So far the only things of Bolaño’s I’ve really dug have been By Night in Chile and Distant Star, which are terrific. I struggled to care about The Savage Detectives, and felt the similar ambivalence about Amulet, which is a satellite work to The Savage Detectives. Books where the main focus is hagiography of writers-as-writers always turns me off. I’m often interested in poems, but very rarely interested in poets.