2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of 2666: A Novel
Book Review: Immense and overpowering
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a deeply troubling work. Not terrifying, quite, nor horrifying, nor shattering. Instead, demanding. Incriminating. An accusation of the most serious kind. Chilling. Mesmerizing. Giant, as it were.
The only thing I've read which approximates the scope or scale of this novel is War and Peace, but the comparison to War and Peace is a rotten one because if you haven't actually read 2666 yet but have read Tolstoy, such a comparison will give you absolutely the wrong idea.
2666 is a haunting, creeping, threatening, silently (and ever more) dangerous whisper that gradually accumulates, begins to hang in the air, the whisper of death, of all of the deaths of modernity, foremost amongst these the deaths of society and of a particular conception of humanity and civilization. It is not so much a eulogy for the modern project as it is the warning of an impending reckoning, a cold, calculated demand for payment, the calm before a dreadful storm that (thankfully) doesn't actually arrive in the novel's pages, but that continues to color the silence that follows, the certainty of its ultimate arrival at some unknown future date all too clear.
It is an implicit, intuitive, wild summary of existential dread, of the uniquely modern aggregation of history atop which we live, of holocausts and nuclear politics and terrorism and slavery and capitalism and totalitarianism and unrestrained virtuality and uncontrollable sexuality and the tyranny, the utter, utter tyranny of individual and collective human agency, which has proven to be restrainable neither with freedom nor with unfreedom, neither with technology nor through romanticized constructions of the "natural."
It is perhaps the most incriminating thing I've ever read, a pronouncement about the human condition in the age of exponential population growth, encroaching climate change, the unchallenged dominance of capital and the banalization of violence. As a sociologist, I found it to be endlessly illuminating and diverting. As a fan of fiction, I found it to be innovative and surprising. As a professional writer, I found it to be the most willfully "incorrect" body of writing that I ever been unable to put down.
ADDENDUM:
After reading more of the reviews that have appeared here, particularly those that gave the work just one star, I wanted to add to the review that I wrote above (written immediately after finishing the work).
Many of the one-star reviews complain about a lack of plot, suggest that the individual "books" in the work are unconnected, or talk about a lack of resolution or the absence of central characters. Many also frame their review by saying "Maybe I missed the point, but..."
My response would be that they did indeed miss the point. There is one plot here, and it is in fact coherent. It kept me turning pages throughout the entire work, and the more it came together, the more enthralled (and shocked) I became. There is also one character, the protagonist of the book if you will, that is the fulcrum of said plot. Those who didn't notice the plot and didn't identify the protagonist have indeed "missed the point" entirely, and I can understand why they must be frustrated.
Book Review: Imperfection Perfected
Summary: 5 Stars
2666, originally published in Spanish in 2003, is the last novel of Roberto Bolaño's oeuvre, completed just before his death of that same year. Translated by Natasha Wimmer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2008, the deceased Chilean author's 900-page magnum opus has, since its November 11th release in the United States, received unanimous acclaim. TIME, for instance, proclaimed it the best novel of 2008 as did The New York Times, setting it beside four others. Some are considering it the entire re-invention of the novel...the novel not of America, no...it's not the next great American novel, nor is it the next great Latin American novel, not anything like that...the novel of the WORLD (as someone else has said here). The next great World novel. The Book is around 900 pages and is separated into 5 parts, all of which are distinctive by themselves with their own set of characters but connect together in a gigantic thematic web reaching across the tome's pages. And the pages themselves across the entire world.
Much of the novel is centered around what Bolaño called "The World's Graveyard," Ciudad Juarez, which is given, in the book, the fictionalized name "Santa Teresa," an industrial city on the border of Mexico and the US. There, for the past 10 years or so, women have been subject to a growing number of serial killings, more than 500 documented thus far. The novel consists of five separate, overlapping story arcs, each, in subtle ways, more dark and violent than the one preceding, that is, until the fourth part "The Part About the Crimes," the climax, where some 200 dead women are documented in the fashion of a police or autopsy report with flat, objective prose. It's this lack of emotion in the telling of the horrible violence that ironically brings forth sympathy from the reader. It's a dark outlook on the violence present in humanity, especially that in Mexico which often is brushed aside. Is this the first time YOU'VE ever heard of Ciudad Juarez?
And, yet, just as well, it is a meditation on literature. Each section's main characters are scholars, professors, journalists, novelists, &c., and it's through these narratives that Bolaño expresses his own feelings of current writing. He felt that too much literature isn't as free-wheeling and raw as it should be. Or that the risky works aren't read as much as they should. Or that there are too many rules for ambitious writers. Rules that Bolaño disregards. Writing is not a perfected art and should never be created with that type of goal in mind for the end product. 2666 isn't perfect; in fact, it's an ugly and messy and battled work of art, so anyone who reads 2666 should expect Lynchian non-sequiturs, digressions galore, and unanswered questions. If none of the above is "your thing," this book you should, at all costs, stay away from. In it, a character Amifaltano thinks the following:
"Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench."
--I don't doubt this quote will become a classic one as I've seen it in most every review I've read so far.
It's the epitome of what Literature is supposed to do, and what most don't. "Masterpiece," "spellbinding," "wonderful," blah blah blah...but most importanly, it is: a testament of what literature can truly do. And that, Bolaño has proven, is a lot.
Book Review: Life's too short, people...
Summary: 1 Stars
I'd like to think of myself as reasonably literate, but I find myself stupefied by the critical circle-jerk which has fomented around 2666. I appreciate that taste is subjective, but I was hard-pressed to find a single passage, clever parallel, insight into any facet of the human condition or turn of phrase -- in over 800 pages -- that made me feel like the reading experience was worthwhile. (That, in itself, is almost impressive.) In all honesty, I've never experienced a book which was so devoid of reward. I don't need the bad guys to get comeuppance, I just want a sense that my life has been somehow enriched by the time spent in the world offered by the book. Or even a sense. Of anything. All I found were endless culs-de-sac, bloated streams of consciousness which negate themselves, multiple interpretations of the dreams of distant relatives of unimportant side-side characters. There is the slimmest interconnection between the five books here, and even the title which unifies them is of nil significance: it takes the editor's note, appended to the end of the book, to explain that Bolano makes a reference to the year 2666 in an earlier novel. How anyone but the most devoted Bolanophile would pick up on that is anyone's guess.
I barely made it through, fueled only by some masochistic sense of completism, and a rapidly ebbing hope that there was some reason for the whole endeavour. Is there really that much demand for a sprawling, formless, utterly pretentious bloated drudge? Is it merely that the backstory of the author's awareness of his impending mortality as he wrote imparts the book itself with some credibility? If anything, I think that there's a morbid comedy to be found in the idea of Bolano racing against time to pack his novel with as many red herrings as possible - really, that's all I felt there to be here. Even books which I've found frustrating reads -- Eggers' "You Shall Know Our Velocity", Sebold's "The Lovely Bones", Easton Ellis' "Glamorama", Ballard's "Crash" -- have had some quality which propelled me onwards. Guess I'm destined not to get Bolano, like I don't get Jean-Luc Godard...
Sorry - just had to vent.
Just so you know I'm not a full-on hater, I'd like to give props to Daniel Alarcon's "Lost City Radio", which I read last week and whose unpretentious style I found exquisite. In my opinion, a young talent worth following...
Book Review: Like a cemetary in the year 2666...
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the best book I have read this year (2009). In fact, it is one of the best books I have ever read, and most other literature pales in comparison. However, it is probably not something everyone will enjoy as much as I did. It may appear to be a cumbersome exercise in multiple storylines that never neatly meet, but anyone who appreciates the art of the written word will savor every sentence. This is as much a triumph of translation for Natasha Wimmer as it is a magnum opus by Roberto Bolano.
One of the main reasons it appealed so much to me--aside from the skillfully crafted prose--is the dimensions of the narratives. The stories within stories regarding situations and people adds to the air of mystique. Another large appeal to me were the premises of each of the sections. One should consider the juxtaposition of numerous protagonists in each section: the European academics, the Mexican professor, the American Journalist, and the Soldier come Author. Each contributes to a greater narrative at hand. Though the police reports of section four may seem dross and eternal, they serve a function like the other sections.
Bolano deftly uses language--able to inject humor, sex, adventure, and introspection--with utmost skill and fluidity.
This is a novel to be closely read and appreciated. Take time for 2666.
Book Review: Literature Insight
Summary: 5 Stars
It is an excellent book to understand the lives of artists and the faculty involved in the arts. It spans the globe with modern problems and lives in transition. Bolano makes the world in this work of fiction seem current and real.