The Savage Detectives: A Novel
by Roberto Bolano
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Book Reviews of The Savage Detectives: A Novel
Book Review: Not as good as 2666, but still impressive
Summary: 4 Stars
I guess I could call myself spoiled, because my introduction started with 2666 and The Romantic Dogs.
The Savage Detectives, as is well known, chronicles the lives of fifty plus poets over a span of some forty years. The first and last part revolve around a wannabe poet, Juan Garcia Madero, and the middle (and arguably the first and last) center around Arturo Belano (the alter ego of the writer himself) and Ulises Lima (reputedly an alter ego of Mario Santiago, a friend of Bolano's), the founders of a ficitonal poetry movement called "Visceral Realism".
And that's about as far as the plot goes. For those of you who prefer tightly woven, gripping plots, this book is certainly not for you. For people who prefer existentialism for existentialism's sake, this book is a must. Engaging characters (some are better than others, but most are entertaining), anecdotes of humor, shock, and things you would never expect (There's even a duel!), Bolano wrote a work that is addicting and frustrating at the same time.
To anyone who has never read Bolano before, I suggest SD, 2666, and if you like poetry, The Romantic Dogs.
Book Review: A Beautiful Failure
Summary: 2 Stars
It's very post-modern to want to deconstruct the format of the novel. If you're smart and talented, you want to find a new way to tell a story, not the same old way we've been telling stories for a 1000 years. The Savage Detectives is the fictional story of two writers as told by the people who come in contact with them for an hour or a day or a month. (People that would have known them better, like their families, are never introduced.) It's as someone was telling the story of your life by interviewing your dry cleaner or the guy at the hotel desk or someone you met at a job interview, someone you lived with for a month, someone you met on the road.
The problem with this is that you never understand the protagonists' motives, the characters are never allowed to explain themselves, scenes are stopped mid-action and never resolved, there are gaps in the narrative that are never explained. The reader is kept at arms distance from the focus of the story. So, in the end, though the language and the writing is beautiful, I found the book more frustrating than anything.
Book Review: Despite hype, didn't do it for me
Summary: 2 Stars
The blurbs made it seem like this book would be the greatest thing since sliced bread (from the perspective of those who think sliced bread is spectactular, that is. I personally prefer loaves that need to be sliced, but I digress). The blurbs throw around names of authors I deeply admire such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but the only literary work I was reminded of was On the Road. Kerouac was smart enogh to keep his tale of random wandering fairly brief, whereas readers have nearly 600 pages to plow through to make it to the end of The Savage Detectives. I stopped after about 150 of them when it became apparent enough that there would be no characters created with sufficient depth for me to care one way or another about, and no particular plotline to speak of. Roberto Bolano was a talented writer who apparently had little interest in writing beginning-middle-end narratives. I could see why certain people would love this novel. There is no doubt that Bolano was a gifted author, simply not my particular cup of tea.Book Review: A staggering and urgent masterpiece.
Summary: 5 Stars
Bolano himself has called his 600-page novel The Savage Detectives "a love letter to [his] generation". However, The Savage Detectives is both a valentine and an indictment to his generation, as all great works, I think, are.
Know that this is a book that will change your life, transform your eyes, mind, and heart. The Savage Detectives is a verifiable and bonafide masterpiece, choke full of urgency, mystery, animus, humor, sadness, and heart.
Though perhaps daunting due to its length and somewhat complex structure, this is a surprisingly readable and refreshingly unpretentious book. A brilliant, brilliant work. I cannot recommend this one enough. This is a master at the height of his powers, a book that will stand alongside the greats.
This book was the best book I read in 2008, hands down, and possibly the best I've read, maybe ever (a dangerous statement, I know).
I could go on forever about this one. I won't. You should check it out for yourself.
Book Review: Latin American Kane
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading this book, I kept thinking for some reason of "Citizen Kane." Not in the plot, but in the structure. The person you never see in the narrative seems to be acting much in the same way as the reporter in "Kane," gathering information from documents (the diary) and from eyewitness accounts (the entire second section) in an attempt to piece together the lives of Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. These characters, who are arguably the novel's protagonists, seem to be more like ghosts than main characters. They haunt the diary, making sudden appearances and then disappearing again just as quickly. They are ostensibly the subject of the oral history section, and even while the various narrators have their own set of concerns and preoccupations, Belano and Lima are never far from the surface. Much like in "Kane," this technique of revealing the characters only through the recollections of other characters lends them a mythic quality that haunts their entire quest.