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.