{"product_id":"the-savage-detectives-reread-9780231194112","title":"The Savage Detectives Reread","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Savage Detectives\u003c\/i\u003e elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanish-speaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño's novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDavid Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño's life and work have obscured his achievements--and that \u003ci\u003eThe Savage Detectives\u003c\/i\u003e is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores \u003ci\u003eThe Savage Detectives\u003c\/i\u003e as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations--of states, continents, and generations--and the everyday stuff--parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation--of which they're made. For Kurnick, Bolaño's book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eKurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel's microclimates and neighborhoods--the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño's most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that \u003ci\u003eThe Savage Detectives\u003c\/i\u003e holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Kurnick is associate professor of English at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eEmpty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel\u003c\/i\u003e (2012). His writing has appeared in the \u003ci\u003eVillage Voice\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePublic Books\u003c\/i\u003e, and the \u003ci\u003eChronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e, and his translations from Spanish include Julio Cort?zar's \u003ci\u003eFantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires\u003c\/i\u003e (2014) and work by ?lvaro Enrigue.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50862067286290,"sku":"9780231194112","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_80e48321-a875-4fd3-a7c5-aed04d8151ba.jpg?v=1737611816","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-savage-detectives-reread-9780231194112","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}