The wild detectives

The novel The Wild Detectives by Roberto Bolaño was published in the Spanish original in 1998 under the title Los detectives salvajes . It was translated into German by Heinrich von Berenberg and published in 2002 by Carl Hanser Verlag .

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The novel tells the story of Ulises Lima, a Mexican, and Arturo Belano, a Chilean who lives illegally in Mexico. Both are the central figures of the Mexican poet group of real visceralists or visceral realism ( visceral from Latin viscus = gut ). This movement existed in the mid-1970s and is made up of young people born in the 1950s who live in Mexico City . Everyday life is portrayed by some central actors of real visceralism, in addition to the main characters, the sisters María and Angélica Font, daughters of the architect Joaquín Font. The people involved meet here and in various cafés and bars. In addition to poetry, sex and drugs, especially marijuana and alcohol, play an important role.

Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano are interested in the history of their predecessors, the real visceralists of the 1920s, and do research in various archives. They come across a literary magazine of the time called Caborca , which was edited by Cesárea Tinajero and only appeared once.

As the only poet in this movement, you can find Amadeo Salvatierra, who lives in Mexico City. During your visit, he shows you the only issue of the magazine that contains a poem by Cesárea Tinajero, a graphic. The author apparently left Mexico City in the 1920s and returned to her hometown of Caborca in the Sonoran Desert .

María Font meets the prostitute Lupe, with whom María's father, Joaquín Font, appears to be in love. He hides her from her pimp and eventually picks up Lupe in his house. The pimp and his "policeman friend" besiege the house and when the situation becomes too explosive for those involved in Font's house, Ulises Lima, Arturo Belano and Juan García Madero (also a member of the real visceralists) flee to the state with a magnifying glass in Font's Ford Impala Sonora . There they want to escape Lupe's pimp Alberto on the one hand, and at the same time they go on the trail of Cesárea Tinajero. To do this, they drive all over Sonora and finally find them in a small town near the US border. On the way with her, they are caught by Lupe's pimp and his companion. In the ensuing conflict, Alberto is killed, his friend is gunshot and later dies. Cesárea Tinajero, who threw herself on Alberto's friend, who was struggling with Ulises Lima, is also fatally shot. Lupe was saved from her pimp, but the information that Cesárea Tinajero had hoped for is now lost.

While Juan García Madero stays in Mexico with Lupe, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano set off for Europe. Here their paths largely separate. Their respective stories are told from the perspective of those involved who met them. While Arturo Belano's traces are lost in war-torn Africa, Ulises Lima returns to Mexico.

Structure and interpretation of the novel

Roberto Bolaño describes the fate of a South and Central American generation that hoped and committed to the democratization of Latin America and failed. In Chile and Argentina, for example, there were military coups that force many people of this generation (as well as the author) to emigrate. So it stands to reason that Arturo “Belano” can be understood as the alter ego of the writer Bolaño. The death of Cesárea Tinajero also stands for this failure.

The three parts of the novel are not built along the course of the story of the protagonists. Rather, the reports on the life of both people in Europe range from the report on the group of real visceralists in Mexico in the 1970s to the flight to Sonora and the odyssey (“Ulisses” Lima) through the Sonoran desert.

First part

The first part "Mexicans, lost in Mexico (1975)" is laid out as a diary of Juan García Madero, who is included in the movement of the real visceralists, thus getting to know the main characters of the novel and the Font family. (In the second part, however, the only real visceralist, Ernesto García Grajales, emphasizes that Juan García Madero was never a member of this movement.)

Second part

The second part, "The Wild Detectives (1976–1996)", consists of reports from people who know Lima and Belano, mostly reports from their lives in Europe. These descriptions are interrupted by Amadeo Salvatierra's report, interspersed in fragments, about their visit to him to find Cesárea Tinajero and the interpretation of their only surviving poem.

third part

In the third part, "The Desert of Sonora (1976)", the other diary entries of Juan García Madero are reproduced. In them Madero describes the escape from Lupe's pimp and the search for Cesárea Tinajero in Sonora.

Trivia

As a reading recommendation, the French author JMG Arcimboldi is a forerunner figure by the German author Benno von Archimboldi from the later novel 2666 . There is also a certain parallel to the year 2666. Cesárea Tinajero, reported her former teacher colleague (part 3), is said to have spoken of "coming times" and meant "sometime around 2600", "two thousand six hundred and a few crushed ones ..."