🦋 Nude Descending a Staircase
Iñaki me miró y lugo miró el mar y sólo entonces comprendà que la escena tenÃa algo de irremediablemente ridÃculo y que lo ridÃculo no era ajeno a mi presencia allÃ.
—Jaume Planells
June, 1994
A couple of episodes in part 2 of Savage Detectives are retold several times by successive narrators/interviewees, from their different vantage points. I think these are my favorite parts of the book -- here Bolaño uses the form he has chosen to its fullest extent. One of these is Belano's ludicrous duel with Iñaki Echavarne, fought off-season on a nude beach near Barcelona sometime in the early 90's (as close as I can tell) -- it is told first by unsuspecting Susana Puig, Belano's nurse and lover when he was hospitalized for pancreatitis, then by Guillem Piña, who hatches the scheme with Belano and serves as his second, then by Jaume Planells, who is drawn in against his better judgement as Echavarne's second. I'd like to think about what it means that Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase #2 serves as a leitmotif for this episode. Piña repeatedly says he "felt like the Nude Descending a Staircase" in relation to Belano and that he "waited, which is what the Nude Descending a Staircase did" -- Planells picks up on this when he says he thinks Echavarne mentioned the painting when telling him about the duel, wonders "what did Picasso have to do with it?" And, well, I'm not sure what Picasso or Duchamp has to do with this absurd duel. The whole thing works nicely as a way of keeping the image in your mind when you're reading the episode, as a backdrop to its events. Bolaño has not used visual art this way very much in Savage Detectives -- many of the poems in Romantic Dogs have a painting as their centerpiece.
 I ran into a woman on the subway this morning who was reading The Skating Rink, and we chatted for a few minutes about how Bolaño is the greatest thing ever. That was fun.
posted evening of Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
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Jeremy, after finishing the first part, I jumped right ahead to part III. Since this is a re-read I felt like cheating. :p
Now I'm trying to think through the "visual poems" in the book, the squiggles and the drawings.
posted morning of December 8th, 2011 by Rise
Cool -- I ran into some of those in one of Amadeo Salvatierra's narratives. They are pretty puzzling, seem like the heart of the book in a way but what to make of it?
posted evening of December 8th, 2011 by Jeremy
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