Is this any good or is it just a meme? I picked it up at the bookstore the other day and read a few pages; the prose was fucking terrible.
you're retarded
go back to /reddit/
You have no taste kill yourself
>>7810938
Oh man, sorry to hear that OP. I really enjoyed it, and enjoy Bolano in general. You could probably chalk it up to a difference in taste.
Maybe try The Savage Detectives, and see if that's more your taste? If you don't like that one either, it's likely Bolano just isn't for you.
wew
Good taste. You made the right move.
>>7810951
Thanks for the legitimate advice without being a dick. I'll check that one out, or maybe I'll just tough it out awhile and see if it grows on me.
It's just a meme. Stick with real literature like David Wallace, Elliot Rodger and Gass
>>7810969
kek
>>7810969
>>7810969
6/10
Bolano is one of my favorite authors. Try his short fiction before The Savage Detectives. Last Evenings on Earth is consistently good and shows you his writing style. I really like his themes and I think he portrays them very well. That's his biggest strength, I think. His prose is overall pretty simple but I still enjoy it, although I've only read it in translation.
I'm really enjoying this at the moment, maybe read 50 pages or the first part to give the waters a proper test - you might've just flicked to some shitty pages, but if you still feel the same then like >>7810951 said, it might just not be for you.
>>7810938
>the prose was fucking terrible
I hate when /lit/ does this. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Why would you even read a book in translation if all you care about is prose
>>7810938
>translations are bad
OH GOD WHO CAN HAVE PREDICTED IT !
>>7810969
You're trying to rustle some esoteric jimmies by throwing Gass in there, but I won't fall for it
>>7810938
The story is great, but if you can't handle the prose then you're probably not going to want to go through all 900 pages.
I haven't heard anyone complain about the prose before though.
>>7810938
>the prose was fucking terrible
The prose is fine you stupid shit
>>7811429
/thread
>>7810938
The weight of professional opinion is comprehensively against you. Whilst you are free to form a contrarian position, it seems likely that you're not equipped to read this yet.
It is also worth noting that the author struggling with subjects outside his comfort zone is a theme of the book:
"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."
>reads translation
>"The prose is terrible."
>>7811953
Nah that wasn't me and I didn't see that thread. Looks like I'm gonna have to give it another shot though, maybe I was just in a shitty mood.
>>7811058
Look up literary style, prosody, lyricism, prose, literary devices and poetic devices and stop being a pleb. Also read more stuff, not genre fiction but actual literature. Read Nabokov and you will get a clearer picture of what someone means when they talk about prose.
>>7811853
>It is also worth noting that the author struggling with subjects outside his comfort zone is a theme of the book
You seem to have misunderstood the meaning of that passage, which is unsurprising considering you read the translation. You show us why the translation meme is actually real.
>>7810967
>without being a dick
Look where you are ROFL
>>7814039
You little worthless faggot, I did my first thesis on Leech and Short's "Style in Fiction", so I'm more qualified than you and half of this board to talk about prose. "Prose is bad/gud" means fucking nothing unless you are able to qualify WHY you say so, and that's something you illiterate faggots never do. It's always just a matter of taste with zero weight or reason behind it.
So, I will ask you again. What the fuck do you mean with "the prose is terribile", you barely sapient homosexual?
>>7810938
"I tell my students that if you begin a book, if at the end of fifteen or twenty pages you feel the book is a task for you, then lay that book and lay that author aside for a time because it won't do you any good. For example, one of my favorite authors is De Quincey. Well, as he's rather a slow-moving author, people somehow don't like him. So I say, well, if you don't like De Quincey then let him alone; my task is not to impose my likes or dislikes on you." - Jorge Borges
Don't listen to the assholes here that say you have shit taste by going against the grain. Bolano's prose isn't really all that great. I made it past the first part of this book before succumbing to boredom. Is that to say Bolano is bad? No. It just means I don't enjoy this particular work of his. Nothing more or less.
>>7814052
kek what a retard, it seems all those years of college daddy paid weren't enough for you to learn anything.
>muh all art is subjective
>muh everyone has different taste
Fuck off.
>>7814042
So what does it mean in the original?
>>7814072
Oh my god how can you function in society with your reading skills? I am saying the exact opposite of "muh tastes". I am asking for reasons that qualify someone's prose as good or bad, something that no one in this thread has done yet. At least on /lit/ people should have a minimum of reading comprehension skills.
>>7814101
I understood you alright, but it is clear to me the reason you are asking the question. If you were really saying the opposite of "muh tastes" you wouldn't even be asking the fucking question.
>>7814149
Yeah, god forbid we actually discuss literature more in-depth than "it's good/bad". I must have an agenda because I want people to articulate their thoughts beyond a basic opinion.
This board is shit.
>>7811388
who is that semon demon
>>7810938
Please leave this board.
>>7814042
>You seem to have misunderstood the meaning of that passage
I was on the shitter, so perhaps my overly concise explanation escaped you.
"Roberto Bolaño sets the bar awfully high when he has one of his characters note with disappointment that:
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.
Bolaño knows he's one of the masters, and he's done those perfect exercises -- the formal one, Nazi Literature in the Americas, the looser The Savage Detectives. With 2666 he goes torrential: like Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet (over which his pharmacist chooses A Simple Heart), like Melville's Moby-Dick (the pharmacist's choice: Bartleby, the Scrivener), it blazes that path into the unknown. The basics are still there: the passages read like a (very good) 'normal' novel, there is -- at least in most of the individual sections of this five-part work -- a story that unfolds fairly straightforwardly. But this is far more ambitious than anything he's done before, as he makes his way through the "blood and mortal wounds and stench""
Or perhaps you have a better interpretation?
>>7814055
It means the pair of you have fuck all attention span, & lack concentration & discipline.
Borges' quote is not a ticket to skip books, it's his existential sign of despair at plebs like yourself & the futility of attempting to get you to apply yourself. To the victor the spoils. If you can't read like a patrician, you will go through life unrewarded, aside from the gift of more spare time, which you will squander in your plebary.
>>7814480
That's a man baaby.
>>7814670
... O_O
>>7814679
Goodluck in Thailand.
>>7814684
D... does she have a nice butt?
>>7814670
Even better.
