2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of 2666: A Novel
Book Review: 5 novels and 40 short stories in search of endings (ANY!)
Summary: 2 Stars
Amazon.com's Book of the Month....They must be kidding.
You may have heard that this is 5 novels published (cobbled?) together over the specific objections of the dead author. However, in addition I counted some 40 short stories sandwiched among the 5 novels, and, guess what, not one of the stories or novels has an ending! If you can get through 200 pages (yes) of descriptions of little Mexican girls being raped, tortured, mutilated, butchered and dumped, then you might be able to read through to the end...and find that nothing happens.
An obvious conclusion would have been for the 80ish writer who spent his whole life in frank detachment from humanity, prefering to "cause no harm" (somehow he manages to fight in an infantry company on the Eastern Front in WWII for 4 full years but never kills anyone - laughable in itself) and to "not interfere" (he does nothing in response to finding someone he knew and seemingly admired...crucified), to then meet up with his serial killer nephew, who takes the same detachment from humanity into torturing 9 year old girls to death for sheer amusement.
The meeting of these minds (and souls?) and its consequences, which all the other dozens of players could then interpret, would have been brilliant.
But in fact, they never meet...and nothing happens. Is everyone waiting for Godot here?
Book Review: A 900 Page Twitter Feed
Summary: 2 Stars
If you are considering reading Roberto Bolaño's 2666, no doubt you are already aware of the overwhelming, even rapturous praise this book has received from literary critics. Bolaño is something of a cult-hero among literary intellectuals and has been elevated to a near-mythical status; the book has been heralded as both revolutionary and brilliant. Given such praise, this reader was left sorely disappointed by the book and mystified by the intensity of the praise.
Bolaño attempts to write a `cosmic' novel that stretches far beyond the narrow confines of a single character or narrative. This book is hugely ambitious, although that wasn't readily obvious for much of the reading. Bolaño's cosmos is disorderly, mostly random, emotionally flat, and depressive - one might say that it is filled with despair, except that despair suggests stronger emotions than the narrative ever shows. Rambling across the 900 pages of Bolano's 2666 are 5 different novels, each one only loosely connected to the others. The book opens with 500 pages of narrative that is banal, boring and mostly pointless. The narrative often works through digressions and random connections, a technique that could be interesting enough (and occasionally during the 900 pages is). At their best (the fifth book) the tangents can be rather fun as one story gets sidetracked into another. In other instances this strategy produces disturbing results - a feeling of the general inconclusiveness of human projects, even a sense of meaninglessness. However, for the most part the digressions feel pointless, almost all of them unenlightening. At its worst, this habit of digressing just resembles (very strongly) bad writing; so much so, I find it indistinguishable. One has little idea why the author has chosen to relate one set of details or occurrences instead of another. Imagine reading a 500 page twitter feed and you begin to get an idea.
Like the narrative, the characters who inhabit this novel are mostly underdeveloped and for the most part totally unconvincing (with few exceptions). One has to believe that Bolaño intended this - but that it happened somewhat by default. He just couldn't be bothered or didn't care to flesh out his characters in a way that his readers might actually relate to or feel for them. They wander through his narrative landscape confused, directionless, and emotionally flat. Perhaps they are tribe of "strangers" out of Camus; perhaps they are simply the creations of an extreme depressive. I'm not sure.
I was left with two questions that are not about the book so much as its relation to the current cultural context. First: what did Bolaño think he was doing? Second: why has the literary establishment been creaming itself over this book (excuse the vulgarity)? I don't have any good answers to the first question. The closest I can come is that the author is subverting classical narrative urges and writing a novel where narratives have no closure; either they sidetrack into tangents or they simply lose volition and peter out. Given that this probably willful, one cannot accuse the author of lacking skill or craft. The second question has led me to a hasty review of the reviews of this book. The literature is extensive, but the following seem rather typical: In the New York Review of Books, Sarah Kerr writes "Amalfitano calls to mind a medieval squire, wanting but failing to protect the girl..." Of course, if you haven't read the book this makes no sense. But it makes no more sense if you have read the book as there is nothing about medieval squires in this book. It is basically a free-association (as is much of the book). Writing in the more middlebrow Time, Lev Grossman, turns vice into virtue, writing that, "the relentless gratuitousness of 2666 has its own logic and its own power, which builds into something overwhelming that hits you all the harder because you don't see it coming." Actually, I didn't see it coming, didn't see it when it came, and didn't see it when it had already come. There was nothing to see. The New York Times praises 'narrative velocity". This in a book where nothing happens for 500 pages.
Perhaps this really is the birth of a new literature (that's another bit of praise from the critics). But my own take is that these people read so much literature good and bad that they are just really bored of the conventional elements that make most of us enjoy a story: well drawn, convincing characters, a fascinating narrative that is neither too obvious or overly incoherent, expressive language, philosophical depth, an engagement with other narratives - historical, psychological, philosophical and yes, even literary, -- and perhaps some linguistic or intellectual treats for the attentive reader. However, such effusive praise for a book like this is an insult to good writers (and good writing); writers who succeed on multiple levels of telling a good story, giving us characters we care about, insights into the world around us, and food for the intellect to chew on. For large stretches, even most of 2666, Bolaño gives the reader none of that. Are the critiques all afraid to say what is so blatantly obvious, afraid of their own reputations in front of their peers?
Read this book if you want to be part of this conversation. It's not hard. But there are lots of other good, great, and even 'cosmic' novels you could spend your time with.
Book Review: A Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a wonder. It can be viewed as an unrelenting critique of western culture in the last half of the twentieth century, with its portrait of appalling criminal behavior, inept and corrupt governments, gruesome war and disturbed minds. In five more or less interconnected sections, with dozens of subplots and stories, the novel is a sweeping panorama of destitution and murder interspersed with unexpected warmth and humane behavior, and love. Many of the horrible scenes are described in plain, bare bones prose, while other sections are dazzlingly poetic. It belongs on the shelf with the great books of the last century.Book Review: A Pleasure to Read.
Summary: 5 Stars
Few books being written today can honestl be called "A Masterpiece", but 2666 is definitely in that category. I fear however that it will be mostly read and appreciated by writers, teachers of writing and intellectual phonies. In translation it is still one of the best novels I have read in a dozen years. Split into five novellas, it is nevertheless a unified work of the human condition and humanity that can only be appreciated after a careful and complete reading. A hefty tomb is understandably intimidating in this age of instant gratification and incredibly short attention spans and visual preferences. This is a story, a novel that is worth the time and effort and will be the kind of book that will stay with the reader long after it is done, and maybe read again and again in the future. Saying almost anything else would be like spoiler alerts, and this is one book that is worth the constant literary surprises. Every page is gem and every thought worthy of deliberation. It is undoubtably the kind of book that is capable of changing lives, giving the reader new ways of viewing the simplest acts. A sixth star should be added for such great books.Book Review: A Set of Diamonds in the Rough
Summary: 4 Stars
I have a hard time imagining that any new novel I read this year will fill me as completely as 2666 did. I encourage you to read the book with interest, but without the expectation of perfection.
In 2666, the monumental novel that has brought so much joy to readers since the 18th and 19th centuries returns in the twenty-first century. Roberto Bolano displays enough breadth of vision to give Dickens something to think about. It's hard to describe this book without giving away details that might spoil your pleasure, but it's clear that everything and everybody are connected. That's also part of the attraction . . . because you want to know what all the connections are.
Bolano's 2666 provides a perspective that we don't get often enough in monumental novels, that of a novelist. In Part 1 "The Part about the Critics" we meet four academics who build careers (and indeed personal lives) around a little-appreciated German novelist, Benno von Archimboldi whom they have never met. The author's name alone will give you a clue that not all is as it seems. This story is by turns wicked satire, patronizing descriptions, tendentious morality tale, and hilariously warped view of the academic part of the literary establishment and its goings on. Only the obvious escapes them in their desire for privacy, comfort, career, and avoidance of loss. Before this part ends though, you'll feel like a strong magnet is pulling you and the characters towards an important appointment, one that will initially resist your understanding.
In Part 2 "The Part about Amalfitano" you will get to know Amalfitano who lives with his daughter Rosa in Santa Teresa, Mexico, a border town south of Tucson where sweat shop factories draw willing young workers from all over Mexico. You might think of Amalfitano as eccentric (after all, he has a book pinned to his clothes line based on something that Duchamp had once recommended), but it eventually turns out that he is a man in close contact with himself and reality. He is an educated man (a professor) from Europe who finds himself in a dusty town where the values are the opposite of any culture that he values. Like many of the characters, he has interesting dreams that help tell the story and enjoys the world of ideas. Some will see him as a stand-in for Don Quixote.
In Part 3 "The Part about Fate" you meet Oscar Fate (born Quincy Williams), an African American who is pulled away from his normal reporting to cover a boxing match in Santa Teresa. Fate doesn't have a clue about boxing and knows perhaps less about Mexico. Once there, he meets Guadalupe Roncal, a reporter from Mexico City, who wants to write about the many women who are being sexually attacked and killed in the Santa Teresa area. After the fight, Fate meets Rosa Amalfitano and eventually her father. Fate becomes our eyes into a culture that is terribly dangerous for women. Before the part's end you meet a mysterious blond giant.
In Part 4 "The Part about the Crimes" you will read in nauseating detail about what has been happening to women in and around Santa Teresa. Bolano buries you through repetition into being numb about the horrors, the callousness of those who prey on the women, and the attitudes of the police and other officials in the context of a very male chauvinist culture. By the end of this part, you'll piece together what's going on . . . which is more than the investigators do. I advise you to read this segment when you are in a good mood and in small doses.
In Part 5 "The Part about Archimboldi, you get to look behind the author's legend to meet the man and his family. It's the best part of the book and reminded me a lot of reading what Gunter Grass had to say in Peeling the Onion about emerging as a writer. Bolano adds power by dropping in little stories and events that complete and magnify other parts of the book. I savored this part right up to the final shoe dropping.
Bolano has an amazing ability to pile story on top of story on top of story so that you are seeing the subject (or the world) through an endless series of mirrors that display all dimensions simultaneously. His imagination to do this is immense. Due to his untimely death as he raced to finish this work, I don't think that these complex structures always received the polish they deserved. For instance, there are a few facts of 2666 that are never finished. Clearly, a good editor would have helped Bolano to flesh out such chinks in the reflective surface.
The translation often seems rough. You can tell because other parts are extremely smooth and well developed. It's not clear how much of this is due to the original not being fully polished or the translation being rushed.
To me, a monumental novel has to convey a sense of what the world is really about. You see that in a work like Crime and Punishment. Bolano also shares his worldview through the actions his characters take and their fates. The philosophy is clearly summarized by John Donne in that we are all connected and the loss of any one is a loss to all. Much of the story's development can be seen in the context of Catholic theology with many of the references unavoidable (such as the crucified general). Bolano's view is also that every thing we think or do affects everyone else. Ultimately, he sees us as all tied together because we are attracted to one another (even if the attraction is sometimes a perverse one). Behind all of these connections is a strong force drawing us to right wrongs, even when there seems to be no chance to succeed.
Although you can feel that the book spends too much time on the tawdry, its ultimate message is a very positive and life-affirming one . . . you can make a positive difference, if only you make the effort.