This is proving to be what I thought it was before this readalong – a fairly daunting read. 

As well as it’s translated, I still find myself doing research so I can understand the author, his story, its setting and characters better. 

Due to the fact that (to me at least), this book is written like a roman à clef, it’s important that it be read in context. So I find myself doing research on the author’s life and lthe literary movements going on at the time. 

Still, I am struggling. Especially with the characters. 

I don’t like many of them. Some, only slightly. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that although a loose autobiography, the book is about the story, not those who lived and breathed it. It is about the journey, the search for something, not someone. 

The author is having his “detectives” search for another poet, but in a sense they are really searching for themselves. But they are all elusive phantoms: elusive to others, themselves, and in some ways, the reader. 

At least this reader. However, I don’t give up that easily. 

I’m going to continue reading if only to ensure I’m not missing a deeper meaning here, for I feel that I am.  

Perhaps this sentence, written about Arturo Belano, a character based on the author, is revealing of what he thinks of this story and his place in the telling of it: 

And then I realized that deep down the guy was a creep. Because it’s one thing to fool yourself and another thing entirely to fool everybody else. The whole visceral realism thing was a love letter, the demented strutting of a dumb bird in the moonlight, something essentially cheap and meaningless. 

In a way, I think this passage more than any, hits close to the mark of what Bolaño remembers about being the founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. 

I hear it also in the voice of a character speaking about the fear of a fellow writer, the fear of “. . . listening to one’s own voice, one’s own footsteps, the footsteps of the enemy.” 

When one writes about memories and one’s life, what attitude do we bring along to help us decipher what happened, what it all means? Is Bolaño looking back as someone who is an enemy to his own memories? Meaning that we all remember what we want to remember, through our own eyes and perspective, finding it a challenge to remain objective? 

Because of this, I think he is trying to distance himself through his characters, using them to search out the truth, or at least a clearer and more accurate perspective of what happened to the movement, to those who believed in it as passionately as he did, and those who didn’t. 

I could be wrong about all of this.  And I will keep reading to see if I am.