The Savage Detectives
Novel by Roberto BolañoWikipedia
14
MENTIONS
5
EPISODES
5
PODCASTS
Search complete. 14 mentions across 5 episodes found for "The Savage Detectives".
Oct 11, 2026
James CrawfordHOST
And this, I think, is one of my favourite books of the last 20 years.
James CrawfordHOST
The breakthrough novel by the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño called The Savage Detectives.
James CrawfordHOST
So, so far, we've been in Jamaica in the 1980s, Manila in the 1950s, Los Angeles in the 1970s, and with...
James CrawfordHOST
The Savage Detectives were staying in the 1970s but moving south to Mexico City and a story of a group of roving avant-garde poets.
James CrawfordHOST
So explain the link here from Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives to The Disappearers.
Marlon JamesGUEST
So the link to Savage Detectives is way more direct in the sense that I've been trying to rip off of Savage Detectives my entire writing life.
Marlon JamesGUEST
I keep failing.
Marlon JamesGUEST
But an abrupt incident changes the narrative, and it's the same thing.
Rafael NarbonaGUEST
Nos extinguiremos, no sé cómo, si por culpa de alguna catástrofe climatológica o, o por un meteorito, o por alguna enfermedad o por una guerra.
Rafael NarbonaGUEST
Pero Roberto Bolaño, en "Los detectives salvajes", dice: bueno, ¿qué es eso de que los escritores se vuelven inmortales? Si el Sol se va a apagar, se va a perder todo, se va a perder Shakespeare, se va a perder Dante, se va a perder la Novena Sinfonía, se va a perder Rembrandt.
Rafael NarbonaGUEST
Y a mí eso sí que me resulta insoportable, pensar que somos fruto del azar, que la materia ha tenido la capacidad de crear estructuras cada vez más complejas y leyes que son en realidad como algoritmos.
Rafael NarbonaGUEST
Porque si tú buscas la ley de la gravedad, eso no es un objeto que tú puedas meter en una probeta, sino que es un precisamente un algoritmo que ve sus efectos, pero no puedes palpar la ley de la gravedad.
AndyHOST
Well, so I, I, I talked about this recently when I was talking about reading, uh, Cowboy Graves.
AndyHOST
Like, I have a few of his shorter novellas that I'd like to reread, and obviously eventually I'd like to reread, you know, 266 and The Savage Detectives.
AndyHOST
Um, but before I dig into those shorter works, I kinda just wanna read, like, the unread stuff.
AndyHOST
Um, and it's only 270-something pages.
Marlon JamesGUEST
Right.
Lily MeyerMODERATOR
I, for one, found The Disappearance to be very Savage Detectives.
Marlon JamesGUEST
Yeah.
Lily MeyerMODERATOR
Very Bolaño in a lot of ways.
Marlon JamesGUEST
I'm always, you know, I read a lot of books when I'm writing.
Marlon JamesGUEST
I wanna be influenced.
Marlon JamesGUEST
This is the third novel where I've failed to write Savage Detectives.
Lily MeyerMODERATOR
It's very hard to write Savage Detectives.
Kaelen Wilson-GoldieGUEST
I remember them as musicians, actually, coming from Ramallah.
Kaelen Wilson-GoldieGUEST
And I remember seeing a very early installation that they did that was an engagement with Roberto Bolaños' The Savage Detectives, which is a very beloved novel to me.
Kaelen Wilson-GoldieGUEST
And so I've seen their style of installation evolve.
Kaelen Wilson-GoldieGUEST
And they've been in a sort of mode of installation making for a couple years now where there are variations on a theme where you have...