2666 poll

i can sympathize but in the end ur dead and im not so i think publish w/e fsg will publish and sb u on the other side

i am really interested to see what the hell a 6th part would be about so chalk all this up 2 that

pls publish my twitter when i am dead thx

ghost twitter

i sort of hope the 6th part is a myth dreamed up as some kind of next-level art/promotion device btw bolano and his agents cuz having the book have this missing empty ending that no one will ever read would be more 2666 than 2666 itself

este huevón.

Random question - does anyone have any idea what font is used for the title on the book cover?

Still haven't gotten past "The Part About Archimboldi." Must. press. forward.

Wait - isn't that the last part?

First part, I thought. The book begins by focusing on the Archimboldi scholars.

Or maybe that's the part about the critics?

thats the part abt the critics

Makes sense. I haven't gotten past that part yet, is what I meant.

By all means, keep going. And then, in the event that you get stuck for a bit during The Part About the Crimes, keep going through that, too. It's worth it.

But yeah, what font is that?

I abandoned this book somewhere in the middle of The Part About the Crimes about a month ago. I keep meaning to pick it up again but it's pretty grueling stuff.

"And then, in the event that you get stuck for a bit during The Part About the Crimes, keep going through that, too. It's worth it"

in retrospective,after reading through it, my advice to Number None and Daniel is the opposite.
don't let this over long part disturb yr reading, skip it if you get tired, it's not getting anywhere till the end of that part.

Which font - the US version or the UK version?

Heh - good question... I'm an American who lives in the UK, and the book was a gift. I've not paid close enough attention to which version I have. Looks like this, though:

http://bookfinds.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/2666.jpg

Bolano's name is in Facade MT Condensed: http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?pid=205963

The '2666' isn't done with a normal font--it's scanned from an old woodcut typeface: the designer says, "Ideally, I didn't want to use a digital typeface, so I was pleased to discover the woodcut face that eventually made its' way onto the final designs." ; http://www.faceoutbooks.com/#13855/2666

Hope that helps!

Bought this back at the end of December last year (back when it was still being published in a three volume box set), but life and other books and insane work hours conspired to get in the way. Finally had time to take it down off my shelf last week and I just finished The Part About the Critics. Blown away thus far.

By all means, keep going.

I will. In fact, I'll turn back to 2666 right after I'm done with Nixon: Alone In The White House.

James, that's incredibly helpful - thank you very much. Great stuff at that link!

Finished The Part About the Crimes a week or two ago, needed to take a break for a bit. Started The Part About Archamboldi this afternoon. That was friggin' intense.

Has anyone re-read this yet? It's tempting me, but my queue of unread books wants to get in the way.

Has anyone re-read this yet? It's tempting me, but my queue of unread books wants to get in the way.

Having just finished it, I already want to if only to try and get a handle on the whole, but I have too many other books that I've ignored while ploughing through this the first time. Perhaps in a month or two.

Oh, and Part V, despite the rushed ending, is probably my favourite, followed by Part I - I'm never clear if his intentions in Part I are to lampoon or sympathize with his characters, whereas the rest of the book is filled with people understood without condescension or irony (or at the very least described with a clearer measure of affection). Part II and III have faded for me - both seem slighter, somehow, but perhaps a return to them will reveal depths that I missed initially.

i voted pt. v. it was definitely the most old-school literary section of the novel, meaning it read like it could have been written in the '40s or '50s (maybe because of all the WWII stuff) but i don't know, i enjoyed it the most and archimboldi was the best character and i'm glad he made some effort to tie things together somewhat

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, January 12, 2009 11:16 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pt. III was the worst, a lot of it seemed awkward and false and fate never really resonated as a character

n/a and I always agree on books.

I thought it was a mess.

i hadn't noticed that A,LS. we disagree a lot on music and movies and other things so that's interesting.

Your David Mitchell recs were spot-on, and I agree with just about everything you've posted about him.

My rankings:

5
1
4
3
2 (I really thought this was the most expendable)

He could have folded a lot of the Amaltifano material into asides and digressions in Pts 1 and 3 imo.

most expendable but also one of my favorites

everybody hates 4, and finds it hard to read, and right on with that, but I feel like it's a kind of apotheosis of something

*checks to make sure that word is being used correctly*

the scene at the very end of pt 3 thru pt 4 was my favorite. I'm a giant lost in the middle of a burned forest. But someone will come to rescue me gave me chills

then pt 4 with its information overload of murders really made me feel like i was lost in a burned forest

i dont think i disliked any individual part, it was more that there were parts that read & you really got into it & then it slows down & feels more laborious, but all the parts had essential moments to the degree that i cant really space them out like that ... it feels like 50 different patchy memories thrown together

i mean that in a good, not entirely unorganized way

everybody hates 4, and finds it hard to read

crazy talk

Hate is too strong a word; don't know why I used it. Guess it just confuses me how many ppl seem to prefer 5...?

I was actually able to maintain distance in 4 mostly bcz of the journalistic detachment with which Bolano reports everything. But once in a while that detachment would break--when the police are raping the prostitutes, or when the old woman (can't remember her name) is on TV--and then all the cumulative pathos which had been held in check would come forth all at once and almost overwhelm me. It's probably the book's greatest effect imo.

good post. seems like a big obsession of bolano's throughout his work is this idea that latin america was irreparable poisoned by granting asylum to former nazi war criminals post-WWII. reading "Nazi Literature in the Americas" and really digging it.

I'm only just starting this and about 100pp into the first section, The Part About the Critics. How I keep getting myself into these 900pp books I cannot understand, but it seems, thus far, worthwhile.

I liked the part about amalfitano (sp?) best but the part about archimboldo is the most memorable. Overall i think this book is ok, idk, i'm not as enthusiastic about bolano as most people seem to be. I think the extreme sexual stamina of all his characters is lol.

i said a crazy thing last post -- that the part about archimboldi was the hardest to forget. the part about the crimes was the hardest to forget, although i think about it the least because it was an almost traumatic reading experience. my then gf and i both read this right after someone we knew was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and that was an awful decision. maybe the reason i sort of don't talk or think about this book very much is that it was *too* disturbing to me, too powerful, and i am not ready to accept it as the major work of our era, which is clearly what it sets out to be.

i wonder if viktor shklovsky would have approved of this book. he thought the point of our was to re-sensitize us to the world around us, and i think this book does accomplish that with its dull, prosaic mode of relating the murders -- as dead to the victims' suffering as our society is. probably, the effect is even more pronounced in the original spanish text, as it is really the form of that chapter -- the bodies piling up, too many to keep track of, too many to care about, until you catch yourself in this indifferent mode of reading and the effect of this recognition is even worse than any more "emotive" description of horror could be -- that makes it so striking, and sickening, as if all it is really saying, over and over, is "this is our world. look at it." until, finally, you do.

hm. this book is better than ok.

one more note: i think my reaction to this novel -- sort of forgetting about it, or repressing it -- was common, as i don't hear it discussed very often anymore and three (four?) years ago it was The Big Thing. in one sense, bolano is telling us something we don't want to hear: our culture treats certain human beings as disposable (by "our culture" i mean the world's, global capitalism's), and the casualties of our system are just too numerous, the problems so vast, that there is nothing we can do (by "we" i mean, anyone) to stem the bleeding. i think this book truly is relentlessly nihilistic. the world it presents is a totally dead world, devoid of hope, except there are billions of people caught in it, suffering. it's been a while since i've read it, but from what i remember amalfitano stood out as one of the only decent, relatable dudes, but he goes insane and his daughter gets caught up with murderous gangsters, i think. i am thinking now that i ought to read this book again but that is never, ever going to happen.

i was singing for my supper in an overnice restaurant with some rich californian ex-soviets ("when reagan came, there was hope!") the other night, and one of them brought up this book, unprompted, but i was the only other one at the table who'd read it, so she started describing it, in detail, from page one, the part about the critics, and i kept thinking she was going to stop but she just kept going, explaining plot points and characters from at least the first two parts, showing a pretty impressive literary memory, and then finally she was like "i didn't like it at all. i didn't see the point of it." i don't think she got far into the part about the crimes. anyway i really admired that level of attentive engagement with a book she didn't like. it was russian. i think this book is very good.

An example to us all!

treeship posts on this thread = v good posts, would read again

one more note: i think my reaction to this novel -- sort of forgetting about it, or repressing it -- was common, as i don't hear it discussed very often anymore

or it's just really long

farthest i've gotten is the very beginning of the, whatever it is, private eye part?

The part about fate, i think.

He's a journalist iirc but the chapter is written in a noirish style

It was my favourite, clearly I never voted in this

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.

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.