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David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Roberto 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. He explores the novel as an epic of social structure and its decomposition.
List of contents
Introduction
I. Mexicans Lost in Mexico (1975)
Some Neighborhoods of Part I
II. The Savage Detectives (1976-1996)
Some Microclimates of Part II
III. The Deserts of Sonora (1976)
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the author
David Kurnick is associate professor of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel (Princeton, 2012) and the translator of Julio Cortázar’s Fantomas versus the Multinational Vampires (Semiotext[e], 2014). His writing has also been published in a variety of publications, including boundary 2, ELH, PMLA, Raritan, Victorian Studies, NOVEL, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Public Books
Summary
David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Roberto 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. He explores the novel as an epic of social structure and its decomposition.
Additional text
How to read The Savage Detectives anew? By providing a fresh, comprehensive, and detailed close reading that engages with the specificities of the book’s tantalizing idiosyncrasies without pandering to reductionist critical stances. Kurnick vindicates enthusiasm as a critical point of departure, a methodology almost, without succumbing to hagiography or fandom.
