{"id":368,"date":"2008-11-29T20:26:20","date_gmt":"2008-11-30T00:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/?p=368"},"modified":"2008-11-29T20:26:20","modified_gmt":"2008-11-30T00:26:20","slug":"bloggin-bout-bolano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/archives\/368","title":{"rendered":"Bloggin bout Bolano"},"content":{"rendered":"

A smattering of reviews for Roberto Bolano\u2019s The Savage Detectives:<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Bolano\u2019s ambition is huge; his capacity to tell stories, never-ending\u2026What impresses us is the fine ear of Bolano, who can masterfully create so many different voices, each of them telling a story\u2026The most important writer of the Spanish language of this generation.\u2019 \u2013Horacio Moya, Pittsburgh<\/em> Post-Gazette.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s no exaggeration to call [Bolano] a genius.\u00a0 <\/span>The Savage Detectives <\/em>alone should grant him immortality.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s an outstanding meditation on art, truth, and the search for the roots and the self\u2026Astounding.\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>Ilan Stavans, The Washington Post Book World<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s great literature about literature that is lost\u2014or, for that matter, was never fated to be\u2014which in essence, pretty much encompasses everything else in life\u2014except this book, whose appearance in English is a major literary occasion.\u2019 \u2013Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond this praise, the book was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, it won two of the most prestigious Spanish awards: the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize.\u00a0 <\/span>So, in light of this, I will now say that I\u2019m terribly disappointed.\u00a0 <\/span>Four-hundred and ninety pages in and I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019m reading.\u00a0 <\/span>One review says that it\u2019s a search for a long lost poet: I\u2019d say about twenty pages thus far have been devoted to that story line.\u00a0 <\/span>The introduction made it sound like the book was about the perseverance of art in the modern world: I\u2019d say that theme is a strong undercurrent, but far from dominant and far from controlling the narrative.\u00a0 <\/span>There are so many characters and so many stories and so many disappearing characters and stories that I\u2019m not sure what to focus on.\u00a0 <\/span>The parallels between these stories are tentative at best, and I\u2019m afraid to say less postmodern than my research paper would require.\u00a0 <\/span>A terrible weight, therefore, is upon my shoulders as I hit the homestretch.\u00a0 <\/span>The weight of crafting some themes that are not merely superficial exaggerations of postmodern stylings in the novel; the weight of trying to use the novel to back up the strong postmodern points brought up in the introduction which I\u2019ve yet to see fully evinced in the book itself; the weight of getting a good grade on a paper about a book whose size is forcing me to sacrifice my lesser obligations this Thanksgiving, such as enjoying college football and enjoying some nature on a horse ride.\u00a0 <\/span>I do have hope, however, that soon this novel will take a turn; that the endless stream of interviews will slow down and begin to form a much needed conclusion which hopefully applies to the postcolonial and postmodern themes I had assumed the book would tackle.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve talked about postmodernism\u2019s love to disrupt expectations in blogs before.\u00a0 <\/span>Unfortunately now I\u2019m confronted with some real consequences, and I find it not as stimulating as I do infuriating.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A smattering of reviews for Roberto Bolano\u2019s The Savage Detectives: \u00a0 \u2018Bolano\u2019s ambition is huge; his capacity to tell stories, never-ending\u2026What impresses us is the fine ear of Bolano, who can masterfully create so many different voices, each of them telling a story\u2026The most important writer of the Spanish language of this generation.\u2019 \u2013Horacio Moya, … Continue reading Bloggin bout Bolano<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}