Transatlantic voyages in the narrative of Roberto Bolaño

Abstract

Travel is one of the principal motives ofthe structure in Roberto Bolaño's novel, The Savage Detectives (Los detectives salvajes, 1998). The multiplied narration offers the impression of scattered mosaics which are assembled by a great number of narrators' monologues. It is also reframed by the personal diary of one of the main characters who takes part in the search for some members of the vanguard poets called "real visceralists" in Mexico. Fragmentation, continuous displacements and the juxtaposition of the monologues in space and time lead to the definite dislocation at both macrotextual and microtextual level. Search, investigation and pursuit become the metaphors of writing and possible readings of the novel, or rather imply the impossibility of any reading of the text, as Paul de Man understands it.