What did /lit/ think of this book?
anal rape hehe
>>7744363
Besides the 300+ pages of misery, what else?
>>7744366
The last chapter and the first chapter were very good. The middle of the book that isnt about vaginal and anal rape drags very badly. The vaginal and anal rape part is unique in any contemporary fiction I have read. In the year since I have read it I have not felt the desire to read it ever again, and it is definitely not the best book I have ever read.
What book is that?
>>7744373
>>7744371
No it isn't. But it is a unique novel, slightly disturbed me a bit but not to much.
The last chapter from WW2 on was excellent. The way people hyped up the middle part I thought it would be the highlight of the novel but as you said besides the descriptions of the murders and that one part with the dudes balls getting sliced open in front of everyone was flat. I expected a more coherent and interesting story. The characters never felt like they fully developed like LA Locura and such.
Anyway, I'm reading Blood Meridian and its reminding me why I don't like Cormac too much. Any good shit out there?
>>7744389
I just read My Antonia by Willa Cather, and it gave me lots of feels and comfiness, and I finished it in 2 hours.
>>7744389
I found The Road at the library today and read the first 20 pages or so. Does he know what a comma is? I didn't see one the whole time, and the bland, unusually short or long sentences bugged the fuck out of me
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 wrong 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.
Boring long fucking book with shit prose and no plo. Literally 'that one book nobody finishes'
>>7745608
pasta! I'm watching you anon.
>>7745620
i promised in the last thread that i was gonna start spamming this cause apparently it triggered some anon, for reasons that are still unclear to me
>>7745615
Reading for plot. Not being able to read a 1000 page book. It's a fucking book. There are harder things in life. Man the fuck up.
Not going to make it bro.
>>7745624
I know. It's a good pasta. I'm still gonna call you out because it amuses me to do so. I'm tempted to create my own tldr analysis & counter pasta.
Now shut up & get in my black car.
>>7745628
I do not read for plot but the book literally has no redeeming qualities, it's Atlas Shrugged tier. It's a complete waste of time like reading the yellow pages
>>7745635
The weight of respected opinion is against you anon. It must be frustrating to read such a great book & get so little out of it.
>>7744362
it's alright.
what's interesting to me is that bolano's prose, which are good but not great, illustrates something a cinematographer taught me in film school - that the more movement there is in frame, the more interesting, or at least watchable, the resulting image is. comapre staring at white noise to staring at a pure white screen, for instance.
so wtf does this have to do w/ bolano? basically, bolano seems to know this is true for writing as well - that's why his prose is a constant torrent of "and then they went here did this and then they went there and did that and then they made love for six hours blah blah blah".
knausgard seems to know this too.
so here's my point, i.e. what's 'interesting' or at least what 2666 taught me about writing: if you literally just write hundreds/thousands of pages of stuff happening in concrete reality, people will think you're a visionary because your book has the appearance of the old important modernist classics but has the digestibility of a hemingway story
>>7745674
>respected opinion
You mean some people on 4chan? lmao
I really want to like the Oscar Fate part, but I just can't.
>>7745683
Nope.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/bolanor/2666.htm
What's in 2666 that wasn't already in Gravity's Rainbow?
I read the first episode and put it down. Either Wimmer's translation is shit-tier or Bolano just isn't that great.
Globalism is bad in ways you can't imagine and it looks like we're headed towards complete disaster.
OK.
>>7745693
>Internet literary critics
This guy
>>7745705
>internet literary critics
those are all super respected print publications.
>>7744362
It's my favourite book. Though I can never talk about it with anyone without looking like a psychopath.
>>7745704
oh look it's the "2666 is about globalism" retard again
just kys senpai
actually now that i think back i'm pretty sure >>7745608 was originally written in response to your (or another anon's?) hilarious and willful misinterpretation of the book and bending it some some globalism/pynchon angle lol
>>7745677
>"and then they went here did this and then they went there and did that and then they made love for six hours blah blah blah".
Interesting. The book definitely has its flaws, though as Bolano says himself in 2666 (& I note that book review link I posted underlines too):
"Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench."
Do you only want to read masters brilliantly jointing the dots on subjects well within their comfort zones, or do you want to see what happens when you drop them into a bear pit to wrestle (& fall)?
>>7745712
on a plus side it does seem to sort the wheat from the chaff. its-to-long-and-it-made-me-feel-tired
>>7745704
Holy fuck. It's one book. It doesn't take that long to read. Here's an idea - read both. Can you manage that?
Fucking pussies in this thread. Trrriiiiiigger'd.
I actually like the fact the first part is so different & off putting to these man children.
'No discernible talent' the book
>>7745726
Why should I read 2666 when I can reread Gravity's Rainbow?
Whenever an author starts talking shit about other authors loudly (Bolano claimed PKD was better than Pynchon and Delillo) you know they're gonna be mediocre.
Only hacks vocalize negative opinions of others. DFW did the same.
>>7745717
> turbulent, crazy novels are good and worth reading
Yes, which is why this board rightly worships Gravity's Rainbow.
>>7745747
anon, I'm going to help you, because no one else will. Instead of reading one book over & over, read more than one book. You don't have to like all the books. The books can make you mad. If you do that, you can have an opinion on them. Reading the same book repeatedly does not speak of a critical mind.
So what the fuck is this book about? Violence and interpersonal disruption? Mexico is fucked? The depersonalisation of humans in modern society? Fucking cripples?
I hate maximalism so goddamn much.
>>7745758
> Instead of reading one book over & over, read more than one book.
> Reading the same book repeatedly does not speak of a critical mind.
say that to my face, motherfucker, and not online and see what happens
>>7745766
Globalization is bad in ways you can't imagine because you can't fully conceive of globalism.
Also, people think the apocalypse is coming.
>>7745717
my point is that bolano's prose style is facile (at least in translation) and one dimensional. i don't prefer shorter works. for instance, i think my struggle is great and it's about 2000 pages longer.
bolano's problem is that he's just not a great writer on a sentence by sentence level. he's good, not great.
>>7745785
>like meme struggle
>calls bolano facile
w e w l a d
>>7745771
>and see what happens
I would kick your ass.
>>7745677
>the more movement there is in frame, the more interesting, or at least watchable, the resulting image is
haha
it's an enjoyable book and the criticism of the part about the crimes is vastly overstated
>>7745790
>calls a book a meme as an insult
>responds with a meme
also, the first 4 pages of struggle is better than anything i've read by bolano...but that doesn't mean the rest of struggle isn't facile either :-)
>>7745674
>muh appeal to authority
What was the point of the character of Lalo Cura?
>>7748389
>mfw the story of the six Maria Expositos
2666 is mostly a snore and is only praised because of the posthumous release.
The Savage Detectives is very good. Read that instead.
>>7750176
How good is the Savage Detectives, and what are its best story aspects?
>>7748389
He's the son of Arturo Belano/Ulises Lima, as revealed in the story of his moms. If you have read Savage Detectives, the concurrence of his conception to a central event in the lives of the two poet offers another look at the Birth of Santa Teresa.
>>7750189
> How good
Its a collection of fragments. The first (and the longest one) is an excellent comedy from Bolano. The rest are ailing dramacomedies, which tend to work well aside from a few near the beginning of the second part.
Best bits? Infrarealist's maganize, named after a terrorist-assassin, edited by a writers schizophrenic father, funded by weed sales and getting two issues ever. Belano challenging a literary critic to a swordfight on a beach during the sunset due to a long and complex series of misfortunes, Ulises being an out-of-world alien who gets lost in Nicaraguan civil war. An essay about the difference and significance of Gays and Faggots on Mexican poetry and the side story of Auxilio, who stars Bolano's Amulet, which is basically the fourth part of Savage Detectives left out due yo its length. Read it simultaneously to yhe novel if you do, and aim to complete amulet before Ulises and Belano leave Mexico for good.
>>7744362
Good, but not as good as The Savage Detectives IMO.
Only thing I disliked was Amafitano's part, it was too short and seemed to be there just to sort of link together the critics and the Archimboldi stuff with the part about the murders. Amalfitano lamenting how his life turned to shit while musing about if he's gay or not was awful.
>>7750221
Thanks, I'm reading it right now.
>>7744362
I liked the rape, gay and incest in 2666.
I found 2666 in a used bookstore today for p. cheap, but I decided not to buy it when I read that it was akin to Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow... did I fuck up?
>>7753590
>akin to Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow
Not really.
>did I fuck up?
Yes. Go back and buy it.
>>7753593
I only had ten bucks and I've spent that already :/
