The Savage Detectivism of Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction

Abstract

The present study analyses Roberto Bolaño’s engagement with marginality in the novels The Savage Detectives and 2666, via the conventions of the noir genre. The aesthetics of the peripheral, the poetics of triviality, vagrancy, bohemian wanderlust, and enigmatic rituals are performed in an inimitable personal style that problematizes issues pertaining to the theory of literature and the theory of the novel. Atomised, puzzle-like novels with deliberately obscure police procedural plots, The Savage Detectives and 2666 break several authorial and narrative architectural patterns, becoming major landmarks in today’s novelistic worldscape.

Keywords

• roberto bolaño
• the savage detectives
• 2666
• marginality
• poetics of triviality
• vagrancy
• bohemia
• roman noir