Hi everyone, I can’t believe we are wrapping the course up and we’re submitting our final blog posts. I’m usually quite a nostalgic person, so any period of time that goes by and I think something like “I remember when … that was great”. I feel the same way about this course and the journey it took me on. I remember starting this class feeling a little nervous because of the title. I have been an avid reader for most of my life, but I have found it very difficult to make time for reading through my undergrad here. Even though I enjoy reading a lot, part of my mindset was that I have to read so much for all my other courses, even if I am reading me something that brings me joy, will it really, because now I’m just straining my eyes even more and doing the same act over and over again. That’s not to say I have never read for leisure during my courses, but it has usually taken me longer to finish books, and overall I felt less joy reading during the semester versus during breaks.

I think this class helped me shift my mindset around this feeling of exhaustion from reading because we learnt so much about the act of reading and what it does to us. It made me think of a life long hobby in a completely different way, one I had never really considered before either. It also was a bit of a challenge for me because for the first time EVER I was reading two books basically at the same time. I don’t know why I thought that would be so difficult, maybe I was just afraid of the unknown, but I actually really enjoyed switching every week, it was keeping me on my toes and brining a bit of uncertainty when I was reading, which I enjoyed.

In our last seminar, we spoke a bit about what kind of abilities ChatGPT and other AI tools have in terms of reading and understanding text, and we noted that when it does not know the answer, it simply makes something up, because it is programmed to provide answers. However, truthfulness or morality or other important qualities that do impact our understandings of information, or even books is not apart of its hardwiring. While I was reading, I also thought about all the time I was spending doing so. It was time that I could not get back, but I felt certain that I was understanding the text much better than an AI tool’s interpretation of the Savage Detectives. The book is extremely subjective, there are many unanswered questions, therefore AI cannot really have the answers to it or provide insight because there aren’t concrete facts it can make an opinion on. Additionally, we know that the act of reading isn’t happening, so there isn’t the period of reading something, then rereading and sitting with the text and drawing conclusions. The answer is instant and a blanket statement essentially. Because of this course, my perspective on reading has changed quite a bit, which I am thankful to have learned something new about something that has been apart of my life for so long.

I learned so much from Jon and my peers in class, thank you all very much!!

Hello everyone! Before getting into my thoughts on the last part of Zeno’s Conscience titled “Psychoanalysis” I want to say I am SO happy I did spoil any part of the book for myself. Sometimes I have a bad habit of flipping to the last few pages of a book just to prepare myself for how it ends, and I have no idea why I do that, because I don’t really like spoilers. Anyways, I’m remarking on my decision not to spoil the book for myself because when I started the book back in January and I saw that the last part was the “psychoanalysis” part, I assumed it would go back to the Doctor’s perspective and they’d provide their thoughts or diagnoses for Zeno. However I was wrong. All we get from Dr. S is that Zeno has abandoned therapy and that they published Zeno’s writings for revenge.

The last part of the book mostly consists of Zeno’s strong critique of psychoanalysis itself, as well as Dr. S being too rigid in their methods, and claiming they were more interested in being right versus actually helping. That is Zeno’s main claim, as well as that psychoanalysis is very damaging and is not as effective as just living life to heal. He believes that the sick man is more adaptable to life and able to evolve, than those who are bound to the labels and constraints of “sickness”. During this part of the book, I began to question my assumptions and thoughts I had formed on Zeno throughout the book. I’m afraid… he was starting to make sense…..? Just a little bit. However it’s hard to make your mind up on who’s reliable or telling the truth because you start the book with Dr. S’ assertion that Zeno is sick and unreliable, but then this last part you are reminded that Dr. S seems to have some kind of motive directly against Zeno.

The final entry from March 1916 also really stuck out to me. He is alive and wealthy during World War 1, despite Italy being war-torn. He thinks that life itself is like sickness because there are moments of cures and betterment, but there are also significant setbacks, and it always ends in death. Then we see that he imagines a time in the future where someone will invent a weapon of mass destruction, someone will steal it and then destroy the world. Some could read it as prophetic because this book was published before the development of nuclear weapons. It did feel a bit eerie to me reading and having hindsight of nuclear weapons. For me, it also made me think that Zeno believes that destroying the world is the only permanent cure to sickness. However, if the world was destroyed life would not exist, so it seems like he is trying to convey he does not think life can exist without sickness. It left me thinking quite a bit about hardship and sickness, it does seem to be a natural part of life. Are we wrong to try and cure it, are we going against nature? Or is Zeno just crazy and has no idea what he’s saying.

Thank you for reading my last blog post on Zeno’s Conscience! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it. 🙂

Hi everyone! I cannot believe we have all finished The Savage Detectives, it felt like this day would never come. I want to first reflect on the action of not only reading a long book, but reading it alongside peers that are having the same experience; this is something I have never done before personally. I think it is a very valuable experience because it really demonstrated how different each of our experiences and thoughts on the book were, yet at the same time we all shared a common ground of having read the book.

I will also say, I am happy that it returned to García Madero’s diary entries for the last part that we read. When the book first switched from the journal entries to the interviews, I was not happy. I found it harder to engage with the story and to bring myself to care about all these new characters and their escapades across the world. However, reading the last part of the book, it did not really bring back the structured style of story that I was craving, which I kind of came to terms with? In general I like satisfying endings, ones that make sense and we are left with a better understanding of the story, or something else. Having finished the book, I have a better understanding of all this ambiguity and uncertainty. We don’t know what will happen to García Madero, but considering all the adventures and the people around him, it would not make sense to just know. The lives of Arturo, Belano and everyone else are messy and complex. They cannot be tied in a bow to make a perfect ending, instead it can present itself authentically to us as readers, and we can task ourselves with the duty of wondering what it all means.

That’s not to say that there are no constants in the book. We can see that the pursuit of a poetic revolution remained extremely pertinent to Arturo, Belano and García Madero the whole time. It was also quite amusing when García Madero began spewing all his poetry knowledge to Arturo and Belano, which also showcased the constant feeling of belonging and how important it was in the book. Lupe’s being chased by her pimp and being in danger was another relevant constant in the book. It shows the uglier realities of being wrapped up in this kind of world, ones that may be covered with different artistic pursuits or adventures all over the place, but are essentially impossible to outrun. The book ended, but it left a lot of parts and people’s stories unanswered, will I be able to sleep at night? Yes I will, but I am excited to discuss with everyone because I think everyone will have a different interpretation of what the point of all of this really was.

Hi everyone, I can’t believe we are approaching the end of the course so fast, which means all of us will have read both The Savage Detectives and our self-selected book. I am really happy with my choice, as I have enjoyed most of the book, and am anticipating a very funny and ironic psycho-analysis from the doctor for my last chunk of reading.

The part I read in the book for this blog post is titled “The Story of a Business Partnership”. This part of the book delves into the relationship Zeno has with a man Guido, who can be understood as a business rival, but there is more to it than that. Around 150 or so pages ago when Zeno was still pining over Ada (who is not his wife) and was determined to marry her, Ada met another suitor, who was much more charming and charismatic. Therefore, Guido is not just a business rival, Zeno is very envious of Guido because he also married the woman he intended to marry. Then why do I call them best frenemies… well because Zeno acts like his friend. Of course he does. In fact, Zeno goes as far to seek Guido out to become his business partner, which was a doomed idea from the start, but he agrees. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer I guess. The business partnership is flawed and doomed because even though Guido has more charisma and is more likeable, he is disorganized, and spends excessively. You would think that Zeno would see this and intervene, or try to get out of the arrangement, but he does not. Instead, he quietly observes, constantly noting throughout the book that he believes he is more capable, yet does not do much to change what is happening. Yet another example of Zeno’s crippling passivity. Zeno would likely not see it as crippling or destructive, but it certainly is for the average person. Zeno lets things happen to him and then restructures events and realities to fit what he believes to be true, as I have mentioned in previous blog posts. I have to question the degree of his awareness. Does he know he is doing this, is he extremely mentally ill and has no sense of his actions, or a bit of both. Either way, it is kind of fascinating to read because I feel like I am getting one of the most different perspectives I have ever gotten from a book.

That was quite a long blurb, but I found the nature of their relationship to be very interesting. I will summarize a couple other key events that happened during this chapter. Guido begins to experience financial ruin and simultaneously, Ada’s appearances begin to change due to illness, and she is described to become less attractive. You can imagine Zeno is sitting back and enjoying this, there is sense of revenge being served in his eyes, which is quite cruel. Guido, becoming more distraught decides to stage suicide to make Ada feel sorry for him, and it works. So Guido thinks, “hm that was great let me do it again” and does, but dies trying to fake his suicide. It was a big misunderstanding, one that Ada blames on Zeno because he is the one who explained the difference between sodium veronal (fatal) and veronal (not fatal). It seems like anyone who enters Zeno’s life is worse off because of it, but that is a general observation. His death being accidental is very on brand with Zeno’s life and the rest of the book; that being that apparently us humans do not have much volition to do as we please and instead we are almost victims of the rest of the world.

Thank you for reading, I can’t imagine what type of diagnosis a doctor would give Zeno.

Hi everyone, I cannot believe we are nearly finished the book, it feels like time has flown by in terms of this course and the rest of the semester. At the same time, this book continues to drag itself out and always finds something else to say. I still like the book, but as it is coming to an end, I am pretty certain that I would likely have never read this book in my life had it not been for this class. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, but I cannot think of a book that is too similar to The Savage Detectives that I have read before. In comparison to Amulet and my self selected book; those are more aligned with what I typically read. While reading this part of the book, I did not love it or hate it. It feels like world building to me because we are introduced to more characters, told more stories that are loosely related to the main characters that were first introduced in the book, and are given more contextual clues as to these stories interlock and what it means. However, this meaning (based on my own thoughts and reading through other’s blog posts) is subjective. My last initial thought on this part made me think of something Jon said in class, which was that J.K Rowling needed an editor. I kind of feel the same way about this particular chunk of the book.

I think one of my favourite interviews of the section we read was Joaqín Font’s, on page 400. The sentence “Freedom is like a prime number.” had me pause for a minute before getting into the task of reading the next 188 pages. Prime numbers are natural numbers only have two factors; the number itself and one. Did this mean that Joaquín thought his freedom and liberty was in his own hands, or did this mean that aren’t really many pathways to anyone’s freedom, even if it may seem like there is. I felt bad for him because he was thinking about his poor Impala being taken and worn down. I would be upset about that too. “I knew that we were ruled by fate and that we would all drown in the storm, and I knew that only the cleverest, myself certainly not included, would stay afloat much longer” (406). Drown in what? The revolution of visceral realism, the rejection of freedom or something completely else? It is hard to say with certainty.

I left my last blog post uncertain as to whether Zeno would marry Ada or not. I thought there was a chance, but really given the nature of the book it was also fair to assume that something would go wrong, and Zeno would not be able to marry Ada, the one he has been pining for. However, in true Zeno fashion, he proposes to Ada, who rejected him, then he proposed to Alberta who also refused, and then finally proposed to Augusta who accepts the proposal. I guess third times the charm. However, she is in fact his third choice, and in the start of this section of the book, he described her as “unattractive and dull” and wondered how anyone could be attracted to her, a great way to start a marriage. Despite the dissapointment, Zeno also references the stability that Augusta provides him in their marriage, which he is fond of. Yet again, Zeno’s recollection seems to be very misinformed and blind to what is actually happening in real life.

Then he goes on to write about the balance of his marriage with Augusta, and his affair with Carla, who is described as a shrill voiced aspiring singer. The tone in this part of the book is slightly different than the first few parts. In this part, Zeno writes much more passively about these events, compared to when he wrote about his pursuit of Ada, or when he was trying to quit smoking. Yes, he was making excuses and finding ways to avoid facing his addiction, but his language describing the details of his affair really emphasize the lack of agency Zeno has convinced himself he had in this time. That’s the most important part; that he has convinced himself, not that the events actually transpired like that. He is just as unreliable as ever in terms of explaining what has happened, because reality is being reconstructed to his liking. It is very interesting and also frustrating to read because you as the reader know this is not true, or it doesn’t make sense, yet this is what you are left with. His description of Carla as fresh and healthy shows this obsession with sickness he has, that has carried from the illnesses he has experienced in the past and his smoking addiction as well. It poses a question of whether he saw his affair as a cure to something, because he is rather bleak about his own outcomes. I found it quite ironic, because Zeno also notes that Augusta’s health is stable as well, and moreover she is his wife, yet he chooses to lean into the unstable affair as if that will be a cure all to his troubles. It is very selective morality that always seems to pardon him. Again, very frustrating to read, but also made me reflect on the fact that morality is moldable and very personal to everyone. At some point, everyone has probably bent their own morality and values to justify something, and so really the question may be how often we do this, or how serious the consequences are of this. Zeno is unapologetic of the affair that eventually ends and then he states he has been cured, quite similar to his self-proclaimed status of “cured” with his smoking habit. One of my blog posts is titled “Nothing Comes Easy for Zeno… According to Him” but I am revisiting this idea because really he seems to have a simple method of refusing any other perspective, which lets him do immoral or bad things so comfortably. I wondered then, why don’t more people live like this. Is it because we are socialized in a way that refrains us from being so self motivated, or do many people live like this and just do a better job of hiding the deeply self-centred motivations that dictate what we do.

“How long is this going to take?” (King Julien from the Madagascar movie). That is kind of how I felt reading this chunk of the book. Because there are so many voices and stories, that are coming from all ends of the world, and are semi-relevant but are also displaying the ways in which these characters pass time, ways that I myself could never imagine myself partaking in, I re-read a lot of pages. It was hard to put the picture together in my head of why all of these accounts were included. Every time Ulises or Arturo were mentioned, I thought okay, some relevance to the first part of the book that I read only around a month ago, yet it feels much longer than that. I think that is the point though, so while it sounds like I am complaining, I did still enjoy this part of the book. The sprawling of the story was very notable to me. We are introduced to more characters that are somehow connected to Arturo or Ulises, as well as new locations like Paris and Barcelona that tie together the uncertainty and fluidity of the visceral realists.

Furthermore, the sense of belonging or lack of is also continued into the book, which is one of my favourite elements of this book so far. For example, when Simone remarks on how she met Arturo, and then eventually Ulises, she states that Mexicans all have a funny way of just meeting one another, but then Arturo says “I’m not Mexican, Simone, I’m Chilean.” and she notices a hint of sadness in his statement, but the truth behind it (235). This stood out to me, because I think it ties very well with what we start to put together for the reasoning of leaving Mexico in the first place. The sense and feeling of belonging is a very powerful feeling, which is why for those who take poetry and the revolution so seriously, it is their means for finding belonging, and they would go anywhere to find it.

What I also found interesting was Luscious Skin’s role and portrayal in this part of the book, compared to the first 200 or so pages we had read before. He is painted in a much more sensitive and complex light than before, and it is where we understand that this is where the journey begins and he is a key constructor of the events. The visceral realism aspect of the book was highly judgmental in the first parts of the book, where membership was limited and withheld from people that weren’t considered revolutionary enough. However, juxtaposing this judgement with this part of the book, we see the characters unfold much more and can be understood for much more than what they were initially. In this sense, Ulises, Arturo, Luscious Skin and the others, they are delicate and fragile, which is not the conclusion I would have drawn after the first 100 pages of the book.

Hi everyone, likewise to what I have read from everyone else’s posts so far on Amulet by Roberto Bolańo, it is kind of hard for me to pinpoint how I feel about the book. I don’t think I loved the book, but it did leave me a lot to think about. One of the main takeaways for me from Amulet was the construct of time. Bolańo’s construction and deconstruction of time is also very prevalent in The Savage Detectives, but I will come back to more of my thoughts on time later on.

First, I want to touch on Auxilio as a character and why I think she is very powerful agent in her own story, as well as in other people’s lives as well. She notes that she lives somewhat of a nomad lifestyle where she never really stays in one place for too long, I don’t think it can be denied that she makes lasting connections with the people she meets and generally has a positive impact on them. Moreover, I appreciate her personality because I think there is an unapologetic attitude to her that I find admirable. For example, her friendship with Elena highlighted her undeniable ability to make friends anywhere. She mentioned how Elena would always talk about how philosophy and theatre were closely related. Even though they don’t seem to have very similar interests or personalities, Auxilio finds a common ground with her, and when she goes missing for awhile, she makes it her mission to find where Elena went, and goes as far to get her home address from the faculty. Maybe one could argue she was so concerned for selfish reasons, for companionship or looking for someone to stay with, but there is no explicit mention of her staying with Elena and based on my reading, Auxilio puts a lot of her soul into her relationships which is why she always shows a level of care. On page 43, Auxilio states she never lost her humour, which is another part of her personality that shines throughout the book. From her viewpoint, even the bleakest moments can have some humour, like when she jokes about UNAM with Arturo’s mother. It is aspirational to be resilient to the point where you can allow positivity to infect even the most tragic or upsetting realities.

Back to my thoughts on time in this book, the way Auxilio frames time, claiming she sees events that happen in the future far decades ago. On page 31, she states “The birth was over” when she is recalling what happened when she stayed in the bathroom stalls when the soldiers left. This really stuck out to me for a couple of reasons. First, we obviously know this is not her actual birth, because she is an adult woman. But similarly to García Madero with being introduced to visceral realism/realists, this was a definitive moment that felt like birth. We don’t remember being born because we are newborn babies, but with monumental moments like what happened in UNAM, our memories, cognition and perspective are able to actually comprehend what birth means, and then we prescribe our birth to something else besides the actual act of being born. My personal opinion, Auxilio’s birth is much more significant than García Madero’s if we had to judge from an objective standpoint, but I get that the value assigned to these life changing events is personal, I’m just being a bit of a hater.

Overall, I really enjoyed the element of time in this book, as well as the balancing of bleakness and random tidbits of her bohemian life.

Hi everyone, I have read about 70 more pages since my first blog post on Zeno’s Conscience, which puts me at page 130, which is just before the part titled The Story of My Marriage finishes. Originally, I was going to finish this part, but I don’t think I divided it up very well, so I adjusted.

To be completely honest, I enjoyed the first two parts Smoke and My Father’s Death more than this third part I’ve now read as well. However, I think this largely due to the fact that I am getting so annoyed with Zeno in this part of the book. What I have read so far is Zeno’s recollection of how he met his future wife and then eventually married her. I read quite a bit, and as of right now, they are still not married! Instead, it has been Zeno going over to the family house, where he pines for Ada. Let me provide some context; there are four daughters, Alberta, Augusta, Ada and Anna. A quick additional note, Zeno found it very intelligible of their father Giovanni to name all of his daughters with an “A” name. As we can see, it is really the little things for Zeno that matter. Anyways, Zeno uses a quick process of elimination to decide that Ada is the daughter he is in love with and wants to marry because Alberta is too plain, Augusta is in love with him and he doesn’t like that and Anna is a child.

Maybe there is another part of me that stopped reading before the part ended because it was taking so long to find out if Ada was going to marry Zeno or not. I have left off at a very interesting part. As of right now, Ada shows no interest, and has also met another suitor that Zeno describes as handsome.

While I have written a lot about Zeno’s adventure of trying and miserably failing to court a woman he thinks he is in love with, that is not all that is in play during this section of the novel. The strange neurotic behaviours and twisted opinions are still very prominent. On page 81 Zeno is writing about why he wants Ada to be his wife. At first it starts off sweet, he talks about how Ada accompanies him at all times, even when they are apart because he always envisions her. Then he goes on to write “I bestowed on her all the qualities I lacked and whose need I felt, because she was to become not only my companion but also my second mother, who would adopt me for a whole lifetime of manly struggle and victory. My initial thought was: Freud must be smiling right now. After smiling uncomfortably and laughing about how his wife would adopt him, the part of “struggle and victory” stood out to me as well. Zeno cannot seem to have any normal, standard or neutral experiences. Everything is extremely emotionally charged. Even when he tells himself he is going to remove himself from a situation, because at one point he considers giving up on courting Ada, he cannot do it with any peace of mind or stability. When I think about the first two parts of the book I read, Zeno was more convincing in his methods, that he was in control and was choosing to act odd. However in this part, I think this foreign element of love, which Zeno has an unique definition of, throws him for a loop even more. It is an interesting read, but it is becoming harder to follow his train of thought.

Thanks for reading!

For my second blog on The Savage Detectives, it took me a moment to try and decide what an appropriate title could be for my post. I’ve called it “Additional Context” because as I was reading, especially with the characters we saw little glimpses of in the first part, more of the puzzle was starting to come together. The opinions on visceral realism and the ways in which everyone is somehow connected to each other was all starting to fall into place and make a bit more sense. To be honest, I found this format of many short stories or recollections from an array of perspectives less engaging than the first part, which focused on García Madero’s perspective. However, I think it is just a personal preference as I enjoy getting into details with characters, and I do think the format of the these following chapters was relevant for the novel.

I found that certain characters such as Luscious Skin, María Font, Alberto, Laura and others, were all portrayed in the second part of the novel quite differently than the first part. I don’t think this is too shocking, considering that in the first part of the book, what we initially learn about the people in García Madero’s life are purely from his point of view. One example of this difference in portrayal was with Luscious Skin, where he calls himself a “peace-loving person” and claims he never hit Belano, despite strongly disliking him. If I had only read the first part of the book, based on the depictions of his violent sexual behaviour, I wouldn’t use peace-loving as an adjective to describe him. María’s account of the events that transpired after García Madero and the others took her father’s Impala and escaped also demonstrates the differences of what we learn, compared to when the story is told from just García Madero’s point of view. In the first part of the novel, María is understood to be very sexually liberal, compared to her sister, but in her own account specifically on page 194 (of the Picador edition), she talks about how during one of her last conversations with Belano and Ulises, that we as readers know of, that she was supposedly tempted to sleep with both of them, but she stays silent. While the contrast between Angelíca and María in terms of their sexual experiences already reveals themes of misogyny and sexuality during this era, I think this also spoke to María’s agency, and her turmoil in not understanding how to navigate emotionally complex situations. Her situation is not unique however, this avoidance, escapism and redirection of emotions seems to manifest in almost every single character. Right before her account, we have another one from Jacinto, that overtly highlighted the visceral realism movement as a facade to distract from something much more serious and looming. Jacinto, who is having a child with Xóchitl, did not focus on finding a job to support his family, but instead spent every single day talking about poetry, and supposedly pouring his soul into the movement. However, I think the movement is also producing hierarchies, as Jacinto seemingly has jealous feelings towards Belano, not because he flirts with Xóchitl, but because he has authority over everyone else.

Finally, my thoughts on Auxilio’s piece at the very end of this section. I really enjoyed her point of view. It was dramatic and it had me wondering if a soldier or someone else was going to find her in the bathrooms. She spoke of the university being violated multiple times, which I think explains why she finds such solace and importance in poetry, because it gives her an avenue to grapple with traumatic or painful events. If anything, I understand and believe she has a genuine connection to poetry the most out of anyone we’ve been introduced to so far. This has left me excited to read Amulet in the coming weeks.

Thank you for reading my post this week!