Visceral Realism (Roberto Bolaño) plain hat

"Visceral realism" is the name Roberto Bolaño gave to one of the fictional rival poetry movements in Mexico City in his novel The Savage Detectives (published in Spanish in 1998, English trans. 2007). This was a thinly veiled allusion to the real group of poets who called themselves Infrarealists, co-founded by Bolaño in Mexico City in the 1970s. In the novel, this group of angry young poets are in revolt against the Mexican poetry establishment of government grants, the tenured academy, Octavio Paz and his disciples, and all institutionalized culture.

Though Visceral Realism appears to have affinities with the Surrealist exploration of the unconscious and revolt against bourgeois norms, as well as the Beats' bohemian anti-institutionalism, the movement is also portrayed as a bit of a joke, a tempest in a teacup with which Bolaño pokes fun at the pretensions and internecine squabbles of writers generally. At the same time, Bolaño's depiction of the participants' commitment and intellectual seriousness is rendered with great warmth and familiarity—a token of his partiality towards romantic failure and his overall perspective on literature itself, as something of both the most and the least importance.

• 100% chino cotton twill
• Unstructured, 6-panel, low-profile
• 6 embroidered eyelets
• 3 ⅛” (7.6 cm) crown
• Adjustable strap with antique buckle
• Blank product sourced from Vietnam or Bangladesh