THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES

There’s a certain category of literary fiction that, for better or for worse, plays a huge role in shaping modern thought. It is idea-driven, thematically adventurous and structurally complex. It is also somewhat overrated. Just a few reviews can turn well-deserved praise into hype, and many of the standout authors of this generation—Jonathan Safran Foer and Zadie Smith, among others—have been unduly hailed as messiahs before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. The Savage Detectives has the near-impossible task of distinguishing itself in a genre that is already the subject of hyperbole and excess.
Roberto Bolaño, who died in 2003 at the age of 50, wrote scores of short stories and poems but barely finished two novels in his lifetime. The Savage Detectives, his first novel, follows the founders of the “visceral realist” school of poetry on their journey to find the mysterious poet Cesárea Tinajero. The concept sounds like a soft echo of Don Quixote and On the Road. Arturo Belano and Ulíses Lima, the title characters, are based on Bolaño and a friend, poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro; their quest, which spans several years and continents, is heroic, futile, and ultimately epic.
Bolaño diverges from his predecessors by crafting his own version of the novel format. His story consists of three sections. Juan García Madero, the newest addition to the visceral realist circle, narrates the first and third, relating a linear plotline that places Belano, Lima and a runaway prostitute in the middle of the Sonora Desert, searching for Tinajero. The second section is told disjointedly by other members of the movement, each of whom adds a new layer to a story that grows richer and more complex as time passes.
What’s exciting about reading this novel is watching Bolaño meld form and function on each page. Visceral realism takes shape right in front of us; it’s in Bolaño’s gritty yet unabashedly human prose. Likewise, the interplay of the past, present and future surfaces often, both in García Madero’s assertion that “what I write today I’m really writing tomorrow, which for me will be today and yesterday” and in the structure of the novel itself. Bolaño manages to write a story that both floats in space and occupies the very real space made by constant references to time and place. His vision isn’t always clear, but he pushes through his ideas with such ferocity and skill that it becomes impossible to break away.
Bolaño’s expression of lofty ideas works because he, unlike many of his peers, is so grounded. A thinly veiled memoir about young, rebellious poets could easily become too self-aware or precious, but Bolaño never falls into the trap of acknowledging his own wit and insight, instead focusing on the fantastic (sometimes outrageous) events that drive his plot forward. The Savage Detectives is really just a story, and an eminently readable one at that. It’s a pleasant coincidence that it happens to be a showcase for the type of thought that should be influencing a generation of writers.—Aku Ammah-Tagoe