do poets have any idea what lurks in the bottomless maws of their vases? And if they know, why don’t they take it upon themselves to destroy them?

Some sort of second person biography told from the perspective of the mother of poetry. Many tie-ins with Save Detectives, including the autobiographical stand-in of Arturo Belano. Aside from the obvious and immediate tension surrounding the university occupation by the Mexican military, the narrator's role is essentially to watch over Belano and Ernesto who go tell of the King of the Rent Boys.

There's some heartbreaking patrioticism/emigre vibe when Arturo’s Chilean accent returns after he gets back from 8 days of torturous imprisonment there as a twenty year old. Pride and disgust with his country.

Bolaño muted imagery shines through in this bleak novel

swamp-like & desert-like bed

in describing the haarsh bed, in the "wilderness" of the kingdom of the kin. Hard to survive, as evidenced by the dying catamite sprawled there.

The picador published edition of this book is perhaps my favorite book cover of all time all of them from this publisher are really good.

The vanity of writing, the vanity of destruction. I thought, Because I wrote, I endured. Because I destroyed what I had written, they will find me, they will hit me, they will rape me, they will kill me… writing and destroying, hiding and being found.

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