Book Thoughts: The Savage Detectives
Continuing my meandering literary exploration to scratch my new-found Borges-flavoured itch, I stumbled across a name as I perused a used book store: Roberto Bolano.
While I admit that jumping at a random latin-american-sounding name and hoping for some similarity to Borges is a fairly ignorant stretch, it paid off in this case. It turns out that Bolano is frequently compared to Borges -- though the book I picked up, "The Savage Detectives," is definitely an entirely unique flavour all its own.
The Savage Detectives is a girthy volume filled with poets, sex, dust, and violence mostly told through the lens of interviews over the span of 20 years. I didn't know what I was signing up for when I opened the novel, and while it held my attention I admittedly didn't really understand what it was I was reading until I finished the last page.
The book is split into three parts: The first is the day-by-day journal of Juan Garcia, a young university student in Mexico City who quickly abandons his studies when he becomes involved with a group of young poets styling themselves as the "Visceral Realists" -- we watch Juan stumble into this messy world, make friends, lose his virginity, date multiple women and ultimately flee the city with the two leaders of the group.
As Juan Garcia free-falls through a disorienting coming of age story we meet many of the characters that will later comprise the interview-style narration, as well as the story's two primary focuses: Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano who lead the Visceral Realist movement.
The second part of the book spans the next 20 years through interviews with people who have interacted with Ulises and Arturo as the two wander the world from Mexico to Spain and France, to Israel and Africa and back. For much of the book I wondered if we, the reader, were the "Savage Detectives" attempting to hunt down the two vagabond poets but always a few steps behind, finding only people affected by their passing.
Over those 20 years we watch the two men change through the eyes of the colorful cast of narrators, each telling their own stories along with their account of the happenings of the poets. Each narrator feels different in a way that is a testament to Bolano and his translators' work. Each of them felt alive -- even when I wouldn't recognize or remember the name of a given narrator who had given another testament in previous chapters it was easy to pick up on unique voicings and figure out who was who. Though I had no idea where things were going, these individual stories were compelling, and many even come to resolution as we revisit some narrators through the years. We watch Visceral Realism -- the poetic movement begun by our pseudo-protagonists -- flicker away into obscurity.
A through-line in all of these interviews is an interview that takes place much earlier -- one where an old retired poet recounts the two boys coming to ask about an unknown female poet who they see as the founder of Visceral Realism -- though almost none of her works remain, for she published almost no poetry at all and disappeared.
I expected the stories of Ulises and Arturo -- of their Visceral Realism movement -- to culminate in something. I kept waiting for some turn of the tides where they would become great poets, but as their lives played out I realized that this was a coming-of-reality story. They lived poor, travelled a little, worked random jobs and had failed relationships. Their stories end in tired obscurity like that of so many firey youths forced to grow up.
The third part of the story returns to the journal of Juan Garcia where it left off, fleeing through Mexico with young Ulises and Arturo, taking the opportunity to take up the search for their poetess.
Here, back in their youth and once again through the eyes of Juan Garcia, Ulises and Arturo regain their mysterious auras as the leaders of the Visceral Realist movement. They are the Savage Detectives, and as they flee danger themselves they also find their quarry through the very same interview process the reader experienced -- and when they finally reach her they find a washwoman living a life of obscurity like they will one day fall in to.
And yet...
Throughout the book we do not find any of the poetry of our protagonists despite this being a book about poets and poetry. Rather, they live it. What is Visceral Realism? It's never pointed out, specifically, but we watch it play out. You feel it by the end.
The many narrators which were part of the movement who move on with their lives, get steady jobs -- each of them stops affiliating themselves with Visceral Realism while Arturo and Ulises continue to live their meandering lives at the edges of society well outside the walls of the artistic establishment they criticize. We see near the end of the novel Juan Garcia quizzing the two on poetic teqchniques and terminology and find they know next to nothing about the formal art of poetry, but having seen their lives play out we know this doesn't matter.
Ultimately we don't need to read their poetry to know what it would feel like.
I can't put words to it, but on closing the book the whole experience felt quietly profound. Like I'd genuinely watched these two men grow up and then gotten a second taste of their youth -- of the fire of rebellion before they'd slowly taper off living their lives on the fringes.
I plan on reading more of Bolano's works -- while he doesn't offer the Borges-style literary thought experiments I was hoping to find after seeing him compared to the other author, he captures the other more subtle aspects of Borges other works that I hadn't realized I appreciated so much.
Note: I found out after finishing the book that Bolano based the work on his own life, styling Arturo Belano after himself and Ulises Lima after his close friend Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. The two of them together started the Infrarealism poetic movement known more for its public sabotage of the Mexican art / poetry establishments than its poetry.
Bolano's Infrarealism Manifesto from Correspondica Infra I published in 1977 is exactly what I expected it to be after reading this book.