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2666

by Roberto Bolaño

4.17 · rating details · 6,781 ratings · 1,590 reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Last year's The Savage Detectives by the late Chilean-Mexican novelist Bolaño (1953–2003) garnered extraordinary sales and critical plaudits for a complex novel in translation, and quickly became the object of a literary cult. This brilliant behemoth is grander in scope, ambition and sheer page count, and translator Wimmer has ag...moreFrom Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Last year's The Savage Detectives by the late Chilean-Mexican novelist Bolaño (1953–2003) garnered extraordinary sales and critical plaudits for a complex novel in translation, and quickly became the object of a literary cult. This brilliant behemoth is grander in scope, ambition and sheer page count, and translator Wimmer has again done a masterful job. The novel is divided into five parts (Bolaño originally imagined it being published as five books) and begins with the adventures and love affairs of a small group of scholars dedicated to the work of Benno von Archimboldi, a reclusive German novelist. They trace the writer to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa (read: Juarez), but there the trail runs dry, and it isn't until the final section that readers learn about Benno and why he went to Santa Teresa. The heart of the novel comes in the three middle parts: in The Part About Amalfitano, a professor from Spain moves to Santa Teresa with his beautiful daughter, Rosa, and begins to hear voices. The Part About Fate, the novel's weakest section, concerns Quincy Fate Williams, a black American reporter who is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a prizefight and ends up rescuing Rosa from her gun-toting ex-boyfriend. The Part About the Crimes, the longest and most haunting section, operates on a number of levels: it is a tormented catalogue of women murdered and raped in Santa Teresa; a panorama of the power system that is either covering up for the real criminals with its implausible story that the crimes were all connected to a German national, or too incompetent to find them (or maybe both); and it is a collection of the stories of journalists, cops, murderers, vengeful husbands, prisoners and tourists, among others, presided over by an old woman seer. It is safe to predict that no novel this year will have as powerful an effect on the reader as this one. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.(less)

Paperback, 1136 pages

Published September 1st 2009 by Vintage (first published 2004)

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Sep 05, 2008

brian rated it

· review of another edition

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 ...more

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Oct 13, 2008

Jessica rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Jessica by: some guy on the internet

Shelves: crime-and-punishment

I hate these star ratings. I'm docking this baby one, because I honestly don't believe there's any way he was finished. This book wasn't done! I didn't read the Introduction and I'm not clear on the back story, but my vague understanding is that Bolaño died after sending this thing to his publisher, who claims it was ready to go, but seriously, man, I just can't believe that. This book is almost great. Parts of it are totally mindblowing, but the fact of the matter is, I'm convinced that it need...moreI hate these star ratings. I'm docking this baby one, because I honestly don't believe there's any way he was finished. This book wasn't done! I didn't read the Introduction and I'm not clear on the back story, but my vague understanding is that Bolaño died after sending this thing to his publisher, who claims it was ready to go, but seriously, man, I just can't believe that. This book is almost great. Parts of it are totally mindblowing, but the fact of the matter is, I'm convinced that it needed one more serious edit. The thing wasn't done, and that's absolutely the most negative thing I can say about it. The most positive thing is probably that as I drew near to finishing this somewhat bloat-- er, sprawling 900-page mass of woodpulp, I began experiencing a strong sense that once I'd finished, I'd like to start over from the beginning and read the whole thing again. So yeah, 2666, unfinished though it may be, is that good. It's that good, and it's that flawed, and so what can you do? The poor guy died! So I can't really get mad at him about it, because some circumstances are beyond any author's control. It's sad, but it's true.

So yes, 2666. I haven't reviewed a book in awhile, and I'm trying to remember how this thing works.... Well, the book is kind of three (people on here say five, but to me it seemed like three) novels that are linked and overlapping in places but which are also clearly distinct from one another. The first section is about four academics (a Frenchman, an Italian, a Spaniard and a Brit walk into a conference....) who are united through their passion for Archimboldi, an elusive and mysterious German novelist. The academics' pursuit of this writer leads them to a fictionalized Mexican border city, which is plagued by an epidemic of gruesome, mostly unsolved murders of women. The second major part -- and this was where I struggled, because the combination of highly disturbing and dully redundant can get hard to take -- takes place in this Juárez stand-in, and contains a brutal, relentless catalogue of raped and murdered women's bodies that goes on for literally hundreds of pages. The last section of the book follows the writer Archimboldi throughout his life, including his time in the German army during World War II. Okay, so I'm oversimplifying, but that's the basic structure of 2666.

Before I get to what I love most about Bolaño, I'd like to say what I love second-most, and that's that I consider him to be probably the greatest straight-male feminist writer that I can think of. I don't know how based in reason this opinion is, and I can picture losing an argument with someone who wanted to challenge me, but that's just the way I felt while reading this and The Savage Detectives. On a very basic, purely emotional level, I just love the way this guy writes about women, though I don't even know that I can explain why. It's very clearly from a male perspective, and I feel that he writes about his female characters with a certain romanticized removal, which should be a problem, but for some reason I just love it. I love it! I also think this book, especially the part in the middle, which I didn't really like, about the (based-in-fact) serial murders, is a feminist text. It makes for an interesting contrast with Ellroy's My Dark Places, which covers some similar ground -- women being raped and murdered, and a subverted detective story -- but where Ellroy gets lost in the oedipal glamour of all that violence, Bolaño takes a stark look at the economics and wider misogyny of a society and forces us to see the pages of raped and strangled young factory workers for what they are, without any romance or horseshit whatsoever....

Which gets me to what I really love best about this writer: put simply and meaninglessly, the way he writes about all the bad and good things of this world. Oh gee.... it might be impossible for me to say just what I mean! But I guess I have to try, right? That's why we're all here, yeah?

I, like at least 99% of the human race, find it extremely difficult to live in this world. Even when things are dandy for me, my vague awareness of the incomprehensible magnitude of brutality and suffering on earth remains nearly unbearable most of the time. Of course, I am simultaneously so crushed and awed by the beauty and splendor of everything that I pretty much feel like screaming my head off almost all of the time. So, I know it sounds a little weird spelled out like so, but I assume that a lot of people feel this way, and I gotta imagine this is just one basic aspect of human experience. It's just the classic position between a rock and a hard place, or maybe more like being suspended between two equally powerful magnets, at this magical point of painfully vibrating stasis, where the unstoppable force of, say, I dunno, genocide, meets the immovable object of (sorry, this is dumb) love.... or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, everything is always so terrible that you just want to die. But everything is always so wonderful that you can't bear the thought of dying. And that's how we live, every day, and it's nuts!

"Okay," you're muttering now.... "Enough with your mixed metaphors, Jessica. What on earth are you trying to tell us about Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666???" Well, fine. Bolaño is -- again, please excuse me -- a reader's writer. I believe he really gets that good literature is the over-the-counter medication that can temporarily relieve the symptoms of this agonizing and incurable condition in which we all find ourselves. A lot of writers know this, and so they try to write about tragedy and cruelty but also the joy of being alive, but obviously doing this right is really pretty tricky, and IMHO Bolaño pulls it off way better than most other people ever have.

One reason why is that I think Bolaño grasps how the pains of the world are not really so qualitatively different from its pleasures. The way that Bolaño writes about sex, I guess I'd say (to oversimplify) is not all that different from the way he writes about death. And that's how my experience of the world feels personally, so I can relate to his fiction, because it feels so familiar and true to me in that way. I had an intense experience while reading this book a couple weeks ago, when I was having a difficult time at work. One of my clients, a very young man, had unexpectedly just hanged himself, and this same day I went court with another very disturbed, unhappy, mentally-ill client I know well, who was then dragged off to jail with self-inflicted cuts all over his arms, while hysterically shouting out his innocence in open court. All this is not my presenting social work war stories for laughs or attention, but just to say that on that day I was reading the Archimboldi section of the book on my long train ride to and from the courthouse, and I had an appreciation as great as any that I've ever had, of the intersection between what I was living and what I was reading. I don't mean the topics were at all similar, but that the experience was the same. All of a sudden, the pain of living in the world, which I was feeling pretty acutely that day, became simultaneously palpable and bearable, and oh, I don't know, I probably started crying a bit on the train. Or maybe I didn't, I don't really remember.... Anyway, this, to me, is what books are ultimately for, and this is the basic purpose of writing and reading, yeah? Just on a simple utilitarian level, the horror and glory of living in this world is too vast to comprehend, much less to endure. But a book -- even an oversized book in need of one more harsh, exacting edit -- is a scaled-down diorama, a travel-sized package, a bite-sized piece we can pick up and chew. And in that moment, the untenable position of being torn apart by the excruciating contradiction of our lives is not unmanageable. Or at least, it's soothed a little. In any case, that was my experience with this book, and being as this is the main reason why I read, I guess I must've loved it, at least in parts.

Yeah, so anyway, I don't know, should I give it another star? This book had some problems. I thought the North American character was lame, and the whole Mexico section in the middle needed a ruthless edit. Also, I don't believe that this book had a real ending, and I require a fabulous ending on such a long book. At the same time, 2666 was great. It was a far more ambitious project than The Savage Detectives, but it was less perfectly realized. I recommend this to anyone who can stomach hundreds of pages about women being brutally raped, tortured, and killed, who enjoys vast, loosely-structured epic kind of things.(less)

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Jan 29, 2009

Emily rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: novels, 2009, not-so-much

I accept that I'll probably get flamed for this, but enough is enough: this maddening, rapacious, and occasionally compelling book is making my life miserable. Will I finish it? Will it matter? Let me say for the record that I counted myself as a likely enthusiast -- I fit the profile -- but after a long, protracted battle, can't bring myself to sing along with the choir to which Bolano is preaching. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if we're so enslaved as readers to the cult of the author th...moreI accept that I'll probably get flamed for this, but enough is enough: this maddening, rapacious, and occasionally compelling book is making my life miserable. Will I finish it? Will it matter? Let me say for the record that I counted myself as a likely enthusiast -- I fit the profile -- but after a long, protracted battle, can't bring myself to sing along with the choir to which Bolano is preaching. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if we're so enslaved as readers to the cult of the author that we no longer require his masterpiece to deliver on its claim to greatness, as an integral work of art that transfigures and transcends its moment without depending on the ego of its author to contain it. This happened with Sebald, too: the writer's death, in consummating that ego, paradoxically secures the instant immortality of the work, and we promote him to canonical status before the work itself can pass the endurance test -- not necessarily of time, but of fiction as an invented life form that can survive not only in the fair weather of an assured friendly reception, but the inclemency of readers' genuine surprise. And their work makes itself available to this kind of literary leapfroggery because of its overtly moribund self-reference: there is no "2666" as a singular novel without the idea of "Bolano" as an already-consecrated literary martyr, just as there may be no individual "Vertigo," "Austerlitz," "The Emigrants," et al., as novels, without the classical fantasy of "Sebald," as an idol of immediate eternity, to connect them all.

For me, the most significant failing of "2666" is that it is not convincing *as* a novel, as a unified world inhabited by a variety of imaginary real people whose lives are in our hands. For all their hyper-personalizing detail, the "characters" of this book do not exist for readers as such, because they serve the book more than vice versa; they appear, get used, and -- not unlike the Santa Teresa victims -- are discarded; their bodies pile up along the unrelenting highway of a narrative profoundly driven, it appears, by a refusal to finish. (Not to be a dime-store psychiatrist, but this reminds me of an intensely voluble teacher I once had who said, "Nobody ever died talking.") When characters reappear, their remergence carries no real novelistic weight, because they never haunted the spaces from which they were absent; without the direct consciousness of the author, they have no being. (When he isn't thinking about them, neither is the book.) I don't refer to them by name for a reason: I don't need to. Rather than sincerely individuated figures, they seem more like components of a consuming, universal ego that substitutes humane curiosity for self-interest -- the literary narcissism of a book that absorbs itself. (By this criteria, I can think of lots of postmodern/post-postmodern novels with dead authors who are still breathing.) It might even be said that the organizing principle of this literally infinite book is the death of the author, and while that might sound coherent enough, even noble, I'm not sure that automatic posterity is the most honorable or compelling motive for a novel, which at its best, endeavors first and foremost to make something live, whether it literally exists or not, or ever did.

What I think *is* noble, though, is the ecstatic response to Bolano's work. Personally, I find the reviews -- encomia to "2666" as the apotheosis of Bolano's genius -- a hell of a lot more interesting than the book itself, and I think I know why that might be. The enthusiasm that readers have for this novel honors something tremendously important: a persisting faith in the transformative potential of the novel as a tradition. Readers who love this book believe in the novel and what it can and should do, and my question is simply whether this particular book really does it, or if we're so desirous for a novel that remakes the form -- a show of proof that literary fiction isn't a terminal enterprise, but eternally regenerative and revelatory -- that we're willing to invest our faith in something that aspires to that aim, but doesn't necessarily achieve it. Bolano clearly shared this desire, too, but to my mind failed his readers by enlisting their belief primarily in the confabulation of this wish-fulfillment -- this imaginary great new book -- rather than in the invented world inside it. Instead of champions of "2666" as an autonomous contribution to literature, or the creation of a strange new world, we've become servants to Bolano's own auto-mythology. And that might be noble, but it's also disappointing.(less)

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Dec 13, 2008

Conrad rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, owned

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A really outstanding read, a book so vast and wide that it takes up a space well beyond its eight hundred-something pages. I found the language in the last book a little too abstruse in places (what, for example, does desperation smell like?) and a little too declarative in The Part About Fate; I have a nagging suspicion that amid the plot of The Part About Amalfitano, there were hints as to the identity of (one of) the killer(s) from The Part About the Crimes - on one of the occasions that some...moreA really outstanding read, a book so vast and wide that it takes up a space well beyond its eight hundred-something pages. I found the language in the last book a little too abstruse in places (what, for example, does desperation smell like?) and a little too declarative in The Part About Fate; I have a nagging suspicion that amid the plot of The Part About Amalfitano, there were hints as to the identity of (one of) the killer(s) from The Part About the Crimes - on one of the occasions that someone drives Amalfitano around Santa Teresa, I'm certain it's in a black Peregrino. Some of the threads that bind the text could have been tightened a little bit, I guess. But these niggling complaints are entirely subsumed by the inventiveness of Bolano's prose and his dense, fascinating characterization. Characters in 2666 don't ever appear to have boring thoughts or routine days.

Bolano remarked that 2666 has a "secret heart." This is no exaggeration - the bareness of the sinews that connect the two opposite ends of the book, Archimbaldi and the murders of the women in Santa Teresa, only becomes clear in the last twenty pages of the book or so. 2666 is full of people telling stories about things that they heard and things that happened to them, and even very few of these stories are ever corroborated or given closure. And yet it's not irritating, it just makes you curious. Klaus Haas's lawyer, who despite being well-educated has a lot in common with the whores her client is accused of killing, could have used another 300 pages or so. So could have Amalfitano's daughter. So could have General Entrescu and Baroness von Zumpe and (above all) Lotte, who is maybe the most boring person in the novel but who struck me as more empathetic than all the other characters in the book put together; reading about her was like being given a bottle of water after wandering through a desert for a week.

Bolano has things in common with Musil, Proust, Ellroy, Heinrich Boll, and Gunter Grass; he seems to be to be more strongly allied with the postwar tradition of western European writers than any South American writers that I know of. (I don't get at all what he's supposed to have in common with Borges...) But his style is completely his own. He has listened to Kundera's advice about using motifs in long prose - I kind of want to start this over and reread it just to catch all the patterns I missed the first time around. Why is it so much easier for me to connect bits of Wagner together in my head than bits of Bolano? Anyway, there is indeed a web of not symbolism, precisely, but recurring bits of business that need reexploring.

I don't think I can put this on my Masterpieces shelf - I need to read more Bolano. But I might down the road.

[300 pages in:]
So far, this book is pretty remarkable for being so easy to read. It's like drinking campari and soda - you only notice when you try to stand up. Unlike other books of its scope, there aren't all that many daunting shifts in perspective or a whole lot of self-conscious experimentalism, just a completely commanding narrative voice that ever so subtly implies what the characters are thinking underneath what it tells you they're thinking. I don't think I've ever read such a masterly third-person perspective. And it's so unshowy but so icy, aggrieved, and wise at the same time. And seductive! It's really hard to stop thinking about and in, um, Bolañese.

I'm thinking in particular of this moment when Norton and Espinoza and Pelletier meet in a restaurant, and the narrator mentions in passing that the tables are somehow the wrong size, and would only seat four people uncomfortably. The three have left their fellow academic and friend Morini out of their love triangle and out of this meeting, as always, because (it is implied) none of them are capable of considering Morini a sexual threat or an object of attraction - something that he only dolefully thinks about every now and then. The narrative trick here is that there's no need for a table for four, but the possibility of a fourth person is perhaps meant to perch in the reader's consciousness as lightly as Morini's absence does in the three characters'. If I were writing a novel, this is the kind of thing I would never, ever be able to do on purpose, but which Bolano does so incredibly well.

I could be wrong, but so far, this is reading like it's going to end up on my "masterpiece" shelf.(less)

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Apr 13, 2011

nathan added it · review of another edition

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Nov 14, 2008

Jesse rated it

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Written under the specter of his own death, Roberto Bolano's "2666" is a statement of the capacity of cruelty that resides in the darkest heart of humanity. The novel is really five novellas, thematically tied together, and centering around the fictional Santa Teresa (Cuidad Juarez in our world) where hundreds of young women are being raped and murdered. The plot of the novel takes a back seat to the real driving force which is the nightmare deathscape of Santa Teresa. There is some gr...moreWritten under the specter of his own death, Roberto Bolano's "2666" is a statement of the capacity of cruelty that resides in the darkest heart of humanity. The novel is really five novellas, thematically tied together, and centering around the fictional Santa Teresa (Cuidad Juarez in our world) where hundreds of young women are being raped and murdered. The plot of the novel takes a back seat to the real driving force which is the nightmare deathscape of Santa Teresa. There is some great yarn spinning as Bolano is a gifted storyteller, but "2666" lacks any overall narrative with a traditional beginning, middle, and end. In this way the novel resembles "Infinite Jest", as there are multiple characters who interact peripherally and whose meaningful, and potentially fatal, interaction takes place outside of the text as the reader must project more narrative onto the end of the novel.

The main character of the novel is a reclusive German novelist named Benno von Archimboldi. His story is told in Part 5, while Part 1 tells the story of four critics who are enmeshed in Arhimboldi's oeuvre and each other. Part 2 tells the story of a college professor named Amalfitano, who is slowly losing his grasp on reality after moving to Santa Teresa with his teenage daughter. Later on the daughter meets a black journalist named Oscar Fate who is the subject of Part 3, after being sent to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match, this despite the fact that he isn't a sports writer. Part 4 leaves us in Santa Teresa to give us an eyes held open (think "A Clockwork Orange") look at this border town and her merciless murders. Part 4 is the most harrowing section in modern fiction, right up there with "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis or Hubert Selby Jr.'s "Last Exit to Brooklyn". Except Bolano shows us not just the bloodthirsty (this being the desert) murders but also the pathetically inept city police, the suspiciously apathetic politicians as well as the devastated families. As the descriptions of murdered and (usually) raped women are repeated, you strangely become used to the death and it is only the brief descriptions of human remains, which no one claims or which are never even identified, that reawakens you to the sheer horror of this fictional border town. The police rarely solve any of these murders and the county attorney tries to pin all the murders on one man, which seems viable until the dead girls start showing up again while the suspect is locked up. This takes us to Part 5 which, as aforementioned, tells Archimboldi's story. But it's not what these characters do that gives this novel its forcefullness, it's what these charcters are searching for.

It is a natural human response, after being witness to an atrocity, to search for a reason - to try and find out what caused this unthinkable act. As humans, we continually fail to recognize that these horrific acts are not anomalous, nor are they the response of some extraordinary circumstance. They are just an aspect of humanity, a symptom of the disease which is human free will. And in "2666" this shameful beast rears its head repeatedly. Bolano draws parallels between the female homicides in Santa Teresa and the pogroms of Eastern Europe in the early 1940's. In both cases one group held extreme power: both industrial power, and economic power. And, living within the same geographical area, was another group - helpless, and lacking the industrial and economic power to collectively protect themsleves - and thus the more powerful group began a movement of mass murder. Compliant in these murders were the community in which they took place. Whether from fear of retaliation, or a sense that the victims themsleves brought about their own demise (in Santa Teresa becuase the were "putas" and were asking for it, in Romania because they were jews: the vermin of the earth). After the deaths began to mount and became uncontrolable, people then began to look for answers - a reason for all the death. Yet Thanatos was already summoned and not taking kindly to requests to leave. It is into this vortex of death that all the characters of "2666" are sucked. They all are looking for something, slowly losing their grasp on reality, slowly losing their faith in humanity. Each character is moving closer and closer to what David Foster Wallace calls "the default setting" of which there is a "constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing." This is the ultimate reason for "2666" as Bolano was racing against his own death to make a final statement about the world in which we live. When we look back in the year 2666 we will see these horrific acts - the Holocaust, the murders in Cuidad Juarez - not as singular acts of unfamiliar human conduct, but as two examples of the all to familiar trait of human cruelty. And just as today no one remembers 13th century atrocites, in 2666 all the pain, suffering, and questioning of our characters will be dim reflections of the invincible living.(less)

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Sep 17, 2011

Mariel rated it

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Recommends it for: in 2666 I'll surely be dead

Recommended to Mariel by: a guy I'm no longer friends with

Shelves: mysterious-and-mysteriouser, happyhookers, coughhistoricalscough, thebighouse

If things work out, and sometimes they don't, you're back in the presence of sacred. You burrow your head into your own chest and open your eyes and watch." (That's from page 315. Probably my favorite page in 2666.)

There were times when reading 2666 that I feared it was going to kill my love of reading. Kill it like some death toll statistics. Impersonal and I wasn't there. Somewhere far away, at someone else's hands. I'd forget my longings and not pick up another book. My hands...moreIf things work out, and sometimes they don't, you're back in the presence of sacred. You burrow your head into your own chest and open your eyes and watch." (That's from page 315. Probably my favorite page in 2666.)

There were times when reading 2666 that I feared it was going to kill my love of reading. Kill it like some death toll statistics. Impersonal and I wasn't there. Somewhere far away, at someone else's hands. I'd forget my longings and not pick up another book. My hands eyes would go empty and I would not remember where to look again. Keyholes blind, doors shut. Almanacs from 2666, 1996 and 1946 were stolen by Biff from Back to the Future for sports games (the athletes will all die when they are forced to take a dive. Maybe the almanacs are fake). It doesn't matter when it is connections faded. This might not make a lot of sense. I have to watch myself in the Charly Cruz method of it depends on the movie and on you sacred night. Opening up yourself and making the small feel big. Restlessness is to be avoided at all costs. If there's not some other place to go to, some one to know... What else is there? That leads to more depressing thoughts and black moods.
I both love and was sorely impatient with this book. It spoke to me in the gutters that I try to avoid. It also spoke to me in some that I avoid too much. I think that's where it wanted to go. I'm undecided about the first kind. Morini from part one with the inexplicable depression sitting in the built up part of London with Liz Norton (I'd sooner forget all about Liz. She was terminally uninteresting to me). Espinoza and Pelletier's loss in the red light district. The realness was in the emptiness, in the void that cannot be filled. I felt nothing when they had sex marathons and day dreamed fantasies of universities paying for conferences and steamy hotel sex and who will the lady choose as if there was an end goal and everything in between was a shadow not made from light. The answer is love didn't bells and trumpets parade to my lips. Bad lonely of "Oh, well co-eds are hot!" and the necessary sharpness of not knowing what you want. A sad sigh did answer, a fear of not being able to move. Boredom, too. I knew how Morini felt when he was paralyzed. It must have been on purpose. Who would care about these guys who breathe from altitudes up in the land of hoisted on their own petards (Bolaño gave them wedgies). I suffered the lonely emptiness for the emptiness that means something wedged (wedgies) with the impatience of profesors who get hit on by co-eds I would walk across the street to avoid. Maybe it shouldn't be filled. It's why I pick up books, I think. It wasn't until the unfilled in lines appeared between other bodies in the other four parts that I began to feel that this book had something to say that was better than a generic big picture. I did feel paralyzed... The whole self steering thing. Maybe I do it too much.

I think it was in the second part that a character notices that a young man prefers the minor works of authors such as A Christmas Carol to the messy battling it out with oneself works like the Pickwick Papers or A Tale of Two Cities (I prefer Bleak House myself. Or Our Mutual Friend. Not that that is important to this review). There is something about forgetting to be restrained. I've been thinking a lot lately about how to navigate between the two kinds of empty. I don't know which has what or the other. I guess I'm bringing this up because I feel 2666 is the one that meant more to the author that he didn't take the step back. It's kind of silly to say that, maybe. The whole book is a step back (hence the often static characters). Maybe I'm not alone in too much eye shutting?

D'oh the afterword quotes that part and it said something about the books that tackled the big issues that affect us all. I prefer (and I'm probably wrong to prefer my own memory but that's how it is) that they battled their own navigation's of emotional and mental pitfalls. Less controlled and more making shadows with all the rest of the people. I'm going to walk across the street to avoid guys who write afterwards afterwords...

I make my battle plans from the spirits of my sleeping soldiers said Napoleon. I like that quote a lot. There's something similar said by a character in the fifth section. What if who is remembered in 2666 is the shadows. If you could tell who the long shadows belong to... The women killed in Santa Teresa. They didn't get to be more than how the love and blow jobs and death of the other people would speak too loudly for their notices. I liked that the Archimiboldians tried to stay out of the wrong kind of shadowy thoughts with their books. Lola with her possibly homosexual and crazy poet. I got something out of this book so I did like it. I still feel restless though. I don't know if in a good way. I feel like I have to watch myself from thinking too long about how empty it felt to read about all of the blow jobs and anal sex and coke snorting and murder (it was probably supposed to be so ridiculous). Sleeping, worst fears and avoiding emptiness. I did get something out of this book and that means there's hope in just doing the allowing something sacred to come in. Yeah, this is a good book.

P.s. I also really liked pages 334-335 (parts three and four were my favorite). The happiness of thinking you getting something and the uneasiness if you don't. Who cares about classic status? That's damned awesome to have that.(less)

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Mar 12, 2009

Josh rated it

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Eloquent Thrashing

Randall Jarrell (so many double letters in that name!) once said that a novel is a prose narrative of a certain length that has something wrong with it. Bolano's 2666 reverses this idea by implying that actually, a novel is something wrong that has a prose narrative of a certain length around it. Seen from the point of view of finished art, I think it's a failure: that is, it attempts to cohere, but does not. Seen another way, however - a more important way, let's s...more

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Jun 05, 2009

Evan rated it

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Shelves: novels, spanish-literature

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

Instructions for reading:

If you want the short version read Part I, then Part V.

If you like what you read and want more, read Part II, then III.

If you are looking for punishment and a reason to quit, head to Part IV.

Review:

Part I-III were engaging. I enjoyed the quotidian sketches punctuated by beautiful writing about commonplace tragedies. Bolaño was definitely a David Lynch fan. His characters even reference their favorite Lync...more

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Apr 19, 2011

Jeremy rated it

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Shelves: first-reads

I finished this a couple of months ago and have probably lost a lot of what I would like to say, but that doesn't change the fact that this was my favorite reads of 2009 and one of my top favorites of all time. In terms of what I felt while reading it, I would compare it to East of Eden except that I felt that reading Steinbeck was like fine wine while Bolano is heroin. Both books made me want to read with every spare second I had. Even just a paragraph or sentence might be enough to keep me ...moreI finished this a couple of months ago and have probably lost a lot of what I would like to say, but that doesn't change the fact that this was my favorite reads of 2009 and one of my top favorites of all time. In terms of what I felt while reading it, I would compare it to East of Eden except that I felt that reading Steinbeck was like fine wine while Bolano is heroin. Both books made me want to read with every spare second I had. Even just a paragraph or sentence might be enough to keep me going for awhile. The following are my disjointed thoughts:

Each part was rich and integral to the overall story in its own way. I loved that 4 literature professors became obsessed about a reclusive author. This part is probably my favorite, but it was the first part and I still thoroughly enjoyed the other parts. The part about the women's deaths is extremely redundant at times as he at times just describes the bare facts of each and every woman found - or at least the ones in this book. And there are MANY. Yet even though at some point I started thinking "I get the point" I immediately thought, "but do I get the point? Wouldn't these women deserve to be individual and not part of a summary? Doesn't it hit you harder when you think you've read of the last rape and murder and then you turn the page and there are 4 more and so on? If you can't really catch on to the horror of it all, at the very least you can start to feel the hopelessness and the desparation of the detectives that actually were trying to solve this.

The subject itself was of merit that he deserves awards for covering. People need to know about the fact that hundreds and thousands of women were being brutally raped and murdered and perhaps this is a fictional version of why there was no resolution, it is so shocking to think of the factual side. And this book is about more. So much more. Everything ends up tying back to the women, but there is so much ground to cover, don't just think you are getting into a detective story.

Bolano is at times poetic, at times earth shatteringly raw at a base of humanity level, at times detailed, at times 5 page run on sentence. I love the total package.

I want to know more about this Mexican culture in which apparently just over the US border there all of these factories. I mean, I've heard of sweat shops, I just never thought much about them other the concept of them.

I could really go on forever about this book, after all it was nearly 1000 pages and I spent somewhere around a month with it. I still look fondly at the spine everytime I walk by it and my mouth waters and my veins start to pop out just at the thought of picking up The Savage Detectives. But all in due time. I think a boat load of credit needs to go to Natasha Wimmer. While I can't say how precise she was in her translation I would have to imagine it was not easy to do and that the wrong person could have made this an unenjoyable read. Also, the cover itself was amazing. Picador really did an excellent job with this one and I very much appreciate that I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Otherwise, I am not sure how long it would have taken me to get to Bolano.

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Oct 28, 2008

jeremy rated it

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If, as Roberto Bolaño surmised in his speech accepting the prestigious Premio Rómulo Gallegos Prize (for The Savage Detectives), literature is indeed “a dangerous occupation,” then 2666 is certainly his attestation. Completed shortly before his death in 2003 (though left partially unedited), 2666 is a monumental work of consummate achievement, one deserving of the most exalted acclaim. Epic in scope and epitomizing the “total novel,” the late Chilean writer’s masterpiece fuses many different ...more

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May 29, 2009

R. marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Anybody who has discovered an obscure author and delighted (and suffered) in the compulsion to track down his or her oeuvre will be moved towards...towards nostlagia for the days prior to the Internet when fate, not search engines, yielded the fruits by which a further inquiry, a deeper delving, could be achieved. And when the circle of acquaintances who shared your knowledge was limited to a handful. Not thousands at a...certain website.

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Jan 23, 2012

Lee rated it

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Something wholly positive that can be said about 2666 is that it's not summarizable in plot or theme -- its dimensions suggest the entirety of life on earth. Seriously! And so all I can really think to do is offer a telling quotation: ". . . history, which is a simple whore, has no decisve moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness." At times, especially early on (first 300 pages), I sometimes impatiently derided this monster...moreSomething wholly positive that can be said about 2666 is that it's not summarizable in plot or theme -- its dimensions suggest the entirety of life on earth. Seriously! And so all I can really think to do is offer a telling quotation: ". . . history, which is a simple whore, has no decisve moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness." At times, especially early on (first 300 pages), I sometimes impatiently derided this monster as a hybrid of Cormac McCarthy and Raymond Chandler, a brutal borderlands high-lit mystery that suggested more than it ever actually signified. But then came a speech by a former Black Panther and a New Yorker named Oscar Fate and things took off, especially once it offers multitudinous murders and the prodigiously pissing, iconoclastic Penitent, and then the massive german, Klaus, in prison. I may have skimmed a dozen or so overly gratuitous descriptions of murdered women, and wasn't high on the 2666 hog through the end of the fourth part, but then the fifth part, mainly set in Europe during and after WWII Germany, is more than worth it. Like reaching the Rockies and the West after driving across the plains en route from New Jersey to California -- all the better because you'd made it that far. Thanks to this book, I've learned that the masterpiece is like a crucified Jesus -- in this book, a Romanian general with a foot-long schlong -- that needs the minor thieves to conceal it, or like a lake in a forest of minor novels. You could discus this book endlessly, or never say a word thanks to respectful speechlessness. It's more an experience than a literary entertainment. A highwater mark for ambition, authority, oomph, audacity, execution. At the end, there's a reverberating sense, like I want to read it again in totally vain hope that all the clattering echoes cohere into an a-ha moment of thematic clarity. The structure requires the reader to make associative diagrams (like Amalfitiano's charts), which are essential to this one's "fun." Total authority in the prose ensures that such associative thinking isn't just an exercise in making "castles in the air." A proliferation of images circle around and conceal and suggest the masterpiece's center. No cookie-cutter poignancy here or precious, luminous prose: five pairs of cat's eyes rise in the dark, lacking "spatiotemporal coherence," during a feverish, clandestine buggery session in a crowded house. Anyway, I'm really interested to see the reception this thing receives in November. The first new book I've read in a while where the blurby expectations are matched and maybe even sort of exceeded because my final sense of the book is a distinct but equivalent awe.

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Nov 03, 2011

Paul marked it as abandoned-half-way · review of another edition

I'm a guy who never falls for the hype, I see those orchestrated culture-vulture whisper campaigns a mile away, I will not be dragooned into seeing the latest cruddy art house movie or the subversive comedian who deliberately doesn't make you laugh, nor yet do I watch Big Brother as an ironic protest against the war in Afghanistan - so imagine my horror when I got home from Waterstones and found I'd bought 2666 in a three-for-two deal. Somewhere in the stunned silence I heard the tiny impudent s...more

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Jan 02, 2009

Erik Simon rated it

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A sublime, inscrutable, horrifying, riveting, magical, mystical, breathtaking maelstrom. I read his shorter novels and didn't much like them. My goodreads friend Jesse loved this book enough to induce me to give it a go. I'm indebted to Jesse. I'm not saying I understood all of this book. I'm not sure anyone will. But I could not put it down. It is the finest, most momentous work I have read since UNDERWORLD or BLOOD MERIDIAN, and this could well surpass those.

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Jan 26, 2009

Carl rated it

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“Madness is contagious,” the most memorable line from this sprawling, desultory, Frankenstein of a novel. And madness is a tedious, dull slog in Bolano’s world. I can ride through a couple hundred pages of experimental obnoxiousness in an ambitious novel like this, as long as the rewards are there. But, ultimately, 2666’s rewards are minor.

I started out liking this book, found it fascinating and darkly funny in the Kafka sense. From there the humor was either lost, or, later, shifted...more“Madness is contagious,” the most memorable line from this sprawling, desultory, Frankenstein of a novel. And madness is a tedious, dull slog in Bolano’s world. I can ride through a couple hundred pages of experimental obnoxiousness in an ambitious novel like this, as long as the rewards are there. But, ultimately, 2666’s rewards are minor.

I started out liking this book, found it fascinating and darkly funny in the Kafka sense. From there the humor was either lost, or, later, shifted registers into that nasty Celine territory, which I can get interested in if something worthwhile is at stake, something important is being said or grappled with. But, as you read, it becomes evident that the stories and motifs are going nowhere, really, or perversely feeding back into themselves, as though written by a madman applying his very personal and idiosyncratic logic to stories and ideas, whose only end is to regenerate further applications of this logic, never getting anywhere--deliberately going nowhere--the sole purpose to keep his madness alive and thriving.

If you’re looking for any remotely sympathetic characters, you won’t find them here. They’re not even characters--more like zombies, really. If you think zombies are cool, you may hate them after reading this book. “Death to zombies!” may be your new motto. Then there’s the sense that the novel is so full of literary inside jokes or elaborate cross-textual references so as to render it incomprehensible to a reader like me. I really couldn't stand nearly all of the final book. Was that supposed to be funny? interesting? fascinating? insightful?

Masterpiece? I don't think so.

While there is much to be admired in Bolano’s skills (his narrative command is excellent, which makes what he’s using it for frustrating), and he has some fine sentences, figurative and philosophical, the final experience of this novel is just plain boredom. Finishing the last page, I was left completely cold and disinterested in unraveling any the stories’ various enigmas.

2666 comes across as a grand exercise in narrative obfuscation. If that’s what he was going for, mission accomplished.
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Apr 02, 2009

Chris rated it

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Shelves: read-in-2009

This book is almost impossible for me to rate. There are parts of it that I hated more than life itself. There are parts of it that I loved more than Five Guys burgers and Chick-Fil-A milkshakes. At times it was so mind-numbingly boring that I almost started to read Mitch Albom books. At times it was so engrossing that it made me forget what time and even what day it was.

I loved and hated 2666 and I'm giving it four stars because I can't possibly give it a lower rating than its p...more

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Jan 12, 2011

MJ Nicholls rated it

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Recommended to MJ by: Stuart Kelly

Shelves: novels, other-parts-of-the-universe, voluminous

A five-books-in-one monsterpiece from Chile's most profitable literary export.

Each book has its own narrative identity while retaining the Bolaño stamp: sprawling sentences savaged by commas, a free indirect style where dialogue blends with prose and narrative position hops from person to person, strange poetic waves of readable and glorious prose, and nasty sex.

"The Part About the Critics" is the funniest section, a real page-turning satire where a cast of lon...more

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Nov 22, 2008

Kelly rated it

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Recommended to Kelly by: Jonathan Lethem (via the NYTimes)

Shelves: fiction

I keep talking to people about this book, and they keep asking if it's "good" or if I "recommend it," which feels a little like asking someone who has spent 6 months abroad, "How was zzz country?" Where do you begin in answering that question, about a place you've inhabited? I feel like I've lived in this book for the last two weeks, and now, just pages from the end, I am sad to be getting on the plane and flying home, but also relieved to be returning to more famil...more

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Jun 24, 2009

Cody rated it

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Shelves: contemporary, post-modernism

James Wood, in *How Fiction Works,* asks “Can we reconcile the author’s perceptions and language with the character’s perceptions and language?” In posing this question, Wood is pointing to a significant conundrum for current authors: what he calls the “risky tautology inherent in…contemporary writing.” In *The Savage Detectives,* Bolaño addresses this issue of tautology through two contrasting narrative styles: the sycophantic journal entries of a young poet and the stark, bureaucratic interv...moreJames Wood, in *How Fiction Works,* asks “Can we reconcile the author’s perceptions and language with the character’s perceptions and language?” In posing this question, Wood is pointing to a significant conundrum for current authors: what he calls the “risky tautology inherent in…contemporary writing.” In *The Savage Detectives,* Bolaño addresses this issue of tautology through two contrasting narrative styles: the sycophantic journal entries of a young poet and the stark, bureaucratic interview transcripts of the so-called detectives, which dominate the bulk of the text and, despite the purposeful coldness of the format, deftly incorporate the sundry voices of the interviewees.

In *2666,* this tautological issue is dealt with in grander, farther-reaching, and more diverse ways. Bolaño writes what are essentially five separate novellas—in fact, there is still conjecture as to whether Bolaño intended for these to published separately. Each novella/part is concerned with disparate characters whose only connections to those that dominate the other parts are their (often merely associative) ties to the murderous events in Santa Teresa—that and the narrative voice. For while the separate sections of *2666* contain shifting narratives—ranging from the academic (“The Part About the Critics”) to the scientific (“The Part About the Murders”; reminiscent of Part II of *The Savage Detectives*) to the astonishingly realist (“The Part About Archimboldi”), a section that, at times, recalls the zany grandeur and beauty of *Gravity’s Rainbow,* in all it’s war-torn fragmentation—the narrative voice, in all its permutations, is singular.

In the “Note to the First Edition,” Ignacio Echevarria references a remark that Bolaño scribbled in one of his drafts claiming that Arturo Belano is the narrator of *2666.* Belano has served as Bolaño’s authorial alter ego in numerous writings dating back to his earliest works, and he is the closest instance we have of being able to inculcate Bolaño within the text of *2666.* The physical evidence, though, of Belano’s presence in the novel itself is confined to a few scattered instances. However, the constancy of the narrative voice, seems the most substantial testament to Bolaño’s note, and, while the narrative voice oscillates in style at times, is overextended in places, and breaks down at others (“What did they live on? Probably, Archimboldi…turned to petty theft” [italics mine:]), this overall constancy is desperately needed in order to grasp such a fractured, enormous tale.

Through all of these characters, geographies, murders, and devastations, and over the course of nearly a thousand pages, Bolaño hammers away at one question: how close can one tread to the abyss—in an act of desperate, imperative confrontation—without going mad, without being swallowed-up? The answer seems to lie in how well one can combat boredom, a point to which Bolaño clues us in right away in the epigraph from Baudelaire: “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” Throughout this massive, masterful text—one that painstakingly explores post-modern ennui and excess—*2666* unravels its five books, in which the dominant characters of each successive Part creep closer to the edge of abyss—some shuffle backwards towards it, blindly; some lose their mind in the face of it; some tumble right down into the depths; some confront and flirt, toeing the precipice again and again. Bolaño even puts the reader to the test in “The Part About the Murders” by describing each murder victim in the cold, scientific detail of a post-mortem report, drawn out over three-hundred pages, with only a few less-grotesque digressions to vary the flow of the “test.” He seems to expect one of two outcomes: either the reader gives-up (either skipping ahead or giving up on the work entirely), or the reader prevails and, by the end of the section, finds these horrifying murders a bit boring, something they just learn to live with—as many of the citizens of Santa Teresa have done. Either outcome seems to reinforce Bolaño’s (and Baudelaire’s) point: the whole of boredom is a horrifying species.

For an enormous discourse on boredom, *2666* is anything but. The accomplishment of this massive, masterful work will serve only to reinforce, if not aggrandize, Bolaño’s reputation—cult as well as literary. Without looking to past generations of writers, it is hard to define Bolaño’s peers, for, presently, no one else seems to be up to the task of mapping the literary and intellectual terrain that he spent his life—literary and otherwise—exploring. It is almost a shame that *The Savage Detectives* garnered so many awards, not because that text was undeserving (quite the contrary), but rather Bolaño’s final effort is even more deserving of the accolades. *2666* is nothing if not a testament to the mad, unique voice of Bolaño—a worthy legacy. A visionary’s last great vision.(less)

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Oct 10, 2009

Christy rated it

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Shelves: world-lit

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 has been described as "the most electrifying literary event of the year" (Lev Grossman, Time), as "a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form" (Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review), as "a work of devastating power and complexity" (Adam Mansbach, The Boston Globe), as "the work of a literary genius" (Francine Prose, Harper's Magazine), and, repeatedly, as a masterpiece.

Adam Kirsch of Slate.com write...more

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Jan 30, 2012

Sean marked it as abandoned-no-thanks · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, fiction

I gave it 330 pages and three whole 'parts' but I'm not going to be able to finish this lumbering beast.

Reading this book reminded me of reading Don DeLillo's Underworld: I could feel it dancing around some grand and important theme with its meandering structure and strangely alluring characters, but after devoting a significant amount of my time without any sort of reward, my desire to discover said theme has waned to the point of total disinterest. I might give one of his shorter wo...more

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Mar 19, 2010

Eugene rated it

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after reading SAVAGE DETECTIVES -- whose psychotropic magics utterly redistricted my limbic system -- i'd decided to take my bolaño in little bits and had stayed away from 2666, saving it up i think.

just now i've finished it. and, while it wasn't the same experience as SAVAGE DETECTIVES (which, relatively speaking, is more suffused with intoxicating romantic ideas) 2666 indeed was another complete deracination. rather than romantic epic, this work -- the primary effort of the last f...more

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Feb 21, 2010

Steve rated it

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Recommends it for: Nobody

Recommended to Steve by: Jane

HEADLINE: I do not recommend that you read the best novel that I have read in the last 20 years.

Yes, 2666 is easily the best novel that I have read in the last 20 years, perhaps longer. No, I do not recommend it to you or anyone else.

Nonetheless, in the event you are unfortunately tempted, I would like to be helpful. Please answer the 20 questions in the following questionnaire with a simple “yes” or “no.” You may answer with a complicated “yes” or “no” if you wish,...more

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Dec 31, 2008

Greg rated it

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Shelves: fiction

Coming in just five minutes under the wire of ringing in the new year I finished this book. I'd been toying with giving it four stars, I figured I would give it four because it's a deeply flawed novel. I'll come back to this.

There may be spoilers, but nothing too serious in what follows (but where I allude to things that happen in this novel and in Infinite Jest).

About fifty pages into the final part of the book, with about two hundred and something pages left I knew ...moreComing in just five minutes under the wire of ringing in the new year I finished this book. I'd been toying with giving it four stars, I figured I would give it four because it's a deeply flawed novel. I'll come back to this.

There may be spoilers, but nothing too serious in what follows (but where I allude to things that happen in this novel and in Infinite Jest).

About fifty pages into the final part of the book, with about two hundred and something pages left I knew that it wasn't going to end well. I call this the Infinite Jest effect because the first time I ever had this occur was during my first reading of DFW's masterwork. In that book at around page 700, with three hundred and something pages left it started to dawn on me that there is no way the book can wrap itself up in the amount of space left. No matter how much I'd be praying in my head for their too be more, for the book not to end the pages gradually lessened and in the end I was left with something that was amazing and great but also unsettling because we want our stories to end nicely. We want to know what happened, be reassured that everything is ok, or that everything is fucked up and life is worthless, or something. We want resolution and we aren't given it. Sorry if I ruined anything about either book, but that is what happens here.

There was so much more I wanted from this book. In my head I felt like a greedy slut wanting to scream out, "More, more, more!!", I felt this same way after reading Savage Detectives, and it was this incompleteness that left me dissatisfied with SD and led me to only give it four stars instead of five. But now I'm seeing that there is something going on here in Bolano's writing, something like meta-fiction but not quite and I don't have a clear focus yet on what to make of it. I mean there are so many things left in the open in this book. Like for example, what is the title supposed to mean? Are you looking for an answer in the book? Well I'll tell you right off that the numbers 2666 don't crop up once in the text.

I could go on about things that I find intriguing and infuriating in the book, but part of reading this book I think is not knowing what you're getting into. Instead I think I'll just ramble for a bit on my bewilderment over the cult of Bolano that has sprung up. He's a really interesting writer, and for me personally he's right up my alley. Bookish, obscure literary references, leftist politics, allusions to the Situationists and E.M. Cioran, people who are living for the idea of literature as something more than just some entertainment. Lots of things that I think are great, and that I find wonderful in books, but why are books that circle around these things gaining such a following by American readers who generally ignore most of the things that his books center around? Why did a book basically about avant-garde poetry make everyone cream their shorts a couple of years ago? American readers don't like experimental poetry, they don't like radical politics, so what is exactly pulling people to his books like flies to shit? Why isn't there more of a overrun of readers from his books to other 'bookish' Latin American writers both living and dead? (Ok, yes, there does seem to be a big influx of publishers putting out books by kind of obscure Latin American authors, New Directions and Dalkey being the two notable publishers here, but why aren't more people coming in asking for these authors too? (Um, stupid (that would be me), maybe it's because people just don't know about these authors and just because you see all these books come into the bookstore and you shelve them all the time doesn't mean other people necessarily know about them, would you know about them if you didn't work in a bookstore? (um, yeah that's true))).

I don't mean for this to sounds condescending in anyway. I think it's great that people are reading him, it's good when awesome writers are read by lots of people, and if lots of people hadn't started reading him I probably would have never been interested in him until 2666 came out, and that would only be because I'm a sucker for packaging like the book has. It was only because of so many people being so into Savage Detectives that I decided to read it to see what all the fuss was about.

That's all for this review. My 2008 reading is done on a very nice high note. Now onto the 2009 books. (less)

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Dec 13, 2008

El rated it

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Shelves: 21st-centurylit, big-effing-books, cuckoos

This is one of those books that surpasses anything positive or negative I might manage to say about it. This is one of those books that I can say with a fair amount of certainty actually consumed me. I thought about it constantly while I was reading it, and while enough time has not passed since I finished it this morning, I am fairly certain I will be thinking about it regularly for quite some time. I showed it to someone at work and said it would be the kind of book to cause my brain to exp...moreThis is one of those books that surpasses anything positive or negative I might manage to say about it. This is one of those books that I can say with a fair amount of certainty actually consumed me. I thought about it constantly while I was reading it, and while enough time has not passed since I finished it this morning, I am fairly certain I will be thinking about it regularly for quite some time. I showed it to someone at work and said it would be the kind of book to cause my brain to explode if it did not end the way I wanted/hoped/expected/anticipated/etc. My brain exploded. And it itches now, the inside of my head. A lot.

In a nutshell (since the story actually takes just shy a few pages of 900) the central character is reclusive German writer Benno von Archimboldi, but there are so many other characters that it is hard to focus on one character and say "this is the one". They all served a purpose, and ultimately all wind up in Santa Teresa (more recognizably Ciudad Juarez to the rest of us) where hundreds of girls and women are raped and murdered (based on the true story). The book is split into five parts, some of which read more easily than others (the section primarily about the murders I found tedious at best as even I, with my stomach mostly made of iron, had trouble stomaching such an attack of visual imagery, section after section repeating almost the exact same images). Each of the five parts are told from the perspective of different characters, but Archimboldi's writing plays a part in all as does Santa Teresa and the murders. There are motifs and symbols out the wazoo here, and I think even if I kept detailed notes throughout the reading I would have missed a few. On top of that I find out now that Roberto Bolano uses a lot of the same motifs in his previous books, which, ah hell, now means I need to read them all and probably be consumed by each and every one of them in turn.

More accessible than Proust and Pynchon put together, I was driven the entire time to finish the book to find out the meaning of the number on the cover. I also became obsessed with the cover (I normally try not to put much stock in the cover images unless it's Margaret Atwood since I know she chooses her own covers for specific reasons) - Gustave Moreau's Jupiter and Semele (be still my heart)... and now I'm finding myself analyzing the hell out of that choice. Does it relate to the story? Is there a connection? Is it a random choice, outside of the one small Moreau reference in the book which probably went unnoticed by most people as just another artistic/literary reference? And now I also need to brush up on my Greek mythology to see what more I can gather about Jupiter and Semele's relationship, and try to trace a relationship to 2666...

One day if I have a brain aneurysm, the central reason will be this book.

Interestingly today when I returned the book to the library and picked up another book on-hold, the guy at the counter had a book off to the side of his keyboard. I saw that it was Nazi Literature in the Americas; when I looked closer I saw that it was written by Roberto Bolano. Random coincidence?

I want to talk about this book a lot, I want to discuss it with people. But I certainly can not do it the right amount of justice. And I am saddened that Bolano died before he was able to finish it, even if they do say he was near the end anyway. I still feel like there is more that should have been included, more characters I would have liked to have been fleshed out more, more avenues investigated. But I can't really complain, overall. Except maybe for this persistent itch in my head that just won't go away even after I finished reading it.(less)

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Aug 05, 2008

Nathan rated it

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I'm afraid to write about this book, a fear that emanates from the knowledge that attempting to describe a monolith almost always lessens its sublimity. Here is a brief, top-of-my-head summation. I finished it in a breathless rush last night (finally), and am confident when I say it's even better than my favorite book of last year, Bolano's amazing The Savage Detectives. Perhaps Pynchonian in length, but where Pynchon revels in overwhelming information strewn with clever asides, Bolano choose...more

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Dec 23, 2008

Mark rated it

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I wanted to like this, but really it did very little for me. I read the whole first section, almost all of the second, and 100+ pages of the fourth. I got it from the library and couldn't renew. I thought about buying it to finish it, but couldn't imagine it would all just snap together and impress me - or even interest me - all of a sudden. The fourth part - about the murders - I liked best, but not enough.

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Nov 22, 2011

Bob rated it

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It's like five books in one! Not much of an observation as it is clearly divided in five volumes which, as is now well-known, Bolaño hoped to have published separately at intervals following his death. Instead it is all a sprawling unit that becomes one of those all-consuming reading experiences that dominates the weeks it requires.
The remarkable stylistic differences between the five books is part of its appeal; also I like the fact that it's not too neat - some of the wildly disparate plo...more

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Jan 30, 2012

Jodi rated it

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Recommends it for: Maureen de Sousa, Ben Loory

Recommended to Jodi by: Mike Lester

When put together as a body, the sum of its five distinct parts, each of which has merits of its own as a novel, equals the whole of 2666 in which Bolano takes us on a round-the-globe journey in search of the author Benno von Archimboldi. But this is no mere travel jaunt. In part one, we join three European scholars, whose common bond is Archimboldi, and begin the search to find this mysterious author. Hot on his trail, we travel to Mexico where we meet Amalfitano, a Chilean literature profes...moreWhen put together as a body, the sum of its five distinct parts, each of which has merits of its own as a novel, equals the whole of 2666 in which Bolano takes us on a round-the-globe journey in search of the author Benno von Archimboldi. But this is no mere travel jaunt. In part one, we join three European scholars, whose common bond is Archimboldi, and begin the search to find this mysterious author. Hot on his trail, we travel to Mexico where we meet Amalfitano, a Chilean literature professor at the University of Santa Teresa and supposed expert on Archimboldi. Eventually, feeling the trail has run cold, the scholars abandon us and the search, and return to Europe, leaving us behind with Amalfitano. In part two, we forge on, hoping Amalfitano is the key that will shed some light on the identity and whereabouts of the elusive Archimboldi, and it is through Amalfitano that we begin our descent into what we will later learn is the quagmire of Santa Teresa, an entity in and of itself, based on the real-life town of Juarez, Mexico, in which hundreds of women have been murdered. In part three, we come up for a welcome breath of fresh air, finding ourselves with Oscar Fate, a Chicago journalist whose regular beat is disrupted as he is asked to cover for the magazine’s recently deceased sportswriter. The respite is a short one, however, as Fate is sent to cover a boxing match in Santa Teresa. Like Fate, we get caught up in the story of the murders, and once again, in part four, Archimboldi’s whereabouts still unknown, we are left in Santa Teresa to continue the downward spiral into the quicksand of the Sonoran desert. Here the search for Archimboldi takes a backseat, and like the people of Santa Teresa and all who go there, it is difficult to dig our way out, stifled by death and corruption, gasping once again for fresh air, all the while latching onto the hope that Archimboldi will somehow rescue us. In part five, we emerge from Santa Teresa, picking up the distant scent of Archimboldi in Eastern Europe, nearly a century in the past. No matter where we are in the novel we cling to Archimboldi as our destiny.

It is Santa Teresa that I believe is the unlikely heart of the novel, a place through which all characters, including ourselves pass, a portal of space and time, and if we survive long enough to escape, it is only because of our own drive to find and learn the identity of Archimboldi. Going back to part one and the European scholars, Pelletier says with regard to Archimboldi’s whereabouts, “It means nothing. The important thing is something else entirely.” This is 2666.

Though at times I felt lost, having no idea where the novel was taking me, I found myself completely engaged in each of the five parts. Part four, in Santa Teresa, is the most difficult part of 2666 to get through. Consisting mainly of an accounting of all the murders, there are still threads that course through and reach the other parts of the novel. It is a way station. Here Bolano instills the sense that nothing changes, and nothing ever will change, in Santa Teresa, a stagnant self-consuming cycle continuously feeding on itself. And such is life outside of Santa Teresa, less concentrated, but a cycle nonetheless. Throughout the reading I expected to reach a major revelation, whether it be Archimboldi’s true identity or something else entirely. But for me there was no grand awakening. It was only until I finished the novel and gave it a lot of thought that I found, in my mind, how the five parts fit together. And I think it is this discovery that is Bolano’s true intent, the trail of Archimboldi is merely the road that takes us there. I already feel compelled to read this book again. There are so many dots to connect that one can only touch the surface on the first read. But, I think this is what will keep me wanting to read it again and again and again, certain that each time I will find a different truth, caught up in my own cycle of 2666.
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topics	posts	views	last activity
De-humanisation Of Victims - Plot Device to show us up?	16	41	Feb 04, 2012 05:51pm
Filipinos: 2666 by Roberto Bolano (Angus, Doc Ranee, Emir, H, and Mina), Start Date: January 3.	183	67	Jan 24, 2012 06:13pm
Alternate Order Of Reading 2666	1	23	Oct 28, 2011 08:08am
Where are you?	4	56	Sep 07, 2011 09:46pm
Cult Books & ...: A random quote from the behemoth I am reading	1	10	Aug 10, 2011 10:40pm
bolano's life story	3	36	Feb 10, 2009 01:27pm

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About Roberto Bolaño

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.

Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing...moreFor most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.

Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

He continued with poetry, before shifting to fiction in his early forties. In an interview Bolaño stated that he made this decision because he felt responsible for the future financial well-being of his family, which he knew he could never secure from the earnings of a poet. This was confirmed by Jorge Herralde, who explained that Bolaño "abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence" because the birth of his son in 1990 made him "decide that he was responsible for his family's future and that it would be easier to earn a living by writing fiction." However, he continued to think of himself primarily as a poet, and a collection of his verse, spanning 20 years, was published in 2000 under the title The Romantic Dogs.

Regarding his native country Chile, which he visited just once after going into voluntary exile, Bolaño had conflicted feelings. He was notorious in Chile for his fierce attacks on Isabel Allende and other members of the literary establishment.

In 2003, after a long period of declining health, Bolaño died. It has been suggested that he was at one time a heroin addict and that the cause of his death was a liver illness resulting from Hepatitis C, with which he was infected as a result of sharing needles during his "mainlining" days. However, the accuracy of this has been called into question. It is true that he suffered from liver failure and was close to the top of a transplant list at the time of his death.

Bolaño was survived by his Spanish wife and their two children, whom he once called "my only motherland."

Although deep down he always felt like a poet, his reputation ultimately rests on his novels, novellas and short story collections. Although Bolaño espoused the lifestyle of a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible for all his adult life, he only began to produce substantial works of fiction in the 1990s. He almost immediately became a highly regarded figure in Spanish and Latin American letters.

In rapid succession, he published a series of critically acclaimed works, the most important of which are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the novella Nocturno de Chile (By Night In Chile), and, posthumously, the novel 2666. His two collections of short stories Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas were awarded literary prizes.

In 2009 a number of unpublished novels were discovered among the author's papers.(less)

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“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.” — 77 people liked it

“So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.” — 73 people liked it

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