2666: A Novel

published	November 11th 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0374100144 (isbn13: 9780374100148)
ebook
pages	912
description	THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM “ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS” (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW)...more [close] THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM “ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS” (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño’s life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared. [close]
date added	03-27-08 edit book

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brian rated it:

(review of isbn 843396867X)

07/07/08

the english version of this book hasn’t come out yet. It comes out in november. as such, I offer no spoilers. i’m here to make three points:

1) the blood and guts
2) the disaster
3) the women

1) y’know that bookbuzz you get when you’re walking around the world and it’s all colored with the life of the book you’re reading? 894 pages of bolano’s epic and I felt like the guy in those 50s sci-fi movies who gets shrunk down real small and is injected into someone’s body. ex...more

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Gin rated it:

06/24/08

bookshelves: best, frosty-s-book-club, jeremy-s-real-book-club

Read in June, 2008

recommended to Gin by: jeremy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Beg pardon, but I have (obviously) had a difficult time trying to make sense of my own thoughts about this book, these books. I shall have to concede my failure, then. What I do have are my notes (lots of 'em); some of which I shall reproduce here in no particular order and in installments.

Strictly pencil and paper by the way. Here goes:

*Mexico and the enormous still life that is every new moment of it; the electrical quality (endless, kinetic desert of the north) of Bolaño's de...more Beg pardon, but I have (obviously) had a difficult time trying to make sense of my own thoughts about this book, these books. I shall have to concede my failure, then. What I do have are my notes (lots of 'em); some of which I shall reproduce here in no particular order and in installments.

Strictly pencil and paper by the way. Here goes:

*Mexico and the enormous still life that is every new moment of it; the electrical quality (endless, kinetic desert of the north) of Bolaño's depiction of it; the book itself is Sonoran in scope; the poor Mexican girls rattle around in their clothes and shoes in guileless exhibition on their bones, joints knocking/clattering like marionettes or more just their doll-teeth, living through all of that heat until they reach that very brief period in their lives until they have completely ripened which leaves them with few choices, too meaty/juicy (suffering mangoes) to the point where they seem like they could leak/something beading on the surface until they quickly fall into a long rot that drops out children and superstition unless they are snatched up first to die in an ugly way; the real murders remain unsolved, at least one mass grave (who are those people? some are even men) has been discovered in the real city

*poor Morini: half helpless, pleats of age obvious on his skin, character as evidence/manuscript of a long passage=Bolaño?

*p. 131: pretty clear that Bolaño had classical mythology in mind when writing this; stronger suggestion that Savage Detectives is retelling of the Odyssey though author may be more Penelope than Odysseus...how tempting it is to think of Bolaño as Tinajera or Archimboldi (could it be?), a glorious hopeful mystery

*three (four? five? only one?) guilty men and one Gorgon in her various beauties and horrors; when a woman is sick enough all men are mythological and maybe even Jesus!; the real horror is the lurid Roman Catholic church...how many North Americans have a sense of the sweaty, overheated pageantry of the church in Mexico? the big, drooling, heaving thing that it is

*p. 151: Johns, right, sure...Robert Walser, anyone? madness in Switzerland and a happy death...no time for Camus now, though

p. 165: Roberto Bolaño, iambic trafficker

*I'm only half Mexican and even I'm pissed off at Spain, progenitor of super-efficient slavery in the Americas...Espinoza may be soft-hearted but he's also a self-serving ass when confronted with attractive poverty (she's a poor Indian girl! she'll feel better if she has sex with me! I'll even buy rugs from her!)...making the world a better place one over-educated dick at a time...why does that have to keep being true?

p. 288: "You just can't rape that many people" ...less

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2666: A Novel

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