2666

by Roberto Bolaño

Having written about each section or part of this long novel separately, I thought it made sense to try to write about the book as a unified whole.

That is not such an easy task. This is a beautiful mess of a novel, split into five novellas (two of which could stand on their own as an individually published book - which at one point Bolaño intended as a way of guaranteeing income for his family and publisher after his early death) which share thematic similarities, and which intersect on occassion, but which really stand best on their own. At one point, Archimboldi, the German novelist who is at the centre of the two book-ending sections, thinks "that history, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that view iwth one another in monstrousness" (p. 794). This view can certainly be seen to apply to the fourth part of the novel, "The Part About the Killings", which is a string of monstrous acts; this view can also be taken as a discussion of this novel as a whole.

That the novel ends, more or less, near where it begins should not be mistaken for a demurement to narrative structure. The book sprawls, encompassing European academic conferences, World War II Romania, prison in Mexico, the 'black' press of New York, Mexican academe, and many other locales and settings. Characters, while searching for each other, never quite meet up. A lesser author would be tempted to riddle the book with near misses and cameos, but Bolaño is above that.

What remains remarkably consistent throughout the book is the strength of his prose (even in translation). An example of why I like his writing: "... the full moon filtered through the fabric of the tent like boiling water through a sock" (p. 750). His images are often startling and original.

In places, 2666 carries traces of that other great Latin American writer, Jorge Luis Borges, as we are treated to a number of précis of books that don't exist except in Bolaño's imagination. We discover many of Archimboldi's books twice - first as they appear to the literary critics in the first part, and secondly as they come from Archimboldi's own mind, in chronolical order. This reminds me of who we often experience a writer's work so differently from the writer. We tend to read books in serendipitous order, while the author often sees progression (or stagnation) that escapes us.

As much as I enjoyed 2666, it was the Note to the First Edition's claim that the book was narrated by Arturo Belano, Bolaño's alter ego from "The Savage Detectives" that has forced me to re-think much of what I've read. That there is a strong connection between these two books was apparent almost from the beginning, especially with a veiled reference to the two protagonists of that novel at one point, but to think that Bolaño was writing this as Belano's book is very interesting.

This is an incredible piece of work with many strong images and ideas that are likely to stick with the reader. It's taken a good chunk of my summer to work my way through it, and I hope to return to it in a few years, and read it alongside "The Savage Detectives."