the fate section is hit or miss but i loved the ending
― 8====D ------ ㋡ (max), Monday, 12 January 2009 17:36 (fifteen years ago) link
i think anyone who thought the thing about friends episodes is at least a little doomed
― thomp, Monday, 12 January 2009 17:46 (fifteen years ago) link
great point, but we're all doomed, FYI
― Mr. Que, Monday, 12 January 2009 17:48 (fifteen years ago) link
i also really like part II btw thought that it was the funniest and kindest section which was really necessary in context of how dark the other sections were
― Lamp, Monday, 12 January 2009 18:56 (fifteen years ago) link
thats my ranking:part 5part 1part 4part 2/part3
― Zeno, Thursday, 15 January 2009 11:05 (fifteen years ago) link
part 1 is the most complete, and perfect in structure.part 5 is the best cause of it's awesome gesture to german literature, adn because it ties everything just about right.part 4 is the worst in terms of literature, but in the end the emotional effect is overflows.part 2 and 3 are more less the same in style, part 3 is the worst (though still great) - too abstract and confused in parts.
― Zeno, Thursday, 15 January 2009 11:08 (fifteen years ago) link
yr crazy that part 4 'is the worst in terms of literature'!
actually i'm not quite sure what that means anyway
― t_g, Thursday, 15 January 2009 11:11 (fifteen years ago) link
it's written more like a detached news report than a novel, isnt it?plus it's too long.
― Zeno, Thursday, 15 January 2009 11:18 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah it's definitely detached but i dont see how that means it's not good lit. stuff doesnt have to be all flowery to be good writing.
it's definitely really long but as someone's said on another thread (i think) that's surely the point
― t_g, Thursday, 15 January 2009 11:31 (fifteen years ago) link
part 4 is the worst in terms of literature
u keep saying this and it keeps getting more wrong
― ½ąm¶ (Lamp), Thursday, 15 January 2009 17:13 (fifteen years ago) link
i like the meta stuff in part V where he's clearly talking about his own writing, or at least his idea of good writing.
it's a similar thing to savage detectives, where the poems or novels he makes you imagine are way better than anything he might have written if he had included samples from the fictional authors.
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Thursday, 15 January 2009 17:53 (fifteen years ago) link
theory: writing about fictional fiction/authors >>>> writing about fictional music/musicians
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Thursday, 15 January 2009 17:58 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah, in the sense that writing about fictional music/musicians is seriously terrible 99% of the time
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 15 January 2009 18:11 (fifteen years ago) link
thats because music is shitty and terrible and books are like the raddest thing eever
― 8====D ------ ㋡ (max), Thursday, 15 January 2009 20:24 (fifteen years ago) link
Taking Sides: Books vs. Music
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Thursday, 15 January 2009 20:26 (fifteen years ago) link
not to mention that "ILB" is such a totally clumsy acronym
― mark p (Mark P), Saturday, September 7, 2002 12:37 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
man this is so true
when is there even a 1% when this doesnt happen?
― t_g, Thursday, 15 January 2009 22:07 (fifteen years ago) link
Doctor Faustus - Thomas Mann
― Zeno, Thursday, 15 January 2009 22:36 (fifteen years ago) link
not-terrible bit about fictional music -- the protagonist's work on his operetta in coetzee's 'disgrace'.
the Writers Writing About Writers Writing is awful INCREDIBLY often, though, ur all nutz
― thomp, Thursday, 15 January 2009 23:16 (fifteen years ago) link
true, a lot of young and/or bad writers do this in a "write what you know!" kind of way, but it seems so much harder even for good writers to write about music well.
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Thursday, 15 January 2009 23:19 (fifteen years ago) link
nn, but the last chapter of poppy z brite's 'exquisite corpse' is bad enough to obscure a dozen you don't love me yets
haha "young and/or bad"
― thomp, Thursday, 15 January 2009 23:41 (fifteen years ago) link
ha i'm not at all sure that 'you don't love me yet' is one of the good ones!
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Friday, 16 January 2009 00:07 (fifteen years ago) link
oh no, i meant it was bad, but it would take a dozen of it to be as bad as that bit of that novel. which is a bit like the epilogue to misery, only even less earned and more putrid
― thomp, Friday, 16 January 2009 00:18 (fifteen years ago) link
How does the translation deal with the pun name "Lalo Cura"?
― Women can be captains too, you know? (jim), Friday, 23 January 2009 15:16 (fifteen years ago) link
they just call him "lalo cura" and theres a brief sentence somewhere where they explain the joke, sort of. they dont really go into depth re: the connotations of 'la locura'
― 8====D ------ ㋡ (max), Friday, 23 January 2009 15:24 (fifteen years ago) link
by "they" i mean the translator
ah, cool.
Lalo Cura is my favourite character in this. Him at the crime scene figuring out the body was placed in exactly the spot where it would be found most easily and the fact that he's the only police officer in Santa Teresa that drinks milk.
― Women can be captains too, you know? (jim), Friday, 23 January 2009 15:26 (fifteen years ago) link
jim, did you get to the hans reiter childhood "puns" part?
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Friday, 23 January 2009 15:29 (fifteen years ago) link
lalo cura seems like another fake-out, the eccentric cop who would be the one to crack the case and have a chase scene & shootout with the killer if this was a movie.
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Friday, 23 January 2009 15:31 (fifteen years ago) link
o lalo cura was that guy. man i find it so hard to remember characters names
― t_g, Friday, 23 January 2009 15:33 (fifteen years ago) link
xposts. Last night I had a bit of insomnia and got from page 600 to page 720 or something like that but that's still in the part of the crimes. So no, not at the puns bit. When I get to it I'll be sure to report back.
Lalo Cura's genealogy was pretty good too.
― Women can be captains too, you know? (jim), Friday, 23 January 2009 15:38 (fifteen years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Friday, 30 January 2009 00:01 (fifteen years ago) link
I was looking at this yesterday. Nice cover, intriguing premise, intimidating weight. But is it any good? I presume so, given the length of this thread, but no-one's said so in so many words
― Ismael Klata, Friday, 30 January 2009 17:55 (fifteen years ago) link
it is good, though maybe not quite as good as the savage detectives (debatable)
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 30 January 2009 17:57 (fifteen years ago) link
chaotic,confused,too long in parts,but still quite amazing i'd say
― Zeno, Friday, 30 January 2009 23:29 (fifteen years ago) link
theres more about it on the bolano thread
― max, Friday, 30 January 2009 23:55 (fifteen years ago) link
my take is that its pretty much the raddest book to have come out last year and maybe in the last few years
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Saturday, 31 January 2009 00:01 (fifteen years ago) link
haha ok how many people posted on this thread and forgot to vote
― max, Saturday, 31 January 2009 00:01 (fifteen years ago) link
i guess only 4 (including myself) finished it.but the results are right.proportionaly, if it was 20,10,10,0,0 for example, it would seem right i guess.
about the raddest book:im the U.S. - maybe (havent read them all of course)but in March, the Johnathan Littel book "the kindly ones" will be published and will probably get a lot of attention(though i am from the ones who think it's mediocre at best)
― Zeno, Saturday, 31 January 2009 00:12 (fifteen years ago) link
started 2666 tonight
kindly ones is the title of two other books i can think of and sounds dreadful:
« Air »Aue visits his sister and brother-in-law's empty house in Pomerania. There, he engages in a veritable autoerotic orgy particularly fueled by fantasy images of his twin sister. The two SS police officers follow his trail to the house, but he manages to hide from them.« Gigue »Aue travels back to Berlin through enemy Soviet lines with his friend, Thomas who has come to rescue him. There he finds many of his colleagues preparing for escape in the chaos of the last days of the Third Reich, meets and is decorated by Hitler in the Führerbunker, escapes through the Berlin U-Bahn subway tunnels, and is finally rid of his police pursuers.
― thomp, Saturday, 31 January 2009 21:26 (fifteen years ago) link
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan)
Just started the last part, after getting backtracked with other books, so far Hans Reiter hasn't said anything that's a pun, as far as I can tell. He just speaks with lots of elision words so that e.g. he says "Nasao na" instead of "No ha pasado nada".
― Bone Thugs-N-Harmony ft Phil Collins (jim), Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:26 (fifteen years ago) link
elision words? i just mean elision
elysian woods
― Lamp, Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:32 (fifteen years ago) link
his name is hans REITER, dont u see
― max, Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:33 (fifteen years ago) link
oh god how did i not think of that
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:34 (fifteen years ago) link
like WRITER
― max, Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:36 (fifteen years ago) link
o hi i thought it was about black riders
― Lamp, Wednesday, 18 February 2009 19:37 (fifteen years ago) link
I should be finished this tomorrow, less than 100 pages to go. Part with Archimboldi is the best. My favourite digression in the book is the one about Ansky's notebook.
― Bone Thugs-N-Harmony ft Phil Collins (jim), Monday, 2 March 2009 00:55 (fifteen years ago) link
man this book is so good i feel like just straight up readin it again
― max, Monday, 2 March 2009 01:50 (fifteen years ago) link
It was my favourite, clearly I never voted in this
― Ismael Klata, Friday, 28 June 2013 22:22 (ten years ago) link
I would have voted for part II, but I hadn't read it back then. It may be expendable, but it's moving, and Amalfitano is a great character. Loved part I also, and part IV is burned into my brain. I thought 2666 was great, but The Savage Detectives is even better. I'm currently trying to read everything that's been translated and, as you might expect, it's somewhat hit or miss. Distant Star and Amulet are quite good, and, if you read just one book of stories, make it The Insufferable Gaucho.
― Cherish, Tuesday, 2 July 2013 19:16 (ten years ago) link
I have now finished three of five parts and I'm a good 100pp into The Part About the Crimes. I am happy to see the fifth and final part was best regarded, getting two of the four votes cast. While I have found the book interesting and full of sharply observed details, it hasn't gripped me or induced any of the thrills of discovery that I associate with books that have genuinely excited me.
I think the extreme sexual stamina of all his characters is lol.
Agree.
― Aimless, Friday, 5 July 2013 00:14 (ten years ago) link
do we not think that he is aware that it is lol
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Friday, 5 July 2013 01:05 (ten years ago) link
deadpan delivery
― Aimless, Friday, 5 July 2013 01:39 (ten years ago) link
I think he knew it was lol but he stopped laughing in the 70s at some point so the humor was theoretical.
― Treeship, Friday, 5 July 2013 02:07 (ten years ago) link
i sort of want to claim that it's not a thing, that it's just the opening section of savage detectives and the last of 2666, that it's for specific effect. but i don't know if i'm editing my memories to make him less embarrassing -- i do recall bits in the first section of detectives (obv the first thing of his i read) that made me think, seriously, is this guy for real
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Friday, 5 July 2013 17:11 (ten years ago) link
I dont have a good answer for that. I think its both supposed to be funny and to add a mythical something to the book.
― Treeship, Friday, 5 July 2013 17:20 (ten years ago) link
yes 'a mythical something' is v good, particularly for the scene in 2666 where they're j.o.ing watching someone have epic not v pleasant sounding sex in a gothic castle
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Friday, 5 July 2013 17:31 (ten years ago) link
ha, is that a real thing? i have no memory of that scene.
― precious bonsai children of new york (Jordan), Friday, 5 July 2013 17:46 (ten years ago) link
yeah. it's the countess lady and the general who is later crucified, i think.
― Treeship, Friday, 5 July 2013 18:21 (ten years ago) link
ha i'd been talking about that scene earlier and then when jordan queried it i wondered if i had in fact invented it
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Saturday, 6 July 2013 03:14 (ten years ago) link
it does feel sort of like a hallucination: my memory of that scene is very vivid, yet imprecise four years after reading it. maybe that book is a masterpiece after all. i don't know anymore.
― Treeship, Saturday, 6 July 2013 05:10 (ten years ago) link
Some of those scenes I took as parellel to the pornographical descriptions of the violence in 'Part about the Crimes'.
He is entirely aware of the ridiculousness, a porn parody.
I need to re-read this. Maybe I'll try and do it at the end of the year, just take a dislike to the paperbk edition of this (UK).
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 6 July 2013 08:40 (ten years ago) link
My paperback's cool, it's got a spiky hole punched in the cover and a skull's eye goggling out.
― Ismael Klata, Saturday, 6 July 2013 10:15 (ten years ago) link
Given all the references to Flaubert-- wasn't there actually a scene in part 1 where they talked about Bouvard & Pecuchet? and also Finnegan's Wake?-- I felt part 4 was deliberately meant to allude/pay homage to B&P but I couldn't figure out why and I couldn't keep myself interested enough to finish that part at all. I'll try it again some time. I loved part 1 a lot.
― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 6 July 2013 13:51 (ten years ago) link
One of the early parts (1 or 2) mentions a clerk who reads a lot, but only the secondary works of great authors. In pointing this out, Bolano cites Bouvard and Pecuchet as Flaubert's great work.
― Aimless, Saturday, 6 July 2013 17:39 (ten years ago) link
Ohhh right, I forgot about that whole section. The parts that stick in my mind are the critics, Amalfitano, the journalist, and of course the crimes. So basically everything except that part, though I do remember being into how everything comes together with Archimboldi. I want to read this again.
― precious bonsai children of new york (Jordan), Saturday, 6 July 2013 17:42 (ten years ago) link
i like how impenetrable and mysterious archimboldi is. ghostlike, itinerant, creating wildly different books (seemingly) out of a grim compulsion. the last section is pretty good, i think.
― Treeship, Saturday, 6 July 2013 17:52 (ten years ago) link
heh i forgot you'd just read this and i thought man, good recall
i gave up on this part of the way through the part about archimboldi, for reasons that made sense at the time, and for x years i've wanted to finish it but don't know whether i'll be able to get the momentum to go through parts one to four again
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Saturday, 6 July 2013 20:04 (ten years ago) link
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?
― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 6 July 2013 20:56 (ten years ago) link
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.
― Cherish, Sunday, 7 July 2013 00:14 (ten years ago) link
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.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 18:47 (ten years ago) link
a read-along, just about to start, late sept. thru nov.
http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2014/08/22/read-along-roberto-bolanos-2666/
― j., Friday, 22 August 2014 19:45 (nine years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 24 August 2014 08:15 (nine years ago) link
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.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 7 June 2017 20:22 (six years ago) link
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
― dow, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 22:30 (six years ago) link
PRRRRRRRRROOOOOGNOSISSSS
― j., Thursday, 8 June 2017 02:24 (six years ago) link