Comments on: The Poetry in the Prose: Part One (and If You Haven’t Read The Savage Detectives Consider Yourself Spoiler Alerted)

By: Jason Guriel

Jason Guriel — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:27:28 +0000

Thanks for these comments, but I don’t find phrases like “ultra-conservative, avant haters” to be very precise or useful. Like all cheap shots, such phrases are fired off easily enough but usually miss their mark. Assuming Bolano’s book is as leftist as some claim, doesn’t the sheer fact of Starnino’s praise of Bolano’s book suggest that Starnino is at least slightly more complex a critic than the ideologue he’s accused of being? (And wouldn’t any supposedly right-wing ideologue’s enjoyment of Bolano’s book suggest that the book itself is more complex than it may appear to those who identify with its more leftist energies?) Starnino recently named a book by Coach House Press – Canada’s most obviously ‘avant’ publisher – to be one of his books of the year. Although he has objected to a certain book by a certain Bok – in a review that is more infamous than actually read – Starnino has anthologized other ‘avant’ work by his supposed rival, a not particularly hateful gesture, and one which I have not seen returned by the pitchfork-bearing poets who are convinced that Starnino’s their enemy (even if they don’t appear to have studied him very carefully; if they did, they might be surprised to find a thoughtful, spirited critic who disdains the dogma of any party, and wishes no one’s eyes put out). Starnino may not be in lockstep with the left, but who would want to be in lockstep with anything? (For the record, I consider myself left of center, politically, but I also believe that true inclusiveness – one of the left’s better impulses – sometimes requires (even if it often fails to pull off) a less hateful tolerance of real contradictions, which can be difficult but rewarding. And reading Starnino, whatever you perceive his politics to be, can be rewarding.)
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By: Guillermo Parra

Guillermo Parra — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:51:29 +0000

“…at the end of the day, it’s not about whether David Orr likes your work or whether it gets tapped “avant” by JB3–it’s about writing and sharing it with others any way you can.”
Posted by: P. Scott Cunningham on February 9, 2009 8:37 PM
Sure, that’s true. And yet Bolaño and his characters thrive off difference, polemics and the tensions between “mainstream” and “avant-garde.” I imagine he’d be simultaneously delighted and horrified at all the attention he’s getting from the likes of Time and Oprah. And I think he’d dread being the latest literary fad (which he seems to be for some). After all, Belano and Lima wanted to kidnap Octavio Paz, which I find delightful. That scene where Paz’s brain-dead secretary watches Lima and Paz sit together in a park and chat seems to point to that battle between the mainstream and the avant-garde (a non-event in the end).
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By: P. Scott Cunningham

P. Scott Cunningham — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:37:08 +0000

Jason, thanks for posting about The Savage Detectives. n+1 had a nice summation of Bolaño in a recent issue, in which they said that for RB, “Literature is a helpless, undignified, and not especially pleasant compulsion, like smoking.” But smokers feel more comfortable with other smokers, right? I enjoyed every page of TSD because I felt like I was in the company of characters who cared as desperately for poetry as I do (or more so), and at the end of the day, it’s not about whether David Orr likes your work or whether it gets tapped “avant” by JB3–it’s about writing and sharing it with others any way you can. If that’s not enough for you, in my reading of Bolaño, then maybe it’s not writing you’re in love with.
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By: JB3

JB3 — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:58:06 +0000

I love the delicious irony of two ultra-conservative, avant haters such as Orr and Starnino praising a book written by a guy who’d probably stick a fork in their eye if he had ever met them. Those two manage to drain the life out of just about every party.
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By: Jason Guriel

Jason Guriel — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:23:22 +0000

Thanks, Mairead, for bringing up Keats, the author of some of the best “dark-matter” out there. I’m glad I didn’t discover him when I was younger, when I was really vulnerable to those more mythical works of art.
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By: Mairead

Mairead — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:26:55 +0000

Jason — So true. Tinajero’s death caught me like a one-two punch, first hitting the reader-me emotionally invested in Belano and Lima’s journey, and then the writer-me, who realized just how well Bolano knew what he was doing. You can only sit back and say Wow.
An example of this dark-matter approach to poetry that has always struck me is Keats, of course. What he wrote is beautiful and interesting. What he didn’t – what his death at 25 prevented him from – is infinitely more so.
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