The Savage Detectives

I've heard Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives described as "the kind of novel Borges could have written." I'm not sure I agree, but it's not an entirely far-fetched comparison -- the two protagonists (based on Bolaño and a friend of his) are on a quest to find a respected member of an obscure avant-garde group, and their meanderings after the meeting (or after their attempt at the meeting) are told through a series of anecdotes, related by persons of varying degrees of intimacy and familiarity -- we have former lovers, traveling companions, members of antipodal literary movements, minor functionaries, neighbors, drinking buddies, etc. Each anecdote (vignette) is well crafted, and as such, this could be a work of Borges'. However, if this were a Borges novel (or the Borges novel, since there are none), I doubt that there would be as much sex, booze, or weed involved. Additionally, the vignettes would take place during the search for Cesarea Tinajero, rather than afterwards. They also might be a bit less mundane -- while the vignettes aren't from bland people, it seems every narrator is slowly losing their mind in a different way. While we occasionally (often?) encounter such narrators in Borges' work, the worlds he creates are slightly more fantastic (in the most literal sense) than what is in The Savage Detectives.

Regardless of my quibbling, this is a hell of a novel. The initial structure was a bit odd (now there's a complaint, especially considering the previous novel reviewed here is Nabokov's Pale Fire) in that the first section is a series of diary entries from a bookish young poet who is introduced to our future protagonists, drops out of law school, and becomes a member of their movement. This section is much devoted to his coming of age -- his first experiences with sex, with cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana. In contrast, the second section is the aforementioned vignettes, spanning twenty years (1976-1996), in which our diarist is mentioned once -- when a scholar denies that he (the diarist, not the scholar) had been a member of the "gang". (In fact, this reference to the diarist comes in the second-to-last vignette, as if to remind the reader how the novel began. The last vignette is a continuation of the first -- an old poet that the two protagonists had visited in 1976, before setting off on their journey. His story is broken up throughout the novel, but stitched together, his (half dozen? dozen?) mini-chapters form one complete narrative of an evening he had spent drinking with the two protagonists). The vignettes almost take the form of interviews: as if the person being questioned had been asked "Tell me about your experiences with Arturo Belano and/or Ulises Lima", or "Tell me about your experiences in [time and place] and how they relate to Belano and Lima," and then was given free reign to ramble onwards. The final section is a resumption of the initial diary, concerning the continuation of the protagonists' search for the vanished poetess.

Despite The Savage Detectives being a novel about poets and poetry, the only poem written by a character in the novel that we as readers are shown is Cesarea Tinajero's sole published poem, which, other than its title, is wordless. I find this to be a good joke, as well as a good contrast to Pale Fire, which featured almost a thousand lines of subpar poetry. (Additionally, the protagonists are described as "more drug dealers than poets", which may or may not be a fair characterization -- their stories are only told secondhand.)

Beyond crediting Bolaño, I must credit the translator, Natasha Wimmer, who certainly had a difficult task, as this novel is clearly filled with slang in the original. (More or less difficult than translating Juvenal? Probably less, since at least Wimmer has contemporaries who have lived immersed in whatever vernacular this is written in).

Absolutely recommended.