Visionary Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño was known for his darkly poetic prose and postmodern narratives, exemplified in his novel The Savage Detectives. His work is also deeply infused with references to the Western literary canon--from French and Spanish baroque texts to American and German modernism, as well as postmodern literature from Latin America and France. Taking Bolaño's notion of "savage" reading as a point of departure, this study explores the key authors and literary traditions that underpin his oeuvre. Blending close textual analysis with insights from the history of literature and ideas, Loy offers fresh perspectives on some of Bolaño's most significant works, including Distant Star, By Night in Chile, and 2666. The intertextual dialogues Loy traces--with figures such as Blaise Pascal, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Charles Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, Ernst Jünger, Nicanor Parra, and Georges Perec--illuminate the aesthetic universe of an author now regarded as a central figure in twenty-first-century world literature.Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.