The Savage Detectives: A Novel by Roberto Bolano
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Book Reviews of The Savage Detectives: A Novel
Book Review: Strange and chaotic book
Summary: 3 Stars
First of all if you are trying to grasp Bolaño I would recommend the last Bolaños'novel :2666 (Narrativas Hispanicas) (Paperback)2666: A Novel, an excellent and stronger novel in my opinion.
About "The savage...": I read the Spanish version and the Mexican slang all over the novel can be sometimes overwhelming.
The story is chaotic nevertheless amusing. But It's all It seems you'll get, so be prepared.
It seems that this Bolaño is very different from the one from 2666, not only the style is different, but here Bolaño depicted a totally "casual"-almost chaotic- and hilarious style. In 2666, the style is more conventional and I would dare to say darker although deeper. Probably both books would be the taste of different readers nevertheless being great books each one on its own merit.
Book Review: good but overhyped
Summary: 3 Stars
When will the Bolaño craze end? Yes, he was very good - at times -yes, he had a special rhythm and music to his prose - yes, he died tragically midlife and mid career, leaving a big sense of What If, and yet... he wasn't always the genius or groundbreaker critics love to call him. Savage Detectives runs out of steam after the first third, endless catalogues of names and droning passages of this and that.. Sophomoric humor, occasionally funny, often not...He could have used a merciless editor. But yes, some love precisely this, the tremendous self-indulgence of the prose. I would recommend his shorter novels by far: By Night in Chile and Distant Star. You've then read the best of him, and have a sense of the writer he could have continued to be.Book Review: Three stars for good writing
Summary: 3 Stars
But I really could not finish this either. I just wasn't interested enough in the story or the characters to stay with a book of this length. It's like a Mexican beat road trip in the middle -- which is only interesting if you're into that milieu, the poets, the times, the people he's basing it on. It's not accessible to me, and though amusing, without the cultural relevance, and no compelling story line, it just doesn't keep you interested enough for the investment in time. Good points: good writing about sex, at least in the first 150 pages. Good writing is rare enough. Good writing about sex is awfully scarce, and usually, I can't stand male authors' attempts. This manages to be charming. Figures - he's not American.Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
So many Names, are they all of Spanish and Latin American writers? So many diary enties of disparate individuals, are they to relate a story?
Roberto Bolanao's manner of narration is a series of diary entries.They are by different people at differnt places and are not chronological.Nor do they tell a story chronologically.Several of them have but a fleeting connection with the presumed protagonists of the story. Some of them despite a casual reference to one of the protagonists could well stand by themselves as short stories.Some entries are totally irrelevant. From this labyrinthine maze we have to disentangle the story of Arturo Belano and
Ulysees Lima. In fact there are three of them, including Luscious Skin.They are poets and call themselves,"Visceral Realists" as opposed to the"Stridentalists". They are opposed to Octavio Paz also.What do those terms connote? We don't know.
Luscious Skin-what a name!- is a homosexual.Bolano gives a steamy description of Homo love-making in the entry of Luis Sebastian of March 1983.
All the three are rootless and make a living by peddling marijuana. Luscious Skin loses his life in a Police Narco-raid.
Ulysees Lima is deeply in love with Claudia but she does not reciprocate it. He therefore cries in his sleep.
Arturo Belano is the hero. He participates in the rescue of the dancer cum prostitute,Lupe,from her pimp whom he stabs to death.He rescues a boy from a deep mountain chasm. He goes to Africa, feels a strong death wish but recovers from it and yet joins a doomed Govt. expedition against rebel forces in Liberia. He is a likeable character.
But the most loveable figure is the half-mad, rich patriarch, Joaquim Font.His two daughters, Maria and Angelica, also poets, are mere foil to the other 'Visceral Realists'.
The elderly Amadeo and two youngsters examine the so called poetry of Cesarea Tinajero which consisted of a word, a straight line, a wavy line and a jagged line with a small rectangle appended to the lines. They read several meanings into this "poem". That is like viewing a modern painting where the viewer can read his own meaning into it.
At the end one is inclined to ask whether the struggle with 647 pages of this work is worthwhile.
Book Review: Overlong saga of two losers
Summary: 2 Stars
This book came with rave reviews on the cover -- blurbs stating it was a modern classic et etc (I'll leave to another time my opinions about the corruption and dishonesty in the "blurb" industry where so much mutual back-scratching goes on)... Well, I found it interesting enough to finish but cannot concur about its so-called classic status.
The plot follows the adventures of two young men, a Mexican and a Chilean who call themselves the founders of some kind of progressive poetry movement called "visceral realism." The two, Arturo Balano ( who is evidently the author's alter ego) and Ulises Lima, drift from Mexico to Spain to Israel to Rome to Africa and back over the course of about 20 years. They sell drugs, do drugs, fall into various relationships, beg, starve, live in caves, rob helpless old men and women, do various odd-jobs and occasionally write something. We're never told what visceral realism is or stands for, if anything. In general, these two seem to be drifters (an unkinder way of putting it might be losers) and I found it increasingly difficult to sympathize with them or even know why the hell I should be interested.
One problem is that we never hear from them in their own voices. We see them through the eyes of a broad spectrum of other characters -- lovers, friends, associates and chance encounters. Many of these secondary characters are also deeply mentally disturbed. One character goes by the picturesque name of "Luscious Skin." Some of these vignettes are interesting but then the character disappears and never returns.
Maybe I'm just too old a fogey to get involved in the lives of these drifters, who after all belong to my own generation. That's possible. Some books appeal mostly to the young. I did in fact meet some South Americans in my kibbutz volunteering days in the 1970s who were a bit like these guys -- long-haired, politically extreme left with uncertain personal cleanliness habits -- and I didnt like them much then either.
So if you're an old fogey like me, this book may not be for you.