Literatura y pobres diablos: Los detectives salvajes y el "realvisceralismo"

Abstract

The topic of this essay is "the poor devil," specifically a literary version of that type. Bolaño's work, especially The Savage Detectives, presents an extensive repertoire of "poor devils," characters who have no importance, or who cannot be set or fit well into a literary tradition. In a way it is the opposite of memory: that which is not remembered and lives permanently in obscurity. Nevertheless this figure can also serve as a methodological tool to thoroughly study a literary tradition, Latin American literary culture of the 20th century in Bolaño's case, and thus its value as a critical category. The poor devil resides in the border between the visible and the invisible, the valid and the worthless, standing for all that a literary culture wants to dismiss o "make invisible." In many ways the poor devil functions as a border that draws limits within a literary culture, to mark its times, levels, and also its contradictions.