Last night I dreamt about showing up to class all prepared to teach The Big Sleep, while all of my students had read Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives. I just finished teaching the former novel last week, while the latter (along with Nazi Literature in the Americas) has been at the top of my “to read” list for about six months. Orals reading has made the prospects of tackling a 600+ page novel daunting, but today I started it anyway.