The book takes its title from one of its poems, "Between Friedrich von Hausen": (Dear Alfred Bester, at least I've found one of the wings of the Unknown University!)
It has a faculty of some two hundred eccentrics and a student body of two thousand misfits—the kind that remain anonymous until they win Nobel Prizes or become the first man on Mars.
"[4][5] In The New York Times, Dwight Garner noted that most of the poems were written in Bolaño's 20s — "and very often they read like juvenilia — the unrhymed free verse of a man who was equal parts poet and poet manqué, a word-drunk literary drifter still finding his voice...Many are vignettes, full of play, written almost like journal entries...The sound The Unknown University mostly makes is that of a promising young writer seeking his way in the world of words.
"[6] In the Los Angeles Times, Hector Tobar wrote that The Unknown University 'reads like a series of fragments from a diary of [Bolaño's] epic artistic journey...it's a book that illuminates the personal struggle behind one of the great literary careers of our times, a career that has come to define a global literary aesthetic.
"[7] Salon reviewer J.P. Smith found the collection thematically similar to Bolaño's novels and "not unexpectedly of uneven quality, especially when it comes to the more youthful efforts.