I'm sure a lot of you aren't surprised to see this passage here, or if you are it's only because it didn't come sooner. This is one of my favorite passages from a book that has almost single handedly sustained my love of books for the last two years.
I've been thinking about this passage and what I want to say about it for the past week, and trying to articulate what I think about it has highlighted the absurdity of this undertaking. This passage comes from a novel that is 648 pages long and is written in forty-eight different voices. This is a four page segment written by one of those forty-eight narrators. There is no way to extract this small piece from its gargantuan host without losing some of its meaning, so i apologize to anyone who's reading this post and hasn't read The Savage Detectives, because to a certain degree, the electric won't flow unless the circuit is complete.
Nevertheless, I'll continue and I'll do my best to focus on what's here, because I think the passage has many intrinsic qualities that everyone can enjoy. One of the most stunning things about this passage is its pacing. It wasn't until after I read The Savage Detectives that I really started paying attention to the pace of the narrative in my own writing. There is one line in particular that sums it up for me: "And somehow all of us felt incredibly happy, I had forgotten all about Cesar, Maria was looking up at the stars that had miraculously appeared in the sky of Mexico City like holographic projections, and even the way we were walking was graceful, our progress incredibly slow, as if we were advancing and retreating to put off the moment at which we would inevitably have to reach the bus stop, all of us walking and looking up at the sky (Maria was naming the stars)." When I first read this passage, I felt exactly like they did as they walked to the bus stop. The narrative moves incredibly fast in sections and slows almost to a halt in others, to the effect that I, as a reader, felt like I was "advancing and retreating to put off the moment" at which everything came into focus. It was like I was alternately running and stumbling through this book while staring at the heavens.
For example, notice how sentences like - "And this went on for months, three or four months or even nine months, and one day I broke up with him." - accelerate the narrative and race through almost a year as if it were nothing, while sentences like - "and then I don't know why but I was sure he'd get lost and I said wait for me at the metro stop and when I went to meet him I found him sitting on some crates of fruit, leaning against a tree, really, the best place possible. You're lucky, I said. Yes, he said, I'm extremely lucky." - settle into a specific moment that couldn't have taken more than a few seconds. The moments that Bolano chooses to focus on make the passage that much more extraordinary, because they are unexpected. There is no way to anticipate when he will gloss over something and when he'll go into full detail, and as a result, you feel a bit disoriented and intoxicated, because you can't wrap your mind around the story or predict where it is heading - all you can do is live each moment at the mercy of the narrator. Which is what makes the final paragraph so powerful, in my opinion. After more than 100 pages of idealizing Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano and buying into Visceral Realism (even though you're skeptical at first, Bolano and his characters win you over), you're given someone's perspective who sees through it all, and it is not a character that you instinctively dislike: "The whole visceral realism thing was a love letter, the demented strutting of a dumb bird in the moonlight, something essentially cheap and meaningless." Just as you expect everything to come into focus, you're left more disoriented than before.
And then there is the wonderful line: "He told me that he'd like to read some of my poems, he told me that he loved the stars of both hemispheres, north and south, and he asked for my number." It reminds me of a line from a BIGGIE song: "Who they attractin' with that line, 'What's your name what's your sign.' Soon as he buy that wine I just creep up from behind and ask what your interests are." I almost feel like I should find it cheesy, but for some reason I don't. Somehow, something that in any other context would be trite, here, is beautiful. How does he do it?
And then there is the wonderful line: "He told me that he'd like to read some of my poems, he told me that he loved the stars of both hemispheres, north and south, and he asked for my number."
ReplyDeleteAre you saying the sentiment is beautiful? Or the way it's phrased? Because it seems like the sentiment there is intended to be all cheese, and indicative of his fraud (he's not even looking at the stars).
And while I have zero sense of humor, it perhaps is meant to be funny?
Again this is all context:
ReplyDelete"And somehow all of us felt incredibly happy, I had forgotten all about Cesar, Maria was looking up at the stars that had miraculously appeared in the sky of Mexico City like holographic projections, and even the way we were walking was graceful, our progress incredibly slow, as if we were advancing and retreating to put off the moment at which we would inevitably have to reach the bus stop, all of us walking and looking up at the sky (Maria was naming the stars). Much later Arturo told me that he hadn't been looking at the stars but at the lights in some apartments, tiny rooftop apartments on Calle Versalles or Lucerna or Calle Londres, and that was the moment he realized that nothing would make him happier than being with me in one of those apartents, eating a few sandwiches with sour cream from a certain street stall on Bucareli. But he didn't tell me that at the time (I would've thought he was crazy). He told me that he'd like to read some of my poems, he told me that he loved the stars of both hemispheres, north and south, and he asked for my number."
The reason that sentence "He told me he'd like to read some of my poems....etc" is beautiful is because it comes on the back of what was obviously a magical period of time they had hanging out (it ends a perfect night, and a perfect paragraph). its definetely not meant to be funny...
So I think we are sort of missing the point if we think that this asking for digits is a pickup line of someone who he is meeting for the first time at a bar (or an opener of conversation), as it is not. i think it is real and not cheesy because arturo truly believes it, the sentiment itself is real.
The interesting thing, is when reading this in the book, her revealing that "deep down, no one took it (visceral realism) seriously" hits you in the gut, because we, the reader believed in it. The poet whose voice makes up the first section of the book believed it. She almost buries Belano when she says that his whole art was just to win her back...
but is this true? in a book made up of 48 voices, and forever belano and lima are a mystery, you realize that there are only elements of the truth, there is no simple picture- just layers upon layers that mix in a form more complex than we can ever know. Maybe a part of belano did do it for laura. Maybe ppl did become disillusioned. But obviously belano kept at it after he he long forgot Laura (inertia, initial force?), and that Laura has no monopoly on the truth...everyone is narcissistic in their way.
Everybody tells the truth as they see it, all the people part of something, and yet still the objective truth is intagible- there is no truth in itself in a Platonic sense (not for us humans, maybe for God...but still I doubt it) (ppl look back on things too and even their reflection on the matter changes, see Rashomon). This is Belano's geninus, he has absolutely no fear, he is willing to put his own life to the grinder...trying to get as close as possible to the truth/purpose as well as the nature of truth in his life and his reflection of it, through his writing.
Sure, context is everything, and perhaps I'm missing out on the larger context of the novel, not having read it, and how this one narrator's take/voice fits into all that, but within the context of the passage itself, the combination of the narrator's final indictment of Belano and the fact that while all look at the stars (as projections from earth) and Belano looking at the lights in the windows (as if they were stars... projecting his desire into those rooms), and instead of saying what he thought, he slips her a tawdry line about liking all the stars in both hemispheres, and then asks for her number, it seems that the sentiment expressed by Belano is false, and meant to reveal him as the fraud she eventually thinks he is.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a judgment on the beauty of the paragraph, which is certainly subjective, but I think given the way that segment is told ("Later he said this, but he said this other thing at the time"), no matter how nicely one thinks it's phrased, belies the eventual conclusion she comes to.
Perhaps other parts of the book would convince you that the man is sincere. But just from what I see here, it seems, if you're going to take this (admittedly maybe unreliable) narrator at her word, the punch to the gut you all are talking about seems presaged by oddities like the one contained in this paragraph. I'm not saying it isn't a polished period. I'm saying that the artfulness seems to have a purpose other than simply trying to say something beautiful (which, if we're speaking of just that last sentence, I don't see), or, simply relate a story.
Of course, I defer to those who have actually read the book. It was just a thought.
Funny enough that we are discussing this one sentence and I'm not even sure what this two hemispheres line means, what is it, astrology?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you both to a certain degree, becuase the line is cheese for me, especially when you consider, as S pointed out, that he's not even looking at the stars but at someone's apartment. But I'm not sure you're meant to take it entirely at face value, just the way you're not meant to take Laura entirely seriously when she says that Bolano's literary movement is essentially cheap and meaningless (or maybe you are meant to take her seriously, but you're not meant to agree with her completely, because her perspective is just a drop in the bucket after all). for me it was almost more beautiful because it was cheesy, and because i realized how cheesy it was. It was almost like he couldn't find the words to say what he was feeling without relying on a contrived idea of what is beautiful and poetic, which i found awesome and poignant - especially reading it in this day and age, as a member of a generation where everyone is afraid to be cheesy. It's almost like bolano starts out cheesy and full of contrived passion and grows into it, while everyone else (or a lot of people i know these days) starts full of passion and guards it with irony and sarcasm and slowly watches it diminish.
ReplyDeleteOver all, I guess, for me, the line kind of elicited a chuckle becuase it was trite and overly dramatic, but for some reason, i still believed entirely in the sincerity of the sentiment.