The Savage Detectives

The savages in ‘The Savage Detectives’ by Roberto Bolaño are young Latino poets living in the huge metropolis of Mexico City in the mid-1970’s who form a rebellion against the older, established poets that oppose their radical ideas (and their radically uninhibited lifestyles), reminiscent of the underground literary scenes of Henry Miller’s Paris in the 1930’s or New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1960’s. These passionate young intellectuals are ex-university students (or even non-university, self-taught teens and twenty-somethings) who loosely form a social-political alliance of young writers with a general goal of upending the rigid strictures of accepted standards for poetry, most perfectly exemplified by the doctrines of the venerable Octavio Paz, but also turning upside down the frowning priggishness of their sexually repressed traditional Catholic culture. The immediate result is sharp intellectual conflict mingled with intense sexual cross-pollination. But Bolaño doesn’t focus on the writings of these young radical intellectuals; instead, he weaves a complex fabric in space-time in which each character, each event, each encounter, is specifically located in the physical geometry of Mexico City’s various colonias at a particular point in time and place. His young anti-heroes live in a world of ideas and words. It’s the vitality of youth and intelligence at the height of their sexual powers. It’s the end of the old guard, and the reign of a new order.The four European academicians in the monumental ‘2666’ (published after Bolaño’s death in Spanish in 2004 and translated into English by Natasha Wimmer in 2008) lack the wide-open intellectuality and intense sexuality of the young Mexico City poets, but they persist in their life’s goal of finding their newly-discovered literary genius ‘Archimboldi’ even as he moves from Europe to Mexico City and then (supposedly) on to the border city of Santa Teresa (Juarez), which is embroiled in drug cartel violence and corruption. The first three parts of '2666' primarily describe the journey (both intellectually and physically) of three of the four academic cohorts as they follow the leads they uncover regarding Archimboldi's movements from locations in Europe and eventually on to Mexico City. The book is 900 pages, and the 300-page middle section ('Part 4 - The Part About the Crimes') takes place primarily in Santa Teresa (Juarez). Bolaño’s tone is calmly descriptive, but deceptively so, since his Santa Teresa is a war zone, and the city’s lawlessness has brought an array of sexual sociopaths and homicidal maniacs into the open air where they freely perpetrate their atrocities on the city’s inhabitants. It’s a dystopia right at our very doorstep, and a prescient vision of the violent perversions that await in a land ruled only by powerful cartels. It’s a contemporary ‘Blood Meridian,’ a similarly unblinking masterpiece of multi-centered social observation and insight. (Bolaño’s ‘2666’ was written 15 years before Benecio del Toro’s brutal film ‘Sicario’ (2015), which also was set in Juarez.) The entire book is lucid, but read Part 4 - The Part About the Crimes of ‘2666’ at your own hazard.

It's a book, to read.

Brilliantly written, but not very enjoyable for those of us who would like to follow a plot. But that is the trend in modern literature, especially in Latin America.

Engaging and epic!

One of the best books I've ever read. So necessary. Exact, wild, powerful. Almost everything is inside it. Savage in itself.

I understand that hype can mislead some people to read something that is not for them so let's be clear this is an avant garde novel with an unusual structure and a meandering (to say the least) sense of narrative. A large part of it is made up of anecdotes by a range of people about encounters they had over several decades with the main characters, two avant garde and thoroughly disreputable poets (the savage detectives), one of whom is perhaps less of a poet and barely sane. These anecdotes, some extended, are thoroughly readable and each of the voices is distinctive and alive. Bolano's range here is impressive and he is adept at invoking a very wide variety of characters and situations, cultural and social, in masterful detail. He is a miniaturist of considerable skill. Most of these pieces are set in Mexico and Spain but we also have Israel and a number of African situations.This long section of voices, anecdotes, is sandwiched between a straight narrative telling the story of a group of wild young radical poets in Mexico City and of the escape of the two main characters with two characters from the first part to search for a lost poet (who may not have written any poetry) from an earlier generation.It seems only in a very sketchy way that all this - the narrative sections at the start and the end, and the long section of anecdotes in between - come together to tell a wider story but you do get a strong sense of time. And between the apparently disjointed parts you can slowly piece together the lives of the lead characters - as they age and as they go about their sometimes chaotic lives. By the end a wonderful portrait of them has been revealed.The action includes vivid sex (the first part of the book is a coming of age story), playful discussion and not a little violence. The book is incredibly alive. It's characters are incredibly alive. I can't even begin to describe why it had such a powerful affect on me. Perhaps I feel a little sentimental about my own roughly contemporaneous wild youth? The period is caught marvellously. But it cannot be that alone. I find Bolano's writing enormously satisfying. It is complex and extremely rigorous. Yet it delivers and is extremely readable. I will read this book again soon and have no doubt I will find more in it.

This book is a must read, though I must caution the potential reader that if you go looking for a plot you'd come out dissatisfied, but if you are looking for an experience you might find this to be one of the best a piece of literature can offer.

The first time I finished a book and had an immediate craving to re-read! It's worth a read because of the numerous thoughts and emotions it evokes. Cheers!

Why do I bother taking the advice of critics ? Is Bolano's reputation based purely on the bulk of his tomes ? I waded through the first 200 pages, completely underwhelmed. I was reduced to scanning, & finally abandoning it. What IS ALL THE FUSS ABOUT ?It's repetitive, & crammed with the minutae of the lives of an alienated & deluded literati. There was not one redeeming character, or event I could empathise with. Bolano is grossly overrated .