Roberto Bolano

Maybe I made a mistake in starting with Savage Detectives. By Night in Chile and Nazi Literature in the Americas are good, but the at the same level of Savage Detectives. I'm hoping 2666 will be at least at the same level, or step it up a notch.

but NOT at the same level, I meant, agh.

Oh, and I meant to make some dumb analogy to starting with some band's best album, and then being left with the great but comparatively weaker material afterward.

GREAT POST, sorry

this dude has some major heat on him right now - first time in ages that a friend has just handed me a book and said "here, I want you to have this, I know when you read it you'll love it" with that kind of evangelical self-assurance y'know

started that book today so far quite good

savage detectives?

there's some good bolano backlash on the "what's a noize dude reading?" thread.

of course there is

did you finish it, nick?

yeah it was great

agreed

now i'm reading 'clockers' and it's like whoah how are there so many amazing books?

ha, i'm about to start 'lush life'.

2666 coming out november 11,

outstanding reviews all over.can't wait to read it.

“Bolaño’s masterwork . . . An often shockingly raunchy and violent tour de force (though the phrase seems hardly adequate to describe the novel’s narrative velocity, polyphonic range, inventiveness, and bravery) based in part on the still unsolved murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, in the Sonora desert near the Texas border.” —FRANCISCO GOLDMAN, The New York Review of Books

“Not just the great Spanish-language novel of [this] decade, but one of the cornerstones that define an entire literature.” —J. A. MASOLIVER RÓDENAS, La Vanguardia

“One of those strange, exquisite, and astonishing experiences that literature offers us only once in a very long time . . . to see . . . a writer in full pursuit of the Total Novel, one that not only completes his life’s work but redefines it and raises it to new dizzying heights.” —RODRIGO FRESÁN, El País

"Bolano's savoir-faire is incredible ... The exploded narrative reveals a virtuosity that we rarely encounter, and one cannot help being bowled over by certain bravura passages--to single one out, the series of reports describing murdered young women, which is both magnificent and unbearable. We won't even mention the 'resolution' of this infernal 2666, a world of a novel in which the power of words triumphs over savagery." --Baptiste Liger, L'EXPRESS

"Splendid ... The jaw-dropping synthesis of a brief but incredibly fertile career." --Fabrice Gabriel, LES INROCKUPTIBLES

"The event of the spring: with 2666 Roberto Bolano has given us his most dense, complex, and powerful novel, a meditation on literature and evil that begins with a sordid newspaper item in contemporary Mexico." --Morgan Boedec, CHRONIC ART

"Including the imaginary and the mythic alongside the real in his historiography, without ever dabbling in the magical realism dear to many of his Latin-American peers, Bolano strews his chronicle with dreams and visions. As in the films of David Lynch (with whom Bolano's novel shares a certain kinship) these become a catalyst for reflection ... In such darkness, one must keep one's eyes wide open. Bolano invites us to do just that." --Sabine Audrerie, LA CROIX

"An immense moment for literature ... With prodigious skill and his inimitable art of digression, Bolano leads us to the gates of his own hell. May he burn in peace." --TECHNIKART

"Bolano constructs a chaos that has an order all its own ... The state of the world today transmuted into literature." --Isabelle Ruf, LE TEMPS

"To confront the reader with the horror of the contemporary world was Bolano's guiding ambition. He succeeded, to say the least. Upset, shocked, sometimes even sickened, at times one is tempted to shut the book because it's unbearable to read. Don't shut it. Far from being a blood-and-guts thriller meant to entertain, 2666 is a 'visceral realist" portrait of the human condition in the twenty-first century." --Anna Topaloff, MARIANNE

"On every page the reader marvels, hypnotized, at the capacity of this baroque writer to encompass all literary genres in a single fascinating, enigmatic story. No doubt many readers will find 2666 inexhaustible to interpretation. It is a fully realized work by a pure genius at the height of his powers." --LIRE

"His masterpiece ... Bolano borrows from vaudeville and the campus novel, from noir and pulp, from science fiction, from the Bildungsroman, from war novels; the tone of his writing oscillates between humor and total darkness, between the simplicity of a fairytale and the false neutrality of a police report." --Minh Tran Huy, LE MAGAZINE LITTERAIRE (Paris)

"The book explores evil with irony, without any theory or resolution, relying on storytelling alone as its saving grace... Each story is an adventure: a fresco at once horrifying, delicate, grotesque, redundant, and absurd, revealed by the flashlight of a child who stands at the threshold of a cave he will never leave." --Philippe Lancon, LIBERATION

"If THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES recounted the end of a century of avant-gardes and ideological battles, 2666, more radically, evokes the end of humanity as we know it. Apocalyptic in this sense, wavering between decomposition and totality, endlessly in love with people and books, Bolano's last novel ranges over the world and history like the knight Percival, who in Bolano's words 'wears his fool's motley underneath his armor.'" --Fabienne Dumontet, LE MONDE DES LIVRES (Paris)

"A work of genius: a work of immense lucidity and narrative cunning, written with a unique mixture of creative power and intimate existential desperation, the work of a master whose voice has all the authority and seeming effortlessness that we associate with the great classics of the ages ... It is impossible to read this book without feeling the earth shift beneath one's feet. It is impossible to venture deep into writing so unforgiving without feeling inwardly moved--by a shudder of fear, maybe even horror, but also by its need to pay attention, by its desire for clarity, by its hunger for the real." --Andres Ibanaz, BLANCO Y NEGRO

"Without a doubt the greatest of Bolano's productions ... The five parts of this masterwork can be read separately, as five isolated novels; none loses any of its brilliance, but what's lost is the grandeur that they achieve in combination, the grandeur of a project truly rare in fiction nowadays, one that can be enjoyed only in its totality." --Ana Maria Moix, EL PAIS

"Make no mistake, 2666 is a work of huge importance ... a complex literary experience, in which the author seeks to set down his nightmares while he feels time running out. Bolano inspires passion, even when his material, his era, and his volume seem overwhelming. This could only be published in a single volume, and it can only be read as one." --EL MUNDO

"An absolute masterpiece ... Bolano writes almost without adjectives, but in his prose this leads to double meanings. The narration is pure metonymy: it omits feelings in favor of facts. A phone call or a sex act can express real tragedy, the sweep of the vast human condition." --Andres Lomena, LA OPINION DE MALAGA

I've still got 2666 to read, in a pile that includes the Recognitions by Gaddis and Underworld by DeLillo. I think I'll get to it first, really liked detectives salvages a lot.

+ don't want to wait 'til next year to be reading it of course.

man that does sound exciting. just pre-ordered that 3 volume box set now.

savage detective was awesome.
the ambivalent of Bolano's thoughts and feelings towards art and artists (supreme or pretentious/naive? maybe both at the same time)
is deliverd in a highly original way

oh man, i want to read this but after finishing infinite jest i don't think i'll want to read another 900+ pager

I'm put off by the size, but the boxed set is a thing of beauty

i think i might order this as a present for myself to read once i'm done with this semester of grad school. i can't handle anything this heavy while i'm doing school, unfortunately

^^yah me too. this might be my winter break book. heard mixed stuff about savage detectives but i may give this one a go.

savage detectives was great. i never actually ordered 2066, i should do that now.

done ... now i just need to forget i ordered it before next week so it'll be a pleasant surprise when it arrives

I ordered it a few days ago, along with Saramago's Death With Interruptions. I probably will not get a chance to start either until May 17th, 2009, my 26th birthday, graduate school graduation day, end of a personal nightmare, and beginning of the better part of my life. I'm really looking forward to that day.

You could say that 2666 got a fairly positive review in the NYT today:

“2666” is the permanently mysterious title of a Bolaño manuscript rescued from his desk after his passing, the primary effort of the last five years of his life. The book was published posthumously in Spanish in 2004 to tremendous acclaim, after what appears to have been a bit of dithering over Bolaño’s final intentions — a small result of which is that its English translation (by Natasha Wimmer, the indefatigable translator of “The Savage Detectives”) has been bracketed by two faintly defensive statements justifying the book’s present form. They needn’t have bothered. “2666” is as consummate a performance as any 900-page novel dare hope to be: Bolaño won the race to the finish line in writing what he plainly intended, in his self-interrogating way, as a master statement. Indeed, he produced not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what’s possible for the novel as a form in our increasingly, and terrifyingly, post-national world. “The Savage Detectives” looks positively hermetic beside it.

"The Savage Detectives" is beautiful. I can't wait to see if "2666" lives up to the hype.

just got 2666 in the mail. it looks beautiful

me too

What do you think about the slip cover paperbacks versus the hardcover?

i got the paperbacks but i kind of wish i'd gotten the hardcover. the package looks nice but i'm worried it's going to fall apart and start to look ratty very quickly

will be easier to read though

i got the hardcover. its not really that unwieldy tho i dont have any plans to be truckin it around

i got the paperbacks, because we're on vacation next week and it will be easier to carry around. the question is, do i take one volume or two??? don't think i will be able to get through all three in a week. though we have two long plane rides to get thru. i think i will hide the second volume in my luggage somewhere for the plane ride back.

got the paperbacks also, just bcz i hate lugging round hardcovers

just bought the hardcover.
CANT WAIT TO READ (but have to wait, busy..)

i pre-ordered 2666 (hardback) on amazon when i was really drunk, forgot about it, then a package showed up at my door, and i'm about 200 pages in. great, great, great.

mr. que i would honestly take v. 1 with you just because it seques so nicely into the v. 2 that i've read so far.

no no i am taking vol. 1 the question is, will I be able to finish it in a week and should i take vol 2. along with me and the answer to both is yes. i am like 40 pages in so far and hubba hubba

the part about the crimes is giving me nightmares

I'm getting this through the library because I'm poor. Hopefully I can read it before it's due (since there will probably be a line for it by the time it's due).

yeah so i liked 2666 a lot. i loved the part about the crimes, which is the most haunting thing i have ever read, and i loved parts about everything else. i'm not a poetry reader and i'm not crazy and i'm not very well-read. i think being more of those things would have helped me enjoy this even more.

bought this yesterday

i think i said something out loud in the store when i saw how expensive books are these days, but then i figured eh, at least this one should last me a while.

the box set was like $20 on amazon, which is really reasonable for a new book

the two adjectives i would give 2666 are wild and uneven. it was a fun, fast read for me but i think i would have appreciated a little more cohesion between the 5 sections. . . just a touch more, really. highlights were all of sections 1 and 4 and the beginning of 5, until Archimboldio gets bogged down in WWII. 3 came off as this weird DeLillo-ish chunk. 2 seems a little pointless in retrospect. he's an interesting writer, the digressions just got a little old towards the end. considering how awesome 1 and 4 are, though, it hardly matters.

yeah, list price on the hardcover at Borders was $30.

just about to start book 4, loving it (although 1 is definitely the best so far). i hit book 4 during a really choppy plane ride and didn't want to read about death and make myself even more tense. i like how the sections are connected, there are definite ties but it's not overdone (like if the reporter would've crossed paths with the critics in a cafe or whatever).

i agree 100% with this guy on 2666 http://quarterlyconversation.com/2666-by-roberto-bolano

I'm looking forward to the translations of his poetry, too.

― Z S, Sunday, March 30, 2008 8:12 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark

finally out btw

I think I'm gonna read Savage Detectives as soon as I finish Yiddish Policeman's Union

i'm somewhere around page 300, and for now, i think Savage Detectives is better.
2666 is a good,philosophical page turner but it has it's flaws, esp. with the somewhat too obscure surreal scenes, some of them impossible to decipher, but Bolani is talented and smart enough to keep me going.
maybe iill change my mind by the end.

that movie is available in the itunes store. i need to reread ´Between Parentheses'.

apparently he was friends with javier cercas, who casts him in his novel ´soldiers of salamis´. i think the swordfighting-on-the-beach scene in ´the savage detectives´ is about him and enrique vila-matas.

there´s a spanish book called ´bolaño por si mismo´ which is quite good if you want to know more about his influences.

apparently he was friends with javier cercas, who casts him in his novel ´soldiers of salamis

Yeah Bolano reviews the book in Between Parentheses - such a strange reading experience..

like the poem from romantic dogs you posted several thousand years ago upthread, xyzzzz. waiting to pick it up from the library, read some in a bookstore & felt prepped to really like it.

Cool, I actually have only read a couple of poems from that myself.

I do not own any Bolano, its all read from libraries. The copy I see of 2666 is so horrible looking though.

The Rebeca Nodier bookstore is tended by Rebeca Nodier herself, an old woman in her eighties who is completely blind and wears unruly white dresses that match her dentures; armed with a cane and alerted by the creaky wooden floor, she hops up and introduces herself to everyone who walks into her store, I'm Rebeca Nodier, etc., finally asking in turn the name of the "lover of literature" she has the "pleasure of meeting" and inquires what kind of literature he or she is looking for. I told her that I was interested in my poetry, and to my surprise, Mrs. Nodier said all poets were bums but they weren't bad in bed. Especially if they don't have any money, she went on. Then she asked me how old I was. Seventeen, I said. Oh, you're still a pipsqueak, she exclaimed. And then: you're not planning to steal any of my books, are you? I promised her that I would rather die. We chatted for a while, and then I left.

thank you for that. Ms. Nodier deserves our boundless admiration.

There's now another theatrical adaptation of 2666 in Chicago, though this interview with its directors strangely never mentions the earlier attempt by Pablo Ley Fancelli and Alex Rigola in Barcelona, 2007: http://lithub.com/adapting-bolanos-unadaptable-masterpiece-for-the-stage/

i read Amulet last week and couldn't put it down. the reclusive painter honing in on Erigone and Orestes, Arturo Belano negotiating like he's in the mafia, the singing ghosts in the valley, Auxilio covering her missing teeth when she speaks. i enjoyed it despite not knowing anything about the Tlatelolco massacre, the topic the whole fucking book is dancing around. someday after i've learned one or two more things about the world i look forward to circling back to Amulet and reading it again.

the character of Auxilio was based off of the story of Alcira Soust Scaffo, who really did remain hidden in a bathroom for 15 days during the military's occupation of the university.

https://i.imgur.com/Rhl2fl6.jpg

https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Alcira-la-poeta-del-68-mexicano-entre-Roberto-Bolano-y-Jose-Revueltas

Distant Star is fuckin' great.

My favorite of his, so haunting and sad.

Been rereading Savage Detectives as well, now that I actually live in Mexico City it's so much fun recognizing all the places! Even the beginning has held up better than I thought, and how the second part gets more and more melancholy and mysterious as time moves on never fails to amaze me.

Had no idea I needed a novel about Roberto Bolaño, but holy shit, LAST WORDS ON EARTH by Javier Serena, translated by Katie Whittemore, coming from @open_letter this year is 🔥🔥🔥. Anyone who loves Bolaño or understands the uncompromising pursuit of literature will love this.

— Mark Haber (@markhaber713) April 28, 2021

After obsessing over this guy in my 30s, I honestly haven't thought much about him in a while. Mostly due to starting a family, but I also just burned out on him a bit. I should revisit one of his novellas. My favorite Bolano character type is the old friend/acquaintance who reappears in your life in an almost menacing way, now adrift and depressed, mumbling dark things to himself.

has much in common with Sebald in that respect

found out that a friend of mines parents are depicted in the savage detectives, in the first part of the book theyre part of the artistic milieu like a sculptor and... something, been a while since i read the book, and since he told me lol, not a close friend

Influencers!

lmao

Is that the foul-mouthed American woman?

yeah must be i know one of his parents is american

finishing up Distant Star rn, pretty good! I do like the concept of "how do you process it when someone in your little arts circle becomes a politically aligned psychotic murderer," because I am thinking of similar things now that I recently found out that someone I grew up with created a giant company that does new slavery or whatever.

for some reason this book is kinda reading like a musical to me, where things are happening in a semi-realistic way or whatever and then suddenly the plot takes off on these (kinda corny) flights of fancies and then comes down (like the skywriting poetry, or the the torture photography exhibit or w/e). Anyway, I tried to read him like 10-15 years ago and thought he was pretty overrated, couldn't get through anything, now I'm having a good time reading this book, not sure why. 10-15 years ago I was able to dive into Marias and Sebald and other more "it helps to be divorced to get it" authors, but whatever it's nice to have something to be into now.

"Aged 19, he ghosted the autobiography of Cliff Bastin, the former Arsenal and England player, and three years later wrote his first novel, The Reluctant Dictator (1952), about a footballer who becomes a leader of a south American republic."

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/may/18/brian-glanville-obituary

some thoughts on By Night in Chile

Two central images from the text are stuck in my mind. The first is the falcons used by various European parish priests as a means of controlling the pigeon population and therefore of preserving the structural integrity of their historic churches (by means of preventing a whole lot of pigeon shit from gumming up the roofs). It seems to me that this is both a commentary on the Catholic Church’s complicity in fascist movements worldwide, but also on the horrors that so many people are willing to tolerate if they feel at least that the old ways, always under threat from the forces of modernization and the incursion of the other, are being preserved. This is a violence that hovers above and swoops down suddenly and torrentially, and in this way the falcons recall the sky-writing that forms such a memorable part of Distant Star.

The second image is the naked body found hand-cuffed to a bed by a drunken theatre critic who finds himself wandering down the wrong hallway in the basement of the house where María Canales throws her parties. This is not a violence in the sky, but rather a subterranean violence, one that lurks beneath the surface of the uneasy artist soirées that were conducted in spite of the curfews during the Pinochet regime. There seems to be some kind of commentary here too about complicity, about the willful ignorance of intellectuals and artists who allowed their connections to fascism to sustain them, or who otherwise looked away, only to later hypocritically deny any kind of proximity to the horrors of disappearance and torture.

It’s hard to express in a write-up like this how terrifying both of these images are in the context of the book. Even writing them out like this, I don’t think I’ve really done justice to how these images truly come across in the course of the narrative. I’m thinking too that perhaps my analysis is too simplistic, or perhaps suffers from a poor understanding of Chilean history. In any case, I’m open to what others might have to say about this or any other parts of the book.

I read this maybe 15 years ago but your impressions match mine, which have been bubbling around in my head ever since. Especially living in a neighborhood filled with Catholics getting paid off the MAGA regime, seeing their houses get nice expensive renovations.

Bolano in general makes more sense as I get older and learn about the evil of institutions and violence against women. I should reread BNiC soon

Very nice post Cattedrale. I also read this book once about 15 years ago too and might be good to pick it up again.