2666 poll

iirc there's a remark in the foreword stating that Bolano saw 2666 as his own attempt to create a "favourite, secondary work"

wth I'll go check it

Nope, it was the afterword and it was the conjecture of Ignacio Eccevaria:

...embarked on a colossal project, far surpassing The Savage Detectives in ambition and length. ...the spirit of risk that drives it and its rash totalizing zeal. On this point, it is worth recalling the passage from 2666 in which, after his conversation with a book-loving pharmacist, Amalfitano, one of the novel's protagonists, reflects with undisguised disappointment on the growing prestige of short, neatly shaped novels (citing titles like Bartleby the Scrivener and The Metamorphosis) to the exclusion of longer, more ambitious and daring works (like Moby-Dick or The Trial):

"What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. 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" etc.

Frankly it kind of put me off. Reading that Guardian article about Celine today reminded me of how cool it is when L-F. works in some self-aggrandizement but with Bolano it really bothered me?

It never bothered me. It's in the short stories, too. His alter ego, Arturo, is always quite the stud. But it seems to be the same sort of quasi-mythological exaggeration as the idea that everyone he meets writes/reads poetry. It's heightened... almost an alternate universe.

Elsewhere I promised to post some impressions of 2666 after I finished it. This seemed the best place to post them. They will consist mostly of random thoughts pretending to have some connection to one another.

I found 2666 to be well written and interesting. The repetiveness of the Part About the Crimes was integral to its purpose, so it was not troublesome for me. Bolano had an excellent eye for details and he had enough discipline to keep them from piling up too profusely and burying his point.

He clearly had a strong imagination, in that through the first four parts he easily convinces you that his novel is merely reportage of observed facts and real people, whether they are doing mundane or extraordinary things, which nicely sets up the Part About Archimboldi, where he pushes the reader to accept his far more fantastic premises about his characters and their activities.

On the other hand, I found the book strangely empty and lifeless in a fundamental way, so that the Part About the Crimes really reflects the heart of the book better than any other part. The characters in that part are all either literally dead, as victims of murder, or merely deadened, as describes most of the inhabitants of Santa Theresa. The most colorful and lively characters were those in the final part, about Archimboldi, and it seems worth noting that they lived the bulk of their lives before the present era, in a mythologized past.

I discovered I could accept the plotless nature of the book, in that the thematic scaffolding was strong enough to substitute for a plot. Most of all I found it a very bleak book, always flirting with death, alienation and chaos, but not a false book. Its only falsity came legitimately, through excluding the parts of life that Bolano chose not to portray or engage with, so that this was not the falsity of lies or distortion, but simply the falsity of art itself.

a read-along, just about to start, late sept. thru nov.

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2014/08/22/read-along-roberto-bolanos-2666/

Be interesting to follow: esp when it gets to the crimes bit. Like one of comments says on re-reading it felt like a richer experience although I had no problems first time around. I remember I couldn't stop

Still look for a copy of it with that cover.

This is the only ILB thread devoted to 2666, so this seems like the best place to put this quotation I found in his novel Amulet, since it throws an interesting bit of light on the title of his final novel.

Guerrero, at that time of nigh, is more like a cemetery than an avenue, not a cemetery in 1974 or in 1968, or 1975, but a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else.

This sentence occurs at the end of Chapter Seven, near the bottom of page 86 in the 2008 New Directions paperback edition of the Chris Andrews translation.

Thanks for the quote, especially the punchline, which might well sum up his Prognosis: Negative (Seinfeld ref) in 2666---and the mostly self-taught exile's way of dealing with it is a deflected rage in the cage, rather than telling us what to think or feel, anyway that's the way I took it and vice-versa. Another good thread: Roberto Bolano

PRRRRRRRRROOOOOGNOSISSSS