THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES

"I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm just trying to tell a story. Maybe I'm also trying to understand its hidden workings, workings I wasn't aware of at the time but that weigh on me now. Still, my story won't be as coherent as I like."
—page 263, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Book 2 of The Savage Detectives is entitled "The Savage Detectives (1976–1996)." It is a complete departure from Book 1. Whereas Book 1 consisted of the diary entries of seventeen year old Juan García Madero, Book 2 is a cacophony of voices transmitted over two decades. This collection of voices is various people who have some sort of connection to the two "founders" of visceral realism, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano.

The stories are as much about the individual telling the stories, even though they may begin as tales about Lima or Belano or both. As readers, we never know who the "savage detectives" are that are able to coax these tales forth. Is it Lima and Belano themselves? Is it Juan García Madero? Is it other members of the visceral realists? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. The stories hold their own.

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The tales are told from the poetry workshops and bars of Mexico City, from the urban settings of Barcelona and Paris, from Israel, from the Spanish and Mexican countrysides, from the killing fields of 1990s Africa. The core story, broken up amidst the others, is told by Amadeo Salvatierra in January 1976 Mexico City. Salvatierra is recounting his meeting with Lima and Belano, as they drank glasses of mezcal and, later, tequila, while talking about literature and life. Lima and Belano are searching for information about Cesárea Tinajero, one of the members of the original visceral realists—the group whose name their literary movement has adopted as its own.

The tale of Salvatierra mixes and mingles with those of others who have also encountered Lima and Belano, either as companions or friends or fellow literary ranconteurs or, in some cases, in passing. This myriad, with their various tales and voices and biases, soon begins to speak in "one" voice. The question becomes: what is that "one" voice saying?

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"I have heard what the talkers were talking....the talk of the beginning and the end, / But I do not talk of the beginning or the end."
—from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, page 26 of Leaves of Grass

I finished The Savage Detectives a couple of weeks ago and I am still digesting it. It is not very often that a book lingers with me for so long. I keep feeling that I need to reread it, and soon. I missed something. I didn't miss anything. Images from the book remain vivid, vibrant, alive.

The book calls to me in the hours between midnight and dawn. The voices call out to me across the veils of sleep and dream. I can hear their melodies, their song.