2666
Its been way too long since I wrote any book reviews and I will now attempt to catch up! I’ll start with the “big boy”, 2666, by Roberto Bolano (FS&G, 2008), now available in a boxed set of 5 paperbacks (FS&G, 2008) or one big fat paperback (Picador, 2009). I kept referring to the experience of reading this book as being enslaved to “book heroin”. It is so dark, unsettling and disturbing, yet I couldn’t wait to get home each day and get back into it. The book is divided into 5 sections, and Bolano (who died in 2003 and is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation) intended it to be published as 5 separate books. There is a huge, rambling cast of characters, and the 5 “novels” are interconnected, but there is no real plot that ties up neatly at the end. In fact, this is a book I would really like to re-read (if I could find the time) because it is pretty complicated in its scope – the first time around I was completely drawn in by the writing and simply trying to keep all the characters straight – and I think a second reading would be really satisfying.
The first “book”, The Part About the Critics follows the adventures and love affairs of a small group of scholars dedicated to the work of a reclusive German novelist, Benno von Archimboldi. They trace the writer to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa (read Juarez), which almost becomes a character in the novel. This section reminded me (in some strange way) of one of my favorite books, Shadow of the Wind…more about that later! The second “book”, The Part About Amalfitano, really had a druggy feel. Amalfitano is a professor at a college in Santa Teresa who meets the scholars in the first book. The second book focuses on him and his beautiful daughter, Rosa. He begins to question why he moved to Santa Rosa from Spain and to hear voices… you begin to think you are also losing your mind as you read this section. The third “book”, The Part About Fate, had me chuckling several times, especially in the part where Fate accompanies a former Black Panther minister in Detroit as he gives a sermon on DANGER, MONEY, FOOD, STARS and USEFULNESS (?!?!). Quincy Fate Williams is a black American reporter who is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a prizefight and ends up rescuing Rosa from her gun-toting ex-boyfriend. This is a good point to note that the book is full of long, meandering passages that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the plot (to the extent there is one) but they are incredible to read. In fact, the whole book looks intimidating when you first pick it up because there can be pages with no paragraphs, and single sentences that go on and on, but trust me, they read “like butter” and I was often stunned by passages, or laughed out loud.
The fourth “book”, The Part About the Crimes, is brutal. It is a tormenting catalogue of the rapes and murders of women in Santa Teresa, and a view into the power system that is either covering up for the real criminals or too incompetent to find them (or both). The emotionless recounting of murder after murder is probably intentional – how can any society tolerate such brutality on such a large scale – but as you read about murder after murder, you become less sensitive about them, and that is probably Bolano’s point. I cut an article out of The New York Times as I was reading this – “Rights groups estimate that as many as 500 women have been killed since 1993 in Ciudad Juarez and other cities in the state of Chihuahua. Many of them were tortured before they were killed, their bodies often found weeks later, dumped in the desert.” Truth can be harsher than fiction..
The book is concluded in The Part About Archimboldi. There are some great passages in here about writing, publishing and, yes, bookselling! Again, there isn’t an ending that ties everything up and connects all the dots, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of reading this book. It really is about the journey, not the destination. So, if you are up for it, crack this big boy open and embark on a magical mystery tour!