Roberto Bolano 'The Savage Detectives'

So much has been written about Roberto Bolano since his books have come out in English translation it seems a bit redundant to add one more review to the mountain available in print and on the internet. And there is such a great review of The Savage Detectives by Benjamin Kunkel in 2007's LRB that there is really nothing further to add, except, if Garcia Marquez, magic realism, and the so-called Boom in Latin American literature left you cold, Bolano could be exactly the writer you have been waiting for, not so much because he repudiates that oeuvre (though he does) but because he represents something entirely unlike both that trend and really any trend in literature, except perhaps the Beats - his sprawling, anarchic, idealistic, almost-formless style, with its flawed, chatty, uncertain characters, its defiantly inconclusive narrative segments and breathless profusion of detail, and its repeated commitment to the idea of a thoroughly lived, embodied poetics, as opposed to the quasi-fascist, stylistically finished literature of the past, is a kind of warcry, an anti-literary statement which is both politically and aesthetically radical. You will wonder what sort of a ride this writer is taking you on, what sort of a fool he thinks you are, until somewhere near the middle of the book you recognize, through the humor, the irony, the misplaced ideals, the vanishing-into-oblivion of people and places and plans, how entirely lifelike these characters and their situations really are, how unlike the perfectly packaged narratives of other writers' characters, and how unusual, how utterly refreshing it feels to encounter this sort of thing in print. You really have to read the book to believe it. It is the sort of upheaval literature needs in order to remain relevant, to thrive and change and live. The Boom is dead! Long live Bolano!