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A review by ailynobaire
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every damn thing matters! It's just that we don't realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don't even realize that's a lie.
- “Dentist,” Bolaño
• The madness of youth can only be understood in retrospect.
• The trinity of life in Bolaño’s eyes: youth, love, death.
• Constructing one’s idea of self-identity with the voices of others.
• Putting together a vision of the
world in contradictory fragments: like Rashomon, there is no knowing ourselves.
• The truth of literature is the truth of what can be found outside the novel, through the novel.
• Art is futile, but it is not meaningless. Its purpose lies in its futility. Our answers may only be found in the attempt.
• If there is Truth, we are incapable of knowing it. Like Cesárea in the desert, it dies upon our touching it, like a mirage, a dream. It requires a lifetime to catch only a glimpse of True Love and Truth, and even then, you don’t know when you have it. You look back and there it was, it was there. You held it, but for a moment.
• The madness of youth can only be understood in retrospect.
• The trinity of life in Bolaño’s eyes: youth, love, death.
• Constructing one’s idea of self-identity with the voices of others.
• Putting together a vision of the
world in contradictory fragments: like Rashomon, there is no knowing ourselves.
• The truth of literature is the truth of what can be found outside the novel, through the novel.
• Art is futile, but it is not meaningless. Its purpose lies in its futility. Our answers may only be found in the attempt.
• If there is Truth, we are incapable of knowing it. Like Cesárea in the desert, it dies upon our touching it, like a mirage, a dream. It requires a lifetime to catch only a glimpse of True Love and Truth, and even then, you don’t know when you have it. You look back and there it was, it was there. You held it, but for a moment.