What are we Reading (Part Dos)

Let us leave the world of politics for a moment -- I have more to say about the health care debate and its implications, but I can't bear to write anything further about it today.  So to the world of literature for a respite.

Just a few days ago I finally finished the enigmatically named "2666" by Chilean writer Roberto Bolano.  It was a long haul, taking me about five months to get through its mammoth 900 pages.  I believe I've only read two novels that were longer -- "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace (which I read when it came out in 1996, when the "juice box mafia" were still reading S.E. Hinton novels) and Robert Musil's unfinished magnum opus "The Man Without Qualities -- which even in its incomplete state weighed in at about 1200 pages -- or, had it been a health care reform bill, would have been about 4800 pages.

Bolano actually did not live to see "2666" published either, having died of liver failure (likely brought on by a history of heroin abuse) in 2003 at the age of 50.  The book, fortunately for us, was in a finished state at that point. 

It is an unusually structured novel, consisting of five discrete parts that are largely independent of one another.  The sweep of the novel, both in terms of its milieu and its concerns, is impressive.  The novel begins with a section devoted to four European academics, three men from respectively France, Spain, and Italy, and an English woman, each of whom becomes an aficionado of an obscure German writer, improbably named Benno von Archimboldi.  They befriend one another through their common interest, travel around to various academic conferences on the Continent, and, naturally, fight with academic enemies who have differing interpretations and approaches to the novelist's work.  Thus, for about 160 or so pages the book is a classic novel of the academy.  At that point, the professors embark on a quest to Mexico where the reclusive author, (who would make J.D. Salinger seem like Paris Hilton) is rumored to have been spotted.

At this point, the novel shifts to three different stories set within Mexico, one dealing with another academic, a Mexican literature professor, then an African-American writer visiting to cover a championship fight, and then lastly, and most powerfully, the largest section of the novel, a nearly 300 page depiction of hundreds of murders of young Mexican women that continue on unsolved.  These crimes are set around the fictional city of Santa Theresa, a stand-in for Ciudad Juarez, although with a fictional locale similar to Nogales.  Santa Theresa is plagued with corruption, violence, poverty, and a kind of hopeless ennui.  The crimes themselves are not shown, just the series of bodies discovered, the identity of the victims where the police can figure that out (many victims remain nameless), the cause of death, and a brief description of the futile efforts to solve the crime.  Bolano repeats these stories over and over with only minimal diversion as they are seen largely through the eyes of one police detective.  The impact is cumulative, with the horror gripping you as one after the other after the other of the bodies of these poor anonymous women and girls are found.

Then finally, when you are starting to feel a bit bludgeoned yourself, the novel turns at last to the German author whose writings began the story.  A large part of this portion of the book is a war novel set on the Eastern front, later following the soon to be Archimboldi to post-war Germany and his life as an anonymous and relatively obscure author.

Throughout its epic length, Bolano shows himself to be a novelist who can convincingly portray everything from elite academics, to Mexican detectives, to German foot soldiers, and Russian Bolsheviks. He's got a great and controlled voice, coupled with an uncanny feeling for large swaths of the world and the people who inhabit it.  

Give it a shot if you've got some long airplane flights coming up or something else that will allow you to give it your undivided attention for an hour or so.  It will be well worth your time.    

Comments

[Eric Wilde]

I can only dream of reading some literature right now. With a seriously stressful job and twin toddlers to chase around the house. I'm sticking with the toddler books and hoping to stay ahead of them month by month. This novel sounds riveting but tough.

[Sir Charles]

EW.

I don't recall doing a lot of heavy reading at that phase of my life either. When I read "Infinte Jest" my son had just turned three, but the only reason I got through it was that I had a week long conference in San Francisco. I read it obsessively on the flights and while in SF and knocked it off in a week. During my normal routine it would never have happened.

Maybe next time you fly to India.

[Eric Wilde]

Maybe next time you fly to India.

Nah, those are spent with a pair of extra batteries and my laptop. Gotta prepare for the week or two of meetings while overseas.

[Corvus9]

Huh. This is the only review of this book I've read which has even bothered to describe what it's about. Do any of these sections even relate to each other, and tie together? Or is it basically five separate novels, and almost an anthology?

Since the last Reading thread, I have read some more of the Baroque Cycle. I am about halfway through the fist volume (of three), which is Quicksilver. Which puts me about halfway through the second "Book"(of three)in Quicksilver, which is about a Vagabond named Jack who is slowly going mad from the pox. The first Book was about Isaac Newton's (fictional) college roommate. Its a pretty fun story, considering its three books 900 pages long.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

They are related but not in a completely linear fashion. You want to read the whole thing -- it is a work in full. Although you could read the separate components and be impressed it is definitely meant to be one book.

Eric,

All work and no play you know . .

[big bad wolf]

ah, finally a 2666 review that i can trust.

SC, have you read sebald? his books are musch shorter than 2666, but your description of bolano's building technique seems vaguely reminescent of what sebald did with "facts." i like austerlitz best, though the emigrants is also excellent, and the rings of saturn, if ultimately baffling to me, was fascinating too.

i read nearly as much fiction in the couple of months after my daughter's birth as i have in the last 9 years. i was up a lot sitting in a chair with her sleeping on my chest after walking her. now, between work and kids, it's three or four a year.

[big bad wolf]

i shouldn't put it all on the kids. i spend too much time on the internet, but later at night, assuming i am not back working (or actually even if i am and am stuck), that is easier to do than reading fiction. or i read the new yorker or the nyrb. ari is not wrong that the nyrb could use a transfusion of younger blood, but it is still a better read than most things. and the new yorker, well it has its ups and downs too, but i'm willing to risk the loss of the huffpo and the rest if i can keep the new yorker. for this alone perhaps, i wage my battle to keep conservative from meaning radical reactionary. another in my endless lost causes :)

[Off Colfax]

Sir Charles, last time I gave you a bunch of non-fiction.

So today I'll give you a few fiction titles.

Little Brother by Corey Doctorow. A bunch of technopunk teenagers in San Fransisco go head-to-head with the Department of Homeland Security. And win. Well, mostly win. The truly frightening part of this book is not how realistic the ham-handedness of DHS responses were written, but instead that all of the technologies that Doctorow uses in the book are real. Current science, on the shelf, and click the link. He even provides URLs and references in the bibliography.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. An intriguing philosophical novel based upon one simple and devastating question: What would human philosophies and religions look like to someone who wasn't human? And then ask yourself the exact same questions. It is a wonderful tool of self-critique wrapped up in a highly intriguing concept.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Simply and amazingly well-written, wonderful research, and a plot that will drag you in like a hungry Sarlaac... [insert insane laughter] Just kidding. This was an absolute trainwreck of a novel, ranking as his second worst to date just behind Deception Point. I wouldn't even waste a single day of library late fees on this one much less the $29.95 list price. Angels & Demons it ain't.

A Fraction Of The Whole by Steven Toltz. An Austrailian author, but don't let that stop you. You will laugh harder and longer than you did while reading Lamb... You did read Lamb, right? Right? Oh gods... You haven't even read Christopher Moore yet. I can tell by the blank look on your faces. Go now unto Amazon and purchase your hilarity!

[Eric Wilde]

All work and no play you know . .

My play comes in the form of peekaboo and dirty diapers. Lots of dirty diapers.

[Sir Charles]

I do remember those days. It's amazing how routine it becomes though, isn't it?

I feel like I'm finally getting some pay off today -- I went off to work and left the 16-year old with instructions to dig out my hopelessly snow-buried car. One of the joys of on-street parking is that the plows really help pack you in, adding to the already 20 inches or so under which you are buried.

[Eric Wilde]

It's amazing how routine it becomes though, isn't it?

The play or the diapers? I guess both; but, I really haven't come anywhere close to tired of infantile play. The "Why?"s started this past week and I'm eagerly looking forward to the full frontal assault of toddler curiosity from both girls.

[Sir Charles]

Both -- but I must confess I was thinking of the diapers, which become oddly routine in a matter of weeks, if not days.

The curiousity is fun and gets more and more enjoyable I think as their cognitive abilities increase. Not that it needs to be all high minded -- I used to laugh like hell taking my son up to New York on the Metroliner (which I ended up doing a lot) and listening to him make train noises most of the way up. (Yes, business people hated us.)

[Sir Charles]

Off Colfax,

Is this Doctorow related to E.L.?

And thanks for the Dan Brown laugh -- for a minute I was trying to think of a gentle way to say well this may not be the audience for that. True confession -- on a vacation to the Caribbean in which we were plagued with bad weather, I came up short in terms of reading material. The house in which we were staying had the DaVinci Code on the shelves. I thought, well, let's take a gander. What truly appalling writing. Naturally I read the whole damn thing. But I did not respect myself in the morning, oh no sir, not for a minute.

I am intrigued by the Australian -- among the world's genocidal peoples (including white Americans) I believe they are the funniest -- well it's neck and neck with the Brits.

[Off Colfax]

I've asked myself the exact same question multiple times, to be honest, and I've never found a reference stating that they are directly related.

It would be a rather odd coincidence if they weren't related, wouldn't it just.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

I tried to research it, or at least its liklihood. I thought it might be a common Russian name under various transliterations from the Cyrillic -- thus E.L.'s ancestor noted in Wikipedia is transliterated "Dokhturov" and the name seems to be a variant form of the Russian word for 'doctor.'

But, I then checked the Brooklyn White Pages. We have quite a group of Russians here -- we have quite a group of everything here, that's why I love living here -- and found only one listing under any of the alternate spellings, a 'Doctoroff.' So maybe it would be a bigger coincidence than I first thought.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Would watching a movie based on a Pulitzer-winning play count? Because, last night I got a chance to see John Patrick Shanley's DOUBT, for which which Shanley both wrote the screenplay and directed, and this one I have no qualms at all in recommending. Not only is the story extremely well done -- when Shanley wrote the original play and it was produced as one act, he said 'and the second act will be the conversation people have after they leave the theatre' -- but the acting is incredible, hard to believe the original cast of the play could have matched the performances of Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and -- in one extended scene that actually steals the show from the others -- Viola Davis.

I won't give a long review -- oh, it's tempting -- but the theme of a nun, played by Streep as a heir to the Inquisitors, totally certain, totally blind to the people involved, pursuing a priest who may or may not have been involved in an 'inappropriate relationship' with the first black student in the Bronx school -- it is set in 1964 -- is played against the off-stage events of the time, Pope John XXIII, Vatican II and the Civil Rights movement that are poundingly there even though never mentioned. The scenes are totally real to someone who had attended Catholic school at the time -- I'm five years older than Shanley and had left the Church by then, but I found myself horrifyingly able to sing every word of "Holy God We Praise Thy Name" with the choir in an early scene, found not one line or bit of background off -- except that "Sister James" the young nun who teaches history was unlikely to teach Thomas Paine after teaching Hitler and WWII to the same class. And the use of the early trnsistor radio, and Sister Aloyisius' hatred of ball-point pens becomes a character point, as does every single prop and word in the movie.

You don't need the background, or the experience of Catholicism to appreciate it -- my wife who had neither had no problem -- but it makes a stronger film if you've 'been there.'