Of all the current and past meme books, how does this meme actually weigh up? Is it actually a meme or worth a read?
>Original Spanish of course.
>>7468196
>>Original Spanish of course
go fuck yourself, mexifag
>I'm a monolingual pleb
don't worry bud I'm master race like you but I took spanish in highschool.
>>7468206
and you think that qualifies you to appreciate literature in spanish?
meme status does not mean a book is bad.
>implying it takes more than 4 years to become proficient in literally the easiest language to learn for english speakers
yes?
>>7468196
In english it's really good
I thought the ending was really stupid and the novel still had a lot more but who ever finished the novel was a retard.
>>7468390
You know Bolano died before he could "finish" it. I've seen somewhere that Part 6 has been found but I doubt it'll actually give any sort of answers.Personally I liked the ambiguous ending. I felt like the detective who couldn't solve anything, because everything was far too chaotic to properly have a justifiable answer
>>7468390
>reads for plot
>>7468196
im 200 pages away from the ending and it's a rather interesting book. lots of stories interwoven in the plot, feels more like a collection of short stories. It will probably straighten out eventually, i hope
>>7468559
Kinda desu. I mean, it's not a poorly written book or anything, but the ending is really unsatisfactory and it spoils everything. I don't care about loose ends, but the last page is a fucking disaster.
>>7468561it wontand it doesnt even matter
>>7468570
fuck this shit ill just throw it in the trash thanks bro
>>7468559
If you don't read for plot, it's because you are incompetent.
>>7468579
nah its good. when you finish you'll realize you wont care that it doesnt resolve neatly, and that was never the point
>>7468586
I don't think it's the "plot" what should be solved tho. It's the characters. It's not about how a leads to b but how all these overly developped characters are affected by the events. It really feels like an unfinished novel.
Not even The Pale King feels that incomplete
>>7468595
Don't go into 2666 expecting a resolution, is the moral of the story here.
I like it. I like all of his books. They're all great. Considering the fact that 2666 isn't a finished book - he died before it was edited - I would read it last. Start with Savage Detectives.
>>7468206
>actually speaks gibberish
>>7469059
>Start with Savage Detectives
This. 2666 may be his greatest work, but The Savage Detectives is much more polished and lighthearted. Then again what isn't more lighthearted than 2666 really
I don't think it's great. I read the first part and didn't care.
Took way to long to build up characters and get to anything interesting. It was mostly just an akward translation (Wimmer is a hack) and some loser intellectuals making phone calls to each other.
I probably won't finish it.
My favorite underrated/underread Bolano is The third Reich btw, it's a great precursor to his later stuff.
And I'm fond of by Night in Chile as well - simple but well executed.
>>7468586
>>7468595
seems trite to be like DUDE, THERE ARE NO ANSWERS IS THE ANSWER, DUDE!
What's he saying that hasn't been said in Pynchon and Delillo? I get that the Mexican city where women keep getting killed is about globalism.
Plus he had smug as fuck condescending opinions, which puts him closer to DFW. Whenever you get an artist who likes to say edgy contrarian shit about how X is so much better than Y, they're probably hacks.
>>7469684
By Night in Chile is also one of my favourites by him.
His short stories are also very good, I really recommend Sensini. And IDK if it's been translated to English but Una Novelita Lumpen is underrated aswell IMO, such a well written novella in his visceral style.
>>7468390
>icecream
Any book ending with ice cream is god-tier.
>>7469687
oh god no that would be awful I agree.
I haven't read Pynchon and Delilo so I don't know about how he differs, but I definitely don't think it's the "there are no answers" or the "answers are what you make of it" bullshit.
For me, 2666, and much of Bolano's other work, is there to intimate a sense of a concealed doom. The key word is "convergence," where the various parts of 2666 all converge, whether overtly or indirectly, towards Santa Teresa. The events of the novel, and what came before, and even elements of Bolano's other works, all hurtle together with irreversible force towards an ultimate conclusion, to be resolved in the enigmatic year 2666. However, (and I understand this might be the part that gets iffy), it is not our providence to understand in a logical or coherent way what that conclusion is.
Nor is it the providence of Bolano himself. Bolano stated that the entire work is narrated by Belano, his literary alter ego. And it is the cast of the novel (and by extension the world) who is speaking through Belano, who speaks through Bolano. What we get in our hands is the distilled essence of Belano's vision, something that hints at an apocalyptic vision but does not narrate or explain.
(There is also another case of people speaking through others through narrative with the Soviet authors, whose manuscript interrupts the Archimboldi narrative. Story within a story within a story, woo!)
You can look towards globalization and the influence of Nazis/WWII for some more mundane themes, and the idea that Santa Teresa/Mexico is a microcosm of the world and human history/future (both geographically and temporally) is certainly valid. Personally, I read it as a representation of, or perhaps more accurately as signs indicating, "chaos." There is a fundamental, dare I say visceral, sense that something is [i]wrong[/i] with the world being described in Bolano's work(s). At times apparent and wide-ranging (the horrors of WWI, the grotesque murders) and at other times personal and obtuse (the chaotic personal lives of the critics, Fate's descent into the chaos of Mexico from sheer coincidence).
I am reminded of the Second Coming:
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:
[...]
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The difference is that instead of the age of Christ coming to an end in the year 2000, it is the age of [whatever Bolano saw] spiraling towards chaos in the year 2666. You have the similar sense that a revelation/cataclysm shift/change is at hand, and you get a vast, ancestral image from the collective unconsciousness manifesting itself in the events of the novel as well as the thoughts of the authors/writers, real and fictional, that inhabit his world.
Sorry if this came out a bit incoherent, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
I read Antwerp by him in a day and was very confused but enjoyed it.
>>7469822
you said what i've never been able to put into words desu senpai
whenever i tell people 2666 is one of my favorite books they ask me what it's about and im never able to tell them
>>7469822
Thank you for this.
>>7469822
This is a good effort
>>7469822
Nice review–
I'd love to add that I think Morini's dream in the first part when he sees Norton dive into that giant oily pool, and then nears the edge to peer into the water, seeing nothing but fog followed by emptiness, is a holon for the entire book, a complete microcosmic representation.
Morini is crippled, meek, and yet he in his silence he sees; he sees what is elusive to him, and he sees it dive away into a vast, bleak, obscure nothingness. He is man incarnate; the pool the world, swallowing up women and evaporating into oblivion like the Sonoran desert itself; and Norton, because of her various interactions with the three other critics that I won't mention in detail so as to not spoil anything, symbolizes not only everything that is feminine and Athenian, but also sacred and sought: she is the seaweed in Bifurcaria Bifurcata, a crucified captain, Klaus' detached mother, what have you. The dream reflects the whole as the water does all.
But that's just this guy's opinion–!
I don't see how 2666 is a meme, I never see anyone posting about it
>>7468583
I agree, Anon. Reading entirely for the surface aspect of the book is what the truly enlightened do.
>>7471355
a) Lurk more
b) Stop shitposting
c) Learn to read
d) Get funnier
>>7471367
Nope, there are like two threads a week about 2666, tops. Looks like you're the newfag, newfag.
>>7471374
Fuck, you're right. I am a newfag. But I didn't realize it until you told me just now.
How much lower can I get?
>>7471379
low enough to suck my cock lel ;)
just like your mom double lel ;)
>>7471388
c'mon man
>>7469687
>I get that the Mexican city where women keep getting killed is about globalism.
Call me a pleb but I did not get that from 2666 at all.
Is it that the women are being sucked into Santa Theresa by their need to work and they end up being murdered and raped brutally and that's meant to represent the modern world demoting traditional places of women as mothers etc. and driving them into cities to become corporate slaves who are just lifelong singletons riding the "cock carousel"? I guess that sounds a little MGTOW-ish. or are the women meant to demonstrate the beauty and innocence of life being abused and murdered?
>>7469822
Now this I did get from 2666. In fact in all the Bolano I've read there's this certain sense of some kind of hidden ominous danger that pokes its head out but in 2666 he refines it down and it becomes this overriding essence throughout the book.
I can see how it's like The Second Coming. Except in Bolano the end is predicted in 2666 and the "rough beast" is slouching towards Santa Teresa, a desert town on the other side of the world named after a christian mystic and counter-reformationist.
The book is like archimboldi's namesake's paintings, each individual sub-story or character could be self contained but as whole they all come together to create a greater image. Bolano's early death meant that the work is incomplete so we see most of the various "fruits" or elements on their own but we can only roughly grasp at what the overall intended message or image is if one was ever intended.
>>7468196
Yes. It is, and check out Mario Santiago Papasquiaro's poetry as well. Arte & basura. with Luis Felipe Fabre's foreword.
>>7471640
all original thought senpai, no external influenced (i think?)
linik the goodreads review pls now im interested thx
>>7469822
OK, maybe I will keep reading it.
Still seems like it's just about globalism. Why do women keep getting killed in Santa Teresa? Just a coincidence caused by a number of factors in a post-national world. There is no one reason.
I mean, the part about the academics seemed to be about how dumb and clueless people in the west are to the rest of the world. The academics have no clue about Santa Teresa, have no clue about Archimboldi, even though they're all connected. Like when theybeat up the Paki taxi driver.
The official meme trilogy
Gravity's Rainbow - military industrial complex
Underworld - cold war
2666 - globalism
>>7473600
Eh I think that's too harsh a read on the critics.
>>7468196
Nocturno de Chile
Estrella distante
La literatura nazi en américa
Those are his best books, the others are too memeical.
