We have exhibit A, The Savage Detectives, the posthumously published novel by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolano — he being probably the greatest talent to have emerged from South America since The Boom, when Garcia Marquez, and Cortazar, and Vargas Llosa made their presence felt — which secured his reputation in Estados Unidos, slow to catch on to this secret of the Iberian world, and prepared us, if preparation were possible, for 2666, which surely stands in the front rank of best novels of this decade.
And now we have The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Laureate and first man of Turkish letters, author of the beguiling yet disturbing Snow, as well as My Name Is Red.
The Savage Detectives is largely a Bildungsroman about Mexico City teenagers in the middle of the ’70s, 1975-’76 to be exact. The Museum of Innocence is also about a young man coming of age — or more precisely, a 31-year old man and his love for his beautiful 18-year old distant cousin, also in the summer of ’75.
Two different continents, two different traditions, two different explorations of youth and love and sex in 1975. For years, 1968 has lorded over all of us born too young to have been hurling rocks that year at the French gendarmerie, too young to have been chasing tanks in Prague, to have seen the Doors at Ondines in New York.
Could 1975 be making its mark?
Tulip Frenzy 