The savage detectives : reread / David Kurnick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kurnick, David, 1972- author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Series:

Rereadings

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003. Detectives salvajes.

Bolaño, Roberto.

Physical Description:

viii, 210 pages ; 20 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2022]

Summary:

"The Savage Detectives elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanishspeaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño's novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño's life and work have obscured his achievements-and that The Savage Detectives is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores The Savage Detectives as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations-of states, continents, and generations-and the everyday stuff-parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation- of which they're made. For Kurnick, Bolaño's book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. Kurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel's microclimates and neighborhoods-the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño's most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that The Savage Detectives holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Games of Taste

Time to Read

Nonoptional

Normal People

The Map and the Territory

I. Mexicans Lost in Mexico (1975)

Some Neighborhoods of Part I

Fucking psychopaths

Poetesses

Maricones' Putas

"Octavio Paz"

Literalism, or poetry

Los infra

II. The Savage Detectives (1976

1996)

Some Microclimates of Part II

Maybe this, maybe that

The clown car and the ark

Poetesses II

Maricones II

Vaya nombrecito

Ulises continental

(Historically real)

An atlas of the novel

A space odyssey

III. The Deserts of Sonora (1976)

Fading Signals

An Invisible Day

Myth and Demystification

Coyotes

Games

The Edge of Empire

How to Read Donald Duck

Windows

A Twist in Reality

Noncommunicating Vessels

Hapax legomenon.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Kurnick, David, 1972- Savage detectives reread

ISBN:

9780231194105

0231194102

9780231194112

0231194110

OCLC:

1251506233