Professor Adolfo Cacheiro gave a colloquium presentation on Roberto Bolaño’s “The Savage Detectives” last Wednesday.

The novel Cacheiro delivered the presentation on was originally released in 1998 and translated from Spanish to English in 2007. It’s structured into three parts, with the first being a diary from an aspiring poet, the second a series of testimonials from various characters and the third part concludes as it begins, a diary from the same poet.

Cacheiro’s presentation focused on the themes of the novel, mainly fate, although the novel deploys a number of themes and motifs throughout its 610 pages. This includes women in Mexican society choosing to break the mold and identifying as individuals rather than as a counterpart to men, the inability of the Mexican patriarchy to avoid the deterioration of society and maintain respect for the law, the morality of violence for a good cause and taking the law into one’s own hands.

“There is a strong connection between social deterioration and Bolano’s (one of the main characters, an alter ego of the author) decision to leave Mexico for Europe,” Cacheiro said during his presentation. “It ends in a loss that is a new beginning.”

Bolaño was born in Chile in 1953. Cacheiro described his works as neo avant-garde, a new twist on the unorthodox and extraordinary, with Bolaño’s average novel alternating between realism and fantasy. The author’s love of science fiction has also greatly influenced his works, according to Cacheiro.

In his presentation, Cacheiro also highlighted the many literary techniques used and addressed in the novel. With the majority of the novel revolving around poetry, Bolaño introduces infrarealism, a vanguard movement in Mexican literature that focuses on finding poetry outside of traditional poems, of which Bolaño is considered to be one of the founders.

“One of the most interesting references Cacheiro made was about the Mexican literary movement called infrarealism,” Wayne State College senior Thadd Simpson said. “I’ve been thinking about looking into it ever since.”

Colloquiums take place on the last Wednesday of the month, except for the months of December and May, at 3:30 p.m. in Humanities room 319.