a bit more on the vague side: “What do you think are the purposes of the details that authors write which may not necessarily be relevant to the plot?”I mean obviously to build the atmosphere, to immerse the reader into the story, to overall just make the reader’s experience more enjoyable, etc., etc., so maybe that was a poor question. Instead I’d like to ask: “What small details have you noticed in your book that you believe will be more relevant later on?” I mean with Bolaño, I’m sure there’s a ton that you could point out with all the shorter stories within the larger narrative so I’m curious for all the other books people are reading. Okay, now let me end this blog post on 2666 before it becomes 2666 words long (also what’s the significance behind the title, 2666? my bad, just end it already, Lucas! until next week!)

P.S. Starting from now I’ll be capitalizing “Part” when talking about the five different Parts of 2666 and the three different Parts of The Savage Detectives to avoid confusion when I talk about different parts/sections of specific Parts :p

Unlike the very first part of The Savage Detectives, I’m not going into this second part completely blind because of our discussions in class where it was mentioned that this second part would take a shift from García Madero’s journal entries to a multi-narrative style (multiperspectivity? polyperspectivity? polyphonic narration? I just searched on Google “word for multiple narrators” and got a bunch so I’ll just stick with multi-narrative). I also believe it was mentioned that eventually in the third part we’ll come back to García Madero. However, what I find most interesting is that even though we move away from García Madero’s journal entries, in these ~60 pages, there’s no mention of García Madero at all, nor is there any mention of Lupe as well! To think that the whole first part of this book was from García Madero’s perspective, it makes me truly wonder why there is not one single mention of him yet? It’s also not just that he isn’t mentioned at all, but the fact that basically everyone else from the first part has been mentioned. Belano, Lima, the Font sisters, Quim and his wife, Pancho, Moctezuma, Barrios, Jacinto Requena, Luscious Skin, San Epifanio… the list goes on in addition to the many other characters we meet from this multi-narrative jumble (maybe jumble isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that came to mind). Intriguing, very intriguing, I suppose I’ll just have to read on to find out what happens, or I guess happened, to García Madero…

This kind of transitions to my next thoughts on the chronology and structure of the second part of this book. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far: the second part of this book is dated from 1976-1996 which is of course after the first part that ends on New Year’s Eve. While it’s dated 1976-1996, they of course aren’t solely talking about what’s happening in those years, it’s just that these accounts (or interviews? I’ll get into that a bit later) take place in those years. Since we’ve just only started the first part we’ve only really gotten accounts from 1976, however, it does ping pong a bit back and forth between the months (although maybe it’s just Amadeo’s accounts in January 1976 that are the exception, otherwise I guess all the accounts are in chronological order). We do know from Maria’s account in December 1976 that at some point Belano and Lima have returned to Mexico City though (again, no mention of García Madero or Lupe). Also, each account has a location, so far all just various places in Mexico City (I wonder if we’ll be going international soon because Lima and Belano did mention that they were going to Paris and Spain, also why are they going in the first place??). Now one big question that I have is what exactly are all these accounts? Are all these narrators being interviewed or something? That also of course begs the question of why? These aren’t just simple journal entries like with García Madero. On page 162, Alberto directly references Luisito’s account and goes on to set some facts straight and even says “Make sure you get that straight.” I understand that some people use “you” when writing their personal journals as if they were talking to themself or some omniscient third party (I used to do the same when I was young) but combined with the location and dated entries and the fact that we have all these narrators, this second part reads as some kind of sequence of interviews. Maybe there’s nothing deeper to it and Bolaño just wanted to create this fragmented multi-narration in the second part, but still, something important to note.

Now, personally, I’ve actually been enjoying having all these different narrators, it’s kind of nice to read the differences in how they write and describe events (kind of like how it’s nice to read the differences in our blog posts!). I think the most notably different one was Barbara Patterson’s which didn’t hold back any punches when it came to foul language. My discussion question this week might be a bit lame but I’m curious as to “What do you guys think about the multi-narration? And who has your favourite narrator been so far?” If I had to choose, I’d either say Luscious Skin or Maria. Luscious Skin because he writes very simply in short, straight-to-the-point sentences, and it was fascinating to see how he perceives others and how he perceives himself (as a “peace-loving person” when reasoning why he didn’t beat up Belano which I found quite funny). I also enjoyed reading Maria’s account because in the first part there were definitely a few moments where I was curious to understand what exactly she was thinking or more so how she saw things. So it was actually quite interesting being able to read from Maria’s perspective briefly, even that last part about her wanting to sleep with Belano and Lima gave some nice insights into her thoughts (still, again, no mention whatsoever of García Madero…)

P.S. I know I didn’t mention much on the last chapter with Auxilio’s account (which I believe is the part from Amulet) but after posting this blog I think I’ll do some reading on the Mexican student movement because honestly before this course I was not really familiar with it at all. Please excuse my ignorance!