READIN

🦋 Interviewees

Todo el realismo visceral era una carta de amor, el pavoneo demencial de un pájaro idiota a la luz de la luna, algo bastante vulgar y sin importancia.

— Laura Jáuregui
January 1976

"Interviews" is definitely how I'm understanding these clips of text -- they are not explicitly presented as such, but they read like they are compiled from tape recordings of interviews done by someone making a documentary about visceral realism -- Natasha Wimmer's "faceless interviewer whose presence is only hinted at by the tone of the many characters who testify to their involvement with Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima." Who is this documentarian? And what do the dates on the entries signify? They must be the date on which the interview took place. The identity of the person who spent 20 years on building this archive of interviews became, for me, the central mystery of the book, the first time I read it -- a mystery I was not ultimately able to solve. (It can't be García Madero or Belano, as the first interviews are recorded in January 1976, while those two are driving around Sonora.)

Speaking of mysteries and clues, one of the fun pieces of reading this book, for me, is tracking down information about the infrarealists, the poets whose lives and identities form the basis for many of the book's characters. (And also the stridentists, approximately the visual-art arm of the infrarealist movement.) I'm going to use this entry, below the fold, as a notepad for links about the infrarealists, updating it as I find good new information.

• Página/12 has a good summary of what real poet serves as background for what character in the book. Felipe Ossandón wrote an article for El Mercurio on Bolaño's early literary skirmishes which contains similar information. Another article is Quién es quién en Los detectives salvajes, at Lanzallamas.org.
• infrarrealismo.com is the central point for information and links about the infrarealists. It is maintained by Ramón Mendez, who is the background for the character of Pancho Rodríguez.
• Juan Esteban Harrington (a Chilean poet) is widely considered to be the background for García Madero, although he himself denies it, saying "García Madero was all of us." Harrington wrote a brief manifesto for infrarealism. Ossandón's article linked above features some delicious reminiscences by Harrington.
• Piel Divina is the only poet who had the same handle in real life and in the book -- he is Jorge Hernández, a few of whose poems can be read in translation at Calque. Youtube has a recent video of Piel Divina reading poetry.
• The author whose traces Ulises and Arturo are setting out north searching for, is Cesárea Tinajero, the mother of real visceralismo, who Wikipædia tells me is based on Concha Urquiza, the mother of el realismo infra. Many of her poems are online at A media voz, also some early unpublished pieces in Margarita León's paper Concha Urquiza: poemas de adolescencia.
• At Caravana de recuerdos, Richard finds two articles by Bolaño about the Estridentistas.

posted afternoon of Saturday, November 12th, 2011
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