2666

Okay, it's been a while, and as a founding father of the Back-Blog I feel as though I should be posting more often. But I assure you, I've been working on some lengthy items, and aside from a hiatus from logging in late December, I've been reading and playing a ton. Finally, something has been finished- Roberto Bolano's epic novel, 2666. Allow me to flashback to last year for a moment. At some point, despite my quest to finish everything I have, I developed a fascination with really long novels and went kinda out of my way to pick some up even if I wasn't going to get to them soon. However, on Christmas, I surprisingly received a Kindle- a great gift for a reader, for sure! So this finally motivated me to finish off a lot of the big books I have soon, so I can eventually make the transition to my E-Reader. 2666 is the first of these books. It clocked in at just under 900 pages despite being unfinished, and covers a huge array of topics in five separate parts. Since I liked it but didn't love it, I feel that my praise isn't likely to result in any fellow Back-Bloggers checking this out, so I'm gonna toss out a few spoilers. Not that there's too much to spoil here. The plot moves along slowly, and rarely twisted in some unexpected direction, but that was okay- I liked the writing enough anyway that it really didn't need to. To start with, the book opens up with Part 1- The Part About the Critics, in which a group of notable literary critics who are biggest fans of reclusive author Benno von Archimboldi get together to discuss his works, and eventually set off to find and interview him. Their search eventually takes them to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa, where their lives spiral out of control. It didn't hook me at first, but by the time the critics make it to Mexico, the book really hit a great stride. This is continued in The Part About Amalfitano, which delves into the life of one of the minor characters in the previous part. Bolano is a bit vague about what is happening to Amalfitano- after the disappearance of his wife, Amalfitano either becomes a real, actual psychic, or he might be going crazy. Either way, interesting read. The novel keeps going strong with Part 2- The Part About Fate, in which Oscar Fate, author for a New York magazine with a focus on African-American issues, is sent out to cover a few stories- first to Detroit, and then to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match solely because the usual sports guy passed away. While in Santa Teresa Fate becomes interested in a local story that's been quietly alluded to several times previously in the book- over the course of a few years, a few hundred unsolved murders have taken place in the city, possibly the work of the biggest serial killer of all time. This story comes to the forefront in Part 4- The Part About the Crimes. I don't want to say that the story came to a screeching halt here, but to me it was definitely the least interesting part of the whole book. Bolano describes in rich detail dozens of the 200+ murders, all from the time that the body is discovered. It's hard to pin down exactly how he talked about this- it's not presented as a police procedural, or some giant mystery, but taking a look at its effect of the crimes on the people in the city. After the first few times, the shock of "the next body was found by..." starts to wear off and eventually this part just gets boring. The novel started to win me back though in the final act- The Part About Archimboldi, which details the life of the author our critics were trying to find way back in Part 1 and eventually (and surprisingly) ties together a few loose ends from the previous four parts. But in the end, I still just wasn't sure what the purpose of the book was. It seems like a recurring theme throughout the book was that violence is senseless and unnecessary, yet a flashback to a Holocaust concentration camp almost felt like it was played for laughs. What? I really expected the "violence = bad" message to really come to a head there, and yet it's barely touched, which makes me wonder why it was covered in the latter parts of Part 5. Either way, the connections here are loose enough that I might recommend people read the book and simply skip most of part 4- I realize that Bolano wanted to really try something experimental and cover dozens upon dozens of murders in a (relatively) short amount of pages, but I felt like a lot of it didn't add anything, which is a shame based on how well the book started off. Because of that start, I'm also likely to check out what else Bolano has done, but not til every 500+ page book I own is done and logged. Expect another before the month is out.