I don’t attempt for an original review when writing about the magnificent novel 2666 by the Chilean writer, Roberto Bolaño. Even so, I don’t think that this exquisite novelistic marathon got enough praise from the critics. Amongst them, the following, by the Spanish Rodrigo Fresán is by far, my favorite: “2666 is one of those strange, exquisite, and astonishing experiences that literature offers us only once in a long time. The crucial and amazing thing is not that it’s unfinished, but that it is limitless.”
Roberto Bolaño on Goodreads
[source: Goodreads]
I felt exactly that, literally. It seems obvious that it’s unfinished, but at the same time, it doesn’t matter, because everything has been spoken. There are five parts, and each one can be considered a novel itself. 2666 has been published in original, in Spanish, posthumously, in 2004, one year after the author’s death.
The Author, Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño, a distinguished novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and poet was born on April 28th, 1953, in Santiago de Chile. His family moved to Mexico in ’68. In 1973, he came back to Chile to support the revolution and the socialist government of Salvador Allende. Unfortunately, in September the same year, General Augusto Pinochet assumed the power after a US-backed coup d’état, and Allende committed suicide with a Kalashnikov received as a present from Fidel Castro. In ’74 Bolaño returned to Mexico.
Roberto Bolaño in Newsweek Magazine
[source: Newsweek Magazine]
In 1977 he moved to Europe. He married in Spain and lived in Costa Brava. He worked by day and wrote in the night. In 2003, he died from liver failure. 2666 was his last novel.
2666 – Plot?
2666 doesn’t have a definite plot, but it has a central character, a German writer named Benno von Archimboldi. Researching for this review, I have discovered with no less amusement, that this guy’s traits are inspired by the author himself. Only that Archimboldi’s style was considered chaotic by his critics, which is far from Mr. Bolaño’s style.
In the first part of five, four academics obsessed with Benno von Archimboldi’s work, try to find and talk to him. The German is more reclusive than a hermit. He travels and constantly changes his address. There is only one person in this world aware of all those location changes, his publisher’s wife, eventually becoming his publisher after her husband’s passing away.
You know what? You have to read the book on your own, because everything I can say here may be considered a spoiler. I only want to add a few more words. I read a small review in which the critic said something extremely nice, something like “Gabriel Garcia Marquez changed the writing frontiers. After 40 years, Roberto Bolaño reshaped them again”. I suppose he was talking about the South Americans. Bolaño, as Marques, and the majority of his fellow South American greatest writers (maybe perhaps with the marvelous exception of Mario Vargas Llosa) were leftists. Fortunately, 2666 is less about politics than about a certain climate. Action and stories take place in multiple locations, from the Americas to the Russian steppes.
The 2666 cover of the English edition, the one I read.
[source: fontsinuse.com]
The parts are written in different styles, there are around 900 pages in the English version, the one masterly translated by Natasha Wimmer, and published in 2008 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux from New York. It has a few drops of everything, some more than others. The stories unfold like an onion, one rarely reaches the end. That is when one discovers 2666 is unfinished.
When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, I had a certain feeling that it was the greatest novel I have read in my life. But I was in my 20’s. When I read Llosa’s Conversation at the Cathedral, I thought the same. The same again, with Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Julio Cortazar’s The Book of Manuel was my favorite until fifteen years ago, but it was a very personal choice. Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy came close. There are other books too, at least one more which I considered my favorite. This one? With its only 900 pages, it took me over a month and a half to finish reading, because there were days when I had various other things to do, and contrary to what happened with A Suitable Boy with a personal record of ten days for over 1,200 pages (at my second reading), this one I wanted to never end. I am not disappointed, and I loved it from the first to its last page. Right now, I can’t think of another better book. This one is a cornerstone of literature in its entirety, not only in the Spanish language.
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I love literature. After this article I want to read some books. Nowadays time is very limited, but reading makes me alive. Wonderful article with great taste of literature.