The READIN Family Album
Me and Sylvia, walkin' down the line (May 2005)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

If you think, "I breathe," the "I" is extra. There is no you to say "I." What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale or when we exhale.

Shun Ryu Suzuki


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page
More recent posts
Older posts
More posts about:
The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño
Readings
The Romantic Dogs
Poetry

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

🦋 The real story and the told story

It's 1976 and the revolution has been defeated
but we've yet to find out.
We are 22, 23 years old.
Mario Santiago and I walk down a black and white street.
At the end of the street, in a neighborhood straight out of a fifties film, sits the house of Darío Galicia's parents.
It's the year 1976 and they've trepanned Darío Galicia's skull.
Another thing I spent a lot of mental energy on while reading The Savage Detectives, was on wondering how closely the events being narrated corresponded to actual events in the lives of Bolaño and his crowd. For example the poem "Visit to the Convalescent" from The Romantic Dogs narrates a visit Roberto and Mario Santiago make to the house of their friend, Darío Galicia, after he has surgery for an aneurysm. It reads like memoir, like something that really happened... In The Savage Detectives, Angélica Font tells the story of Ernesto San Epiphanio's convalescence and eventual death following his brain surgery at the end of 1977, by which time Arturo is in Barcelona and Ulises either in Europe or Israel, I'm not sure which, but in no position to visit Ernesto. So as I'm reading I'm wondering what changes have been made and what the reasoning is... Is Ernesto's character based on Darío? Or is Bolaño just using an event from Darío's life to tell a story that is much more about Angélica than about Ernesto, a relatively minor character? From poking around with Google it's clear that much of the broad framework of the story is true to life -- it would be interesting to learn where the story diverges from life.

posted afternoon of Saturday, December 26th, 2009
➳ More posts about The Savage Detectives
➳ More posts about Roberto Bolaño
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about The Romantic Dogs
➳ More posts about Poetry

Respond:

Name:
E-mail:
(will not be displayed)
Link:
Remember info

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange
readinsinglepost