Roberto Bolaño

Second prize with Zora Neale Hurston.

Why is it always that people in the history of these kind of prizes that Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy West and, and, and, you know, Roberto Bolano are always coming in second?

That's true.

Um, but think about-

But this short story is really an example of meta-literature.

writing that's reflecting on writing and all the possibilities of literature itself you see literature isn't a stale lifeless thing it's an encounter that can generate possibilities and those possibilities can keep going for as long as there are words on a page and people to read them and borges isn't the only writer who explored these possibilities i've got to tell you about los detectives salvajes The Savage Detectives by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño.

The 1998 novel is told through diary entries and interviews, and it's kind of a detective slash adventure story.

It follows some young poets on an international quest to find the extremely elusive founder of an obscure poetry movement called visceral realism.

It's fine

... maybe I did, is celebrated for her understanding of Bolaño's intent and context and everything in Spanish.

But really-

Can, can't wait to hear this get sampled.

This is what our second grader drew last year.

They, they remind me a little bit of the new Bolaño covers.

Um, but the new Bolaño covers aren't, like, so, like, childlike in their drawing.

They have something that's a little bit more crisp.

But that's, this might be the new literary trend.

I mean, if you see Bosch, if you see like, I don't know, like the whole Nabi movement, if you understand like the beginnings of how like ready-made was done, those stories are fascinating.

It's like you read a 256 page of like 2666 with Roberto Bolaño's absolute masterpiece.

Right.

And his fictitious understanding of how Duchamp was in, you know, Duchamp was just sitting in like Argentina at his sister's wedding.

100%.

But Bolaño's, like, his generally straightforward prose mixed in with just the occasional awesome metaphor or simile or symbolism.

Like, I feel like that's something Juan Rufo is doing, too.

I've read this twice, and the first time, his prose really didn't stick out to me at all.

And then the second time, I was just astonished by how good of a... how well he, just how beautiful his prose can be.

And he's not trying to flex those muscles all the time, but he does just enough to show you that he can and to add to the aesthetic quality of the work.

And I think that's something Bolaño does as well.

very seldom is Bolaño like really trying to feel very literary, you know, like he's just kind of like, it almost feels unedited sometimes where it's just like, yep, that'll do.

Once you start looking for them, Weld told us, references to the Spanish Civil War appear everywhere.

From the writings of Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Roberto Bolaño, to the childhood memories of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, both of whom were trained in guerrilla warfare by Spanish exiles.

Other such references can be found in the Alarmed Sermons of Conservative Bishops and the Rants of Reactionary Ideologues.

More than a memorable episode, the conflict between the Spanish Republic and its phalanges foes formed a rich and complex object lesson for both the left and the right.

But go listen to those songs for a, uh, a, a less abrasive than Lautgedicht soundtrack to this episode of The Invisible College.

Which will be about Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives.

Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, a novel of 1998.

We have come to the end of our seven-episode summer 2026 sequence from The New World, which was primarily concerned with writers from the Americas who, in certain ways, transgressed, uh, or trans something-ed the borders of the Americas, who, uh, and who also transgressed borders of literary genre and literary style, whether they initiated in the United States or in Canada or in Brazil or in Colombia or in Chile via Mexico, as is the case today.

I have been o-obnoxiously over-pronouncing the Spanish language, uh, a-and I will, uh, probably continue to do so in this episode.

There is a desire for a new type of culture.

There is a desire to replace the old revolution, which had become decrepitly authoritarian, perhaps as emblematized by Gabo's friendship with Fidel Castro, as we discussed on the last episode, and there is a desire for something new.

And what that turned out to be, [lips smack] uh, was the career and the work of Roberto Bolaño.