In the first 60 pages of The Savage Detectives the reader is introduced to the Mexico City literary underworld of the 1970s through the eyes of 17-year-old Juan García Madero. His point of view is that of the desperate adolescent reader: impressionable, impassioned, idealistic and longing. He vies to get the visceral realists acceptance. Not literally because they have already accepted him into “the gang,” but as friends. In their world the stars are the visceral realists, other poets and Cesárea Tinajero, a long-lost poet.
García Madero wants to study literature but his Uncle wants him to be a lawyer, so like many frustrated literature enthusiasts, he signs up for the responsible law school route in the university’s “hallowed halls.” But he also signs up for the poet Alamo’s poetry workshops. García Madero finds the regular workshops mundane until they are interrupted by a visit from two leaders of the visceral realists–a Mexican literary movement, kind of. They are Arturo Belano (arguably a thinly veiled Roberto Bolaño) and Ulises Lima. When they scuffle with Alamo, García Madero shows literary prowess while siding with Belano and Lima and they invite him to join their group.
The Encrucijada Veracruzana, the bar on calle Bucareli, is the local hangout of the visceral realists when not at the upscale Font family house. In the bar storeroom García Madero has his first sexual experience. The waitress Brigada takes him into the storage room where she gives him “a blow job” (Bolaño 16) as he tries to think of The Vampire, a poem he admires for its obscure and dark eroticism. I find this funny.
What I especially like about this section is its inclusion of eroticism alongside class tensions. The eroticism of García Madero’s sexual awakening, first with poetry, with the poem The Vampire, precedes his meeting with waitress Brigada, and then finally with María Font. This appeals to the body of the reader, but Bolaño also knew how to appeal to the mind, or at least to make the reader feel intellectually justified in taking pleasure from the sex scenes.On pages 49 through 55 Garcia Madero walks into the Font’s backyard cottage to find Angélica Font, María Font and Ernesto San Epifanio looking at a series of photos. In the photos San Epifanio is having sex with Billy, the son of a Honduran ambassador. The situation could not be more offensive. Not only is it a sexual act between a man and a boy captured by a mysterious photographer (perhaps Ulises Lima) but the boy’s sister was also present, watching, and it all took place in a run-down hotel with bad lighting “like something from a Santo movie.”(Bolaño 53)
In their usual artistic pretensions the Font sisters are discussing the photos–asking whether they are pornography or erotic art.
“What do you think of the pictures?” Angélica said.
“Hard-core.” I said.
“Hard-core? That’s all?” San Epifanio got up and sat in the wooden chair where I had been. From there he watched me with one of his knife-blade smiles.
“Well there’s a kind of poetry to them. But if I told you they only struck me as poetic, I’d be lying. They’re strange pictures. I’d call them pornographic. Not in a negative sense but definitely pornographic.”
“Everybody tends to pigeonhole things they don’t understand,” said San Epifanio. “Did the pictures turn you on?”
“No,” I said emphatically, although the truth is I wasn’t sure.
“They didn’t turn me on, but they didn’t disgust me either.”
“Then it isn’t pornography. Not for you at least.”
“But I liked them,” I admitted.
“Then just say that: you liked them and you don’t know why you liked them, which doesn’t matter much anyway, period.”(Bolaño 54)
The reader asks his/herself a similar set of questions during parts of the Bolaño novel. Undoubtedly, some readers decide to leave the novel based on their answers–especially those expecting high literature propriety, who may leave with a distaste in their mouth. Overall, I think what is created is a great moment of subversion of the high and low art opposition, which takes place through the novel’s acute self-awareness. One imagines Bolaño wearing a sardonic smile as audience members get up and leave the theater.
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