2666
/2666 by Roberto Bolaño (2004) As a book object, it’s one of my favorites: the cool, mysterious title, the massive 900 page paperback (Picador)—2008 translation by Natasha Wimmer, published after the author’s death. His death doesn’t enhance it, and I wish he’d lived to write more, but this book does offer that hope—that a writer can live on through a book. Also, that a book, as an object, can be inspiring. His writing is funny, mysterious, challenging. I read The Savage Detectives awhile back, so really looked forward to this one. I still haven’t gotten through it, however, and might never, though I’ve read parts of it multiple times, and will continue to do so. It’s divided into five “parts”—not entirely connected—a lot of characters. There are a couple of threads that connect the whole. One is the fictional author, Benno von Archimboldi—an elusive, intriguing, and ultimately hilarious figure. I love nothing so much as stories about oddball authors. The other thing is the fictional Mexican border town, Santa Teresa, which is apparently based on Ciudad Juárez, a place partly famous for hundreds of murders of women, many unsolved. Santa Teresa shows up in the book as a kind of black hole, pulling the rest of the stories in. Part 4 is titled: “The Part About the Crimes” and seems to be an endless, straightforward, record of the aftermath of homicides, of women, in graphic detail. I understand that facing such reality might be important, and this brings up an eternal question—how much of reality does each of us need to suppress just in order to stay sane? And within the realm of art, what does it mean to depict it? It made me think of that Michael Haneke movie, Funny Games (1997), that I truly believe is not intended to be completed by the viewer. Likewise, this novel’s “Crimes” section is impossible for a sane person to really take in—so you must ask yourself, to what extent am I harming myself—either soul-wise or perception-wise, to get through it? I’m sure there are those who would disagree with me, and maybe our discussion is part of what’s important here. And apart from all that, there is an immense amount of this book that’s just pure enjoyment.
12.29.25