Robert Bolano and Jack Kerouac

Well into reading Roberto Bolano’s Savage Detectives I started to reminisce about having read Jack Kerouac’s Desolation Angels over 30 years ago. Indeed Bolano’s book provides an echo call to the escapades Kerouac described. There are many similarities between the 2 books BUT one also needs to acknowledge that there are clear stylistic differences.

Both books celebrate the Bohemian lifestyle and the heroes of both books are vagabond poets searching for truth and good times on a globe trotting wanderlust. Bolano barely hides his own identity behind the character Arturo Belano and his sidekick Ulisses Lima who lead the visceral realist poetry movement in Mexico City in the 1970’s. Likewise Kerouac hardly hides behind his Jack Duluoz character with his sidekicks Irwin Garden (Allen Ginsberg), Bill Hubbard (William Burroughs) and Cody Pomeroy (Neal Cassady) in the 1950's.

Drugs, women and a free lifestyle celebrating the artist and writer’s lifestyle make for fascinating reading. Both Bolano and Kerouac have no choice but to follow their muses as they travel from Mexico to Europe and back. Even the roads they travel transverse with one another.

While Bolano’s book has dozens of voices – the interesting people that Belano and Lima interface with, and a plot which appears from time to time (the search for a lost poetress while chased by an jilted pimp), Kerouac’s is an almost diary form of his adventure from the solitude of a forest ranger communing with nature to the drug scenes in Tangiers as Hubbard hold court.

Bolano clearly writes from a Latin American context while Kerouac writes from his American (USA) experience.

What I like most about both books is that they have as their focus young writers who worship the poets who came before them. Though there is an almost 40 year gap between the publications of these books they resound in one another quite emphatically.

I highly recommend both books and writers.

I've never read Kerouac, despite having heard about On the Road as an icon of a generation just a smidge older than my own. Kerouac seems to have been returning to the public consciousness lately after quite a few years in which the vogue for his style of free-wheeling wanderlust was eclipsed by a generation that seemed rather more strait-laced. It's interesting how styles of thought cycle in and out of fashion.

Your description of Savage Detectives reminds me of a movie I saw recently about Che Guevara's youthful odyssey through South America.

You've gotta like someone who worships poets.

Thinking about it there are a number of parallels between Kerouac and Bolano. Both are language and novel innovators. Kerouac wrote a kind of vagabond Homeric kind of modern day fiction drawing much from the fringes of the society and the counterculture of his time. He seemed more driven by particular enthusiasms than Bolano accentuating on people and things he loved and reshaping them into almost mythic dimensions making them at the same time appealing to a large part of American Society and thereby changing perspectives of what literature is and what it can be. Though his was an unique style it wasn't without progenitors. There is reason to believe though that his life (especially towards its end) was much darker than in his novels--which are very autobiographical. Another comparison is they both died relatively young--in their late 40's. As dark as it got for Kerouac though it seems much darker for Bolano--with Operation Condor lurking in his shadow--one major difference between the two at least for me is there is very little optimism in Bolano's work. Though he shares with Kerouac an autobiographical and stream of conscience technique his main character Arturo Belano is on forced exile, more of a man without country--even in exile when the action of the novel begins. He's a young Chilean living in Mexico--part of a Latin American diaspora taking place at the time running away from a vindictive dictatorial regime to be replaced in the action by a crazed and jealous gangster and his friends. In the works of both writers though their characters wander endlessly always in search a new way of seeing things and seeing through things. Both Kerouac and Bolano had the style and drive to push their visions and their artistic expression into new unchartered territory. A very good thread starter Bert.

Interesting that they both died young, and around the same age.

They both seemed to be flames that consumed huge amounts of energy that could not be nurtured and sustained. THat they both were done in by substance abuse is a story often heard about artists.

Iriley- is there a documented conncetion to this Operation Condor and Bolano...does this have to do with his brief fling supporting the pro Allende forces in Chile?

Your point is well-taken that Bolano's themes are often set in a political context while Kerouac appears situated in a more experiential world.

Bolano apparently had been arrested and in custody for several days before two former classmates of his working as prison guards snuck him out. I read a comment somewhere where he mentioned something along the lines of how many years he had been angry with Allende for not arming he and other younger people to take on the army during the coup--only realizing after many years that they would have been slaughtered. As for Operation Condor it was originally set up by a Chilean colonel and I believe his name was Contreras--it coordinated with the governments of Argentina--under a military dictatorship at the time, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, I believe Bolivia--there was a 7th country maybe Venezuela to carry out clandestine operations against former opponents of the aforementioned regimes--many of them assassinations including one of a man by the name of Letellier who was killed along with an american female journalist in Washington D.C.--car bomb. They also threatened the life of the former Mayor of NYC who was then a democratic congressman Ed Koch. Whether Bolano was a serious target for them--the answer is probably not--though keeping in mind that they were very keen on maintaining and adding to lists of those they considered subversives. This group of countries coordinated information and operations not only on armed revolutionary groups but also on democratically minded opponents who were not associated with those revolutionary groups and the operations and assassinations covered the whole spectrum of dissident voices.

OK, I'm a bit late to the party. (In fact, it looks like everyone's gone home and turned out the lights, but I did bring a sixer, so what the heck...)

I just finished The Savage Detectives (which I thought was brilliant) and figured I'd throw in my own thoughts.

I've also been reading Llamadas Telefonicas (Telephone Calls, suspect it hasn't been translated yet) and the character of Arturo Belano shows up in several of the stories that make up that collection. In fact, one of the stories is about the two childhood friends who rescued him from the Chilean prison.

I actually find it intriguing that Bolaño chooses to use a stand-in with a pseudonym. Borges (and Lugones before him) wrote stories where their stand-ins take part in rather fantastic events, but the stand-ins have the exact same names as the authors. I mention this because Bolaño was a fan of Borges, so it's likely the thought would have crossed his mind that he didn't really need to bother with a pseudonym. In fact, it makes me wonder if the stories are too autobiographical to tell with his own name. (Whereas I suspect Borges never really discovered the Aleph in anybody's basement.)

On a comparison note, I couldn't help but think of Palahniuk's Haunted. (I know I've pummeled Palahniuk enough in this group, so I'll try to keep it short.) Both stories are about writers (or wannabe writers) and their stories of (various degrees of) depravity. The comparison reinforces my conviction that Haunted is too claustrophobic to be effective. (Just as the authors are trapped in an old theater, Palahniuk's ideas are trapped in a narrative too self absorbed to allow them to do anything but eat each other.) Detectives, on the other hand, really achieves that sense of vitality and multi-vocality that Haunted seem to be aiming for.

Anyway, this thread convinced me to pick up Desolation Angels, which I've owned since high school when a friend gave it to me. I've been curious enough about the beats to not sell the book or give it away, but never really curious enough to actually read it. Since I'm trying to get through more of my TBR this year, I'll have to make it a priority.

I really like Desolation Angels. Its not got the broad elements you might be concerned about encountering in On the Road.

Re your comment on Palahniuk, Carlos - I hit a point some years ago where I got really annoyed with books about miserable writers with writer's block or other troubles who couldn't get appreciated or make any money, and I just stopped reading novels about writers. Perhaps unfairly, but I suspect I'm not the only one, because there don't seem to be as many of these novels around any more.

Good biographies of writers are another thing entirely. I love them.

Carlos- I very much look forward to hearing your take on Desolation Angels- it is so many, many years since I read it; yet when i was pretty much half way through Savage Detectives I started to reminisce about it. As a young man it stirred my wanderlust.

no way!
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