Roberto Bolaño’s highly-lauded book The Savage Detectives keeps coming up in conversation, on podcasts and among other sources I’ve been reading. So now, it jumps with a bullet to the top of my reading list. I just got the book today. Here’s the opening paragraph.

I’ve been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.

So concise, so loaded with possibility. A mysterious sounding group. No initiation, although it is perhaps the kind of group that might otherwise need an initiation so I want in.

Simple, direct sentences. And the name: the visceral realists. Wonderful.

More after reading. Unless of course the visceral realists come calling. Then, I make no promises.