🦋 Escape reading: Among the poets
 One of the most pleasant aspects of reading Savage Detectives, I am finding to be ease with which I can identify with the narrator and his scene, can picture myself in the crowd of real visceralistas and wannabees -- picture myself perhaps not as GarcÃa Madero, who is after all just a kid*, certainly not as Lima or Belano; but as a minor character, a walk-on. It is an escapist pleasure, I am taken out of myself and out of my immediate world while I am reading (and really, it seems worth pointing out that that is an aspect of the experience of reading almost any Spanish-language text for me).
Without even spending any time/mental energy on the GarcÃa Madera - Rosario sex scene (which believe me, could divert enormous quantities of both), it is worth considering how much like or unlike reading pornography this reading experience is. I'm going to assert that they are unlike in some key ways; but given first that feeling of imagining yourself in a character's boots (and, well, in his whatever) -- how will the distinction be drawn?
 *Hm, and all of a sudden I find I am casting blogging friends of mine in some of this book's key roles...
posted evening of Saturday, November 5th, 2011
➳ More posts about Identification
➳ More posts about The Savage Detectives
➳ More posts about Roberto Bolaño
➳ More posts about Readings
Note to those who are participating in the group read: it's very much worth while to have a look at the book of poetry Romantic Dogs as well, there are some themes and images in common between the two books.)
posted evening of November 5th, 2011 by Jeremy
It's been a few years since I read this. But I remember strongly my gratification at how well Bolaño had swapped out a fundamental feature of genre novels. In a standard mystery, you always know why people are acting -- to save their own skins, to find the killer, etc. In Bolaño, on the other hand, people act because they care about poetry. It sounds absurd, insufficient, and yet he makes it carry the story. Either because, or despite the fact that he doesn't give us many samples of their work.
posted evening of November 5th, 2011 by Vance Maverick
Certainly true; I guess I did not go into Savage Detectives reading it as a mystery novel so I did not notice this so much as a swapping-out... As far as genre goes, it seemed to me (mutatis mutandis) like a beat novel, where it is pretty standard for caring about poetry to drive people's actions.
posted morning of November 6th, 2011 by Jeremy
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