Visionary Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño was known for his darkly poetic prose and postmodern narratives, exemplified in his novel The Savage Detectives. His work is also deeply infused with references to the Western literary canon—from French and Spanish baroque texts to American and German modernism, as well as postmodern literature from Latin America and France. Taking Bolaño’s notion of “savage” reading as a point of departure, this study explores the key authors and literary traditions that underpin his oeuvre. Blending close textual analysis with insights from the history of literature and ideas, Loy offers fresh perspectives on some of Bolaño’s most significant works, including Distant Star, By Night in Chile, and 2666. The intertextual dialogues Loy traces—with figures such as Blaise Pascal, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Charles Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, Ernst Jünger, Nicanor Parra, and Georges Perec—illuminate the aesthetic universe of an author now regarded as a central figure in twenty-first-century world literature.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

BENJAMIN LOY is a professor of romance philology at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich in Germany. He is the editor of twelve books and more than fifty articles on modern and contemporary Latin American, Spanish, and French literature and cinema.

JORDAN LEE SCHNEE works in—and between—English, German, Yiddish, Spanish, and French. He teaches English literature at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany.

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1  The Making of a Savage Reader: (Latin American) History and Literary Form

Chapter 2  Origin of the Chilean Trauerspiel: Allegories of Art and Power in By Night in Chile 

Chapter 3  Dangerous Puzzles: Playing with Life and Death in Distant Star and Nazi Literature in the Americas

Chapter 4  The (Il)legibility of the World: Chaos and Cosmos in 2666 and Woes of the True Policeman

Conclusion  Last Words: Posthumous Bolaño

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Index