The Savage Detectives
I was excited to finally get around to picking up The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. The novel has been getting great press all year long, and it is on just about everyone’s year-end best of/favorites list. I even bought the book at one of my favorite independent book stores, Faulkner House Books in New Orleans, which is usually an auspicious beginning to any novel. To say that this book disappointed me is a bit of an understatement. Frankly, I was a pissed off, if not relieved, when I finally reached the end of its 592 pages.
The Savage Detectives is supposed to be an “important” novel. It says so on the dust jacket. Maybe that should have been a warning that this book and I were not going to get along. It is told in three parts. Let me break it down:
Act 1: Mexicans Lost in Mexico
In part one, Juan García Madero tells us that he has joined an exciting new poetry movement, the Visceral Realists. He’s not sure who they are or what they are all about, but they seem cool. The Visceral Realists stage political actions like interupting other poetry readings and removing themselves from the academy and the establishment. What this means in practice is that they hang around a lot, have sex of a “frank” nature, smoke pot, and talk with no real purpose.
The Visceral Realists’ ringleaders are Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. Lima and Belano are the charismatic, yet mysterious, leaders of the poetry movement who also seem to be involved in the drug business. We know little about their backgrounds nor their ultimate aims for the movement. Whatever, dude.
There’s a lot in this section about madness, literature, poetry, Latin American politics, and even a killer pimp. When the curtain closes on Act I, Lima, Belano, Madero, and a girl named Lupe are fleeing Mexico City under duress.
While reading this part, I thought that the purposeful intellectual distancing of the Visceral Realists from the rest of Mexican society in a vaguely intellectual way was sort of like the pointless rambling in the movie Y Tu Mamá También. I thought that this was a very clever observation on my part. Then I saw that the Amazon review said basically the same thing. Dang. Anyway, there is no way that the writers of the movie haven’t read this book is all I’m saying.
Act 2: The Savage Detectives
The second part of the novel, the lengthiest, is responsible for most of my antagonism towards the novel. In Part I, Madero told most of the story in a diary format and in a relatively straightforward way. Part 2 keeps the diary-ish format, but it is told from many, many viewpoints.
It is almost as though a Latin Ken Burns went out in the field and recorded oral histories from many people who encountered Lima and Belano in the years after the Visceral Realists disbanded. Then, rather than edit the narratives in any kind of meaningful way, Latin Ken Burns simply laid them all out one after another for you to make of them what you will. Sure, there may be many hours of footage that is irrelevant, misleading, or pointless, but Latin Ken Burns doesn’t want to contaminate the narrative with his presence, man!
Contrary to the title, there is very little detective work done in this section. It is certainly not in any way “savage.” Lima and Belano are sad, pathetic, hopeless, and incredibly unsympathetic as main characters. Almost no one who talks about them portrays them in a positive light. There are lost souls, and no one really cares.
In this part, it felt like the pointless youth of Y Tu Mamá También was intended to have given way to the romantic idealism of The Motorcycle Diaries. It didn’t work for me. In fact, if this entire 300+ page part of the novel was excised whole, very little would be lost.
Act 3: The Sonora Desert
OK, now we’re back to the single narrative diary of Juan García Madero. We resume with his flight from Mexico City in a borrowed car with Lima, Belano, and Lupe. Their wandering is not as pointless as it once was, there is a goal. The goal of their exploration of the Sonoran Desert emerged from various threads in Part 2, which could have been summarized in about five pages.
Things happen that presumably explain why Lima and Belano became the men they did are portrayed in Part 2. Really it’s too late in the novel to really care anymore, but I was too close to the finish line to put the book down. I’m sure that there was some sort of payoff there at the end, but I was too excited about being done to dwell on it.
Post Script
The New York Times (and just about everyone else) included Savage Detectives as one of their Top 10 Books of 2007. It gives me no joy to be the Russian Judge. I’m not one of those people who derives pleasure from being a contrarian. However, with this book, I am perfectly willing to be branded a philistine, or worse. I just didn’t like it.
The NYT review by Richard Eder (presumably not the one that vaulted the novel to the Top 10 List) says:
Some of the book’s best passages are here [ed: in Part 2!]; but the formlessness, the cascading miscellany, the pile of jigsaw pieces with some missing, the guiding box-picture (fictional as against intellectual) purposefully withheld: these can make the book, or at least the reader, founder. Many gleaming lights are displayed, but foundering nonetheless.
I was left foundering. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Silver Lining
Because the book made so many “best of” lists, it was actually back ordered for a time on Amazon. I was able to unload my used copy for more than I paid for it as a result. Score!
Just Sad
The WikiPedia entry for the novel is pathetic, and does not meet WikiPedia’s quality standards. A woman’s name, Cesárea, was originally written as “Cesarean.” I was so annoyed that I had to correct it myself. The rest includes snappy copy such as, “She is fat and gets shot by the prostitute’s pimp.” If you enjoyed the novel, you might want to help spruce that up a bit.
December 13, 2007 1:05 pm 6 Comments
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By Cheyne, December 14, 2007 @ 8:37 am
Great review! I am always on the lookout for book reviewers
We just launched a book loving community – Dust Jacket Review, http://www.dustjacketreview.com. We want to be “the place” on the web for great book reviews. The concept is that, by posting new or previously published book reviews at DJR, literary bloggers can find a wider audience for their personal blogs.
Your review of The Savage Detectives could make for a great counterweight to our first DJR review of the book, seen here:
http://www.dustjacketreview.com/books/page/499205
I hope you’ll come take a look.
Best, Cheyne
By eric, December 2, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
Ugh. Typical hipster hype-reaction.
Your review reads like you didn’t actually finish the book: “Things happen that presumably explain why Lima and Belano became the men they did are portrayed in Part 2. Really it’s too late in the novel to really care anymore, but I was too close to the finish line to put the book down. I’m sure that there was some sort of payoff there at the end, but I was too excited about being done to dwell on it.”
Too late in the novel to even care anymore? What? If you think a book sucks, why waste your time on it? Why not just put it down and read something else?
Books aren’t badges of honor or notches in your belt.
This story is not your modern American ironic novel. It is an earnest, soulful, heartfelt, passionate work of art. Next time, it might be worth it to leave your preconceptions at the bookstore and approach each book with an open mind.
By Tim, December 2, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
Actually, I did finish the book. I read the book to its completion because that’s what I do. Sorry.
I’m not sure how my review is a “typical hipster reaction” since I was the only person who seems to not have cared for the book.
My only preconception about the book is that it would be outstanding. My actual reading of the book, which was only my opinion, didn’t match those expectations. It happens.
By eric, December 3, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
You didn’t talk about the ending. You didn’t mention what happens or how the book closes.
The hipster-hype reaction. A knee-jerk aversion to something due to surrounding hype. Something gets discovered and then praised and hyped by a select few tastemakers which shortly thereafter makes it uncool to like b/c it’s not “hip” anymore.
Your only preconception of the book was that it would be outstanding. As a reviewer you should have approached it with blinders on and judged the work on its own merits, but in fairness, I can see how that could be hard.
And yeah, reviews are opinions.
But hey, y’know, it really doesn’t matter. The hipness will fade and Bolano will be remembered as one of the literary greats of the last half of the 20th century and if you miss out on that, it’s a shame, but I’m sure there are plenty of books and authors out there you like.
Time Magazine called 2666 the book of the year and NPR has a story on Bolano today, btw.:)
Really not trying to be a troll here and I apologize if I’m annoying you about a year-old book review, I just googled to find out how people interpreted the ending…and you didn’t. And I just loved the book so much. Anyway.
By Tim, December 4, 2008 @ 12:00 am
This conversation might be better over a beer. And so you know, this may be the snarkiest review that I’ve written. I’ll give you that. I generally don’t write this way, but the book brought out the snark in me.
This book meant quite a bit to many people. I wish I was one of them. The best that I can briefly summarize why I reacted so viscerally against it is that it left me foundering – and not in a good way, like you want.
I didn’t try to interpret the end here, because I generally try not to discuss the endings of books as a rule. If I haven’t read a book yet, I hate it when people tell me how it is going to end and what to think about it. It’s a good conversation to have though.
I hear ya on going into a book with blinders on, but that’s tough to do for someone who obsessively follows the buzz on books. Hype doesn’t typically run me off. I like good books. Really. If I were writing a review for the Times, I would probably write about in the way that you describe – shuttering myself off from all outside influence. In reality, I’m just a dude that likes to write about books in a conversational way as though sharing impressions with a friend.
The New York Times has also named 2666 one of its ten best, and blogs that I deeply respect (Bookfox, The Millions)have been posting extended pieces on it. From the reviews that I’ve seen so far (and I’ve read most of them – there I go again…), it looks like I’d have many of the same issues.
I’m thinking of putting a post together about 2666 with the idea of having a discussion pro/con with people who care one way or the other. Have you read it?