Really I think he just talked for the sake of talking. It was the ideal method for ensuring that no one was friends with anyone, or else that our friendships were unhealthy and based on resentment.Īnd I can't say that Álamo was much of a critic either, even though he talked a lot about criticism. Sometimes Álamo would get bored and ask us (those of us who weren't reading just then) to critique too, and then we would critique and Álamo would read the paper. Up until then, I had attended the workshop four times and nothing ever happened, though only in a manner of speaking, of course, since naturally something always happened: we read poems, and Álamo praised them or tore them to pieces, depending on his mood one person would read, Álamo would critique, another person would read, Álamo would critique, somebody else would read, Álamo would critique. Then, as if it were settled, I started class in the law school's hallowed halls, but a month later I registered for Julio César Álamo's poetry workshop in the literature department, and that was how I met the visceral realists, or viscerealists or even vicerealists, as they sometimes like to call themselves. That's what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night. I'm an orphan, and someday I'll be a lawyer. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in.

I'm seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I'm in my first semester of law school. I'm not really sure what visceral realism is. I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists.

The savage detectives by roberto bolaño