FSG published Natasha Wimmer’s exemplary English translation of Roberto Bolaño’s undisputed champion of the world/masterpiece 2666 on November 11, 2008, which for those unable to make simple calculations is nearly ten years ago now — a simpler time, with a President Elect we could be proud of and only a handful of early adopters on Twitter. As such, now that it’s been ten years, I‘d like to post some impressions from my first reading way back when — I read an ARC with a quotation on the cover from a review of The Savage Detectives in The San Francisco Chronicle by friend from Iowa and at the time fellow recent arrival to Philadelphia Vinne Wilhelm!
Something wholly positive that can be said about 2666 is that it’s not summarizable in plot or theme — its dimensions suggest the entirety of life on Earth. Seriously! And so all I can really think to do is offer a telling quotation: “. . . history, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness.”
I sometimes impatiently derided this monster as a hybrid of Cormac McCarthy and Raymond Chandler, a brutal borderlands high-lit mystery that suggested more than it ever actually signified. But then came a speech by a former Black Panther and a New Yorker named Oscar Fate and things took off, especially once it offers multitudinous murders and the prodigiously pissing, iconoclastic Penitent, and then the massive German, Klaus, in prison.
I may have skimmed a dozen or so overly gratuitous descriptions of murdered women, and wasn’t high on the 2666 hog through the end of the fourth part, but then the fifth part, mainly set in Europe during and after WWII Germany, is more than worth it. Like reaching the Rockies and the West after driving across the plains en route from New Jersey to California — all the better because you’d made it that far.
I’ve learned that the masterpiece is like a crucified Jesus — in this book, a Romanian general with a foot-long schlong — that needs the minor thieves to conceal it, or like a lake in a forest of minor novels.
You could discuss 2666 endlessly, or never say a word thanks to respectful speechlessness. It’s more an experience than a literary entertainment. A highwater mark for ambition, authority, oomph, audacity, execution.
At the end, there’s a reverberating sense, like I wanted to start from the beginning in a totally vain hope that all the clattering echoes cohere into an a-ha moment of thematic clarity.
The structure requires the reader to make associative diagrams (like Amalfitano’s charts), which are essential to this one’s “fun.” Total authority in the prose ensures that such associative thinking isn’t just an exercise in making “castles in the air.” A proliferation of images circles around and conceals and suggests the masterpiece’s center.
No cookie-cutter poignancy here or precious, luminous prose: five pairs of cat’s eyes rise in the dark, lacking “spatiotemporal coherence,” during a feverish, clandestine buggery session in a crowded house.
Maybe the only contemporary novel I’ve read where expectations raised by its blurbs seemed at least matched and maybe even exceeded by my reading. My final sense of the book is a distinct but equivalent awe.
. . . In the ten years since my first read, I’ve listened to the audiobook twice from start to finish and to parts of it, particularly the last part about Hans Reiter/Benno von Archimboldi, several times. I have some of it memorized, or I can anticipate similes (incredible sky similes throughout) and key lines, like the one about how the formula for great literature is supply + demand + magic. I hereby officially bestow the highest possible recommendation to the audiobook, narrated by a perfectly appropriate new voice for each section. Ten years ago, I would have posted a megaupload or rapidshare link so you could download the mp3s. Now, I guess you could try the free Audible trial and listen for yourself.
But, generally, it’s hard to believe it’s only been ten years since 2666 came out — it feels like it’s always existed, the mark of a true masterpiece.
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To support the kind publishers who have taken a chance on my writing, please acquire a copy of Neutral Evil ))) and/or JRZDVLZ. Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox directly from the publisher. Or even a copy of The Shimmering Go-Between directly from me (the publisher is kaput).