2666: The Part About Amalfitano

by Roberto Bolaño

The second part of this novel appears to take place before the first, and contains no mention of Archimboldi, or the Archimboldists, instead focusing on Professor Amalfitano, who appeared in the first part as the guide for the Archimboldists in Santa Teresa.

In this part, we join Amalfitano in Barcelona, where he is married, with a young daughter. His wife leaves him to find an institutionalized gay poet with whom she claims to have had a sexual encounter, although Amalfitano knows that it was he who introduced her to his work. She ends up in a small village, where she daily attempts to enter the asylum to visit him. This poet, who remains nameless, echoes the story of Edwin Johns, the painter who mutilated himself and was institutionalized in the first part.

Years after his wife's disappearance, Amalfitano picks up stakes and moves to Sonora, where he begins to exhibit odd behaviour. He discovers a book in his luggage - a geometry book written by a poet, and decides to use it to approximate one of Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades; he hangs the book from a clothesline, and begins to constantly check to see how the climate is affecting the book.

This section of the novel is more mystical than the first. Amalfitano hears a voice in his house, and begins drawing geometric shapes labelled with the names of philosophers without realizing he's doing it. He also reads about the roots of Chilean telepathy.

This section lacks the narrative structure of the first, but perhaps contains more hints as to the true nature of this novel. There are echoes of "The Savage Detectives" here - one character complains about the lack of quality mescal in Mexico, in what could be a direct quote from that earlier novel.

One thing that stood out in particular was towards the end, when Amalfitano was reminded of a young pharmicist he knew in Barcelona, who would read minor works of famous authors, out of a fear of "the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unkown." I sense that Bolaño is talking about this book here.