2666 in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

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2666

Roberto Bola帽o

Start date: November 15, 2019

Finish date: December 15, 2019

Discussion: 1001 Monthly Group Read

Why we're reading this: November 2019 Group Read
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What Members Thought

Aug 13, 2011 Chloe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-america, immigrant_song, fiction, i_am_in_love, 1001-list, mexico, doorstops

What an utterly beguiling book! I turned the last page of this hefty book nearly a week ago and I've been struggling to find the adequate words to describe my time with it ever since. This vast and sprawling epic is an ambitious, eloquent and beautiful novel- the type of read that reminds you of what all literature should strive to be. Or as Bolano puts it far more succinctly: "what a sad paradox... Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books What an utterly beguiling book! I turned the last page of this hefty book nearly a week ago and I've been struggling to find the adequate words to describe my time with it ever since. This vast and sprawling epic is an ambitious, eloquent and beautiful novel- the type of read that reminds you of what all literature should strive to be. Or as Bolano puts it far more succinctly: "what a sad paradox... Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown... they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench." This is exactly that sort of book and Bolano is undoubtedly one of the great masters, if it wasn't clear after Savage Detectives then 2666 should put all doubts to rest. This is the sort of book that inspires a reader to pick up a pen for the first time in who-knows-how-long and jot out their own ramblings or makes you want to tackle all of those great pillars of literature that have loomed intimidatingly on the horizon for years, as though after summiting this peak you can handle just about anything an author can throw at you. Bolano likely intended such a challenge to his readers though, the chiding asides sprinkled through the book about the state of writing and reading in the world today serving as goads to spur the reader on.

Like most great pieces of literature, it's not easy to describe this book. At its center lies the fictional city of Santa Teresa, a sprawling necropolis of factories and slums situated across the thin Arizona border in the Mexican state of Sonora. A perfect representation of the dark and cannibalistic side of capitalist consumption, this city is a charnel house that consumes with unceasing hunger those souls who venture to the border looking for a better life. An epidemic of brutal killings has plagued the city for over a decade, hundreds of women raped, murdered, and dumped on trash heaps as the citizenry has internalized the message fed them at every turning. This message, that people, like the goods churned out in the maquiladoras, are disposable, cheap, rarely missed and easily replaced, creates an oppressive atmosphere of dread that permeates the five interweaving stories that spin out from Santa Teresa like the spokes on a bicycle and perfectly brings to life the Baudelaire quote with which Bolano opens the book, "an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom."

In a postscript the heirs to Bolano's estate write about how, in his last days, Bolano insisted that the book be split into its five parts and sold separately so as to provide for the future well-being of his offspring. Fortunately his heirs couldn't stand to see the book sundered like that and initially published it as a whole before issuing a second edition sold as a quintet. While each of the parts can be seen as a stand alone tale set in the same world, I think it is the incongruities between these differing parts of the story that help the whole thing congeal into its own large imbalanced creature. We have the critics, devoting their whole lives to promoting a reclusive author who may or may not have finally surfaced in Mexico while still playing out the familiar power dynamics of a three-way sexual relationship. We have the Chilean expat, Professor Amalfitano, who may be receiving telepathic messages from an ancient race of humans or may just be going mad with worry about the fate of his nubile young daughter in a city that eats its young. There is the aging black power activist turned magazine writer, venturing into Santa Teresa on his first assignment as a boxing reporter. There are the hapless police of Santa Teresa on the hunt for this woman killer whilst being flummoxed at all turns by corruption from above, poor training from below, and the sheer systemic nature of the murders. Then, finally, there's the reclusive author himself Benno Von Archimboldi, a former German soldier turned literary star who seals together all these disparate parts into its substantial whole. Separately these are all interesting and distracting vignettes, together they form like Voltron into a lumbering golem of greatness.

There are some faltering steps though, however small. Part 4, the part that focuses on the killings, gets particularly rough about two hundred pages through after about the 70-80th clinically stark description of the raped and murdered corpses that keep appearing in the illegal dumps of Santa Teresa. A friend of mine aptly described this section as the book's Everest and it did indeed prove difficult to summit, but well worth it in the end. Finally, there's also the unfinished nature of the book. Bolano died before finishing it, so things are never tied up neatly in a little bow for the reader. Still, leaving the story without a definitive conclusion fits well with what I've taken away from the book- that events just happen and that there's no rhyme or reason to most of them. That we would all like to think we are the protagonists in our own stories, but for all we know we're just bit players in another player's banal Sisyphean epic. If you can accept that not things need conclusions but are just as powerful simply for having existed even briefly then this is a book that will astound and inspire. ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Jan 10, 2009 Francisco rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novela, hispanos

Un libro que me ha costado tanto tiempo leer... no se, mi impresi贸n es que la prematura muerte de Roberto Bola帽o ha truncado la necesaria labor de depuraci贸n de un manuscrito brutal, mastod贸ntico, que no ha quedado redondo por distintas cuestiones. La m谩s importante es que hay un severo problema de hilaci贸n entre las distintas partes, que dificulta la labor del lector, provocando saltos y faltas de coherencia interna.

3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 19, 2009 Stacie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: i-own, 1001books

I am not quite sure how I feel about this book. There were moments when I was completely sucked in by the writing and the story, but there were other times when I couldn't help myself from thinking "what the hell does this have to do with any other part of the book?!" ...more

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