It sounds interesting so i'm thinking of picking it up to read after the Brothers K (I just read Infinite Jest).
Infinite Jest was really good but I have so many questions about the lack of ending. Since 2666 was unfinished, will reading 900+ pages of his book be an unfulfilling waste?
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>he reads for the ending
ISHYGDDT
honestly i was very satisfied with the way it ended
It's unfinished but not incohesive. I imagine Bolano would have edited out a lot of stuff, but it has an ending (maybe not a neat tidy bow of an ending, but there's no jesting you).
Well, it was actually finished, more or less, in the sense of the 'story' or whatever. It seems that he just didn't have the time to fully edit the last chapter (there are some things in the end that, errors etc).
But the thing is (beside the fact that they found unused material in Bolano's notebook, like the ending note that would explain narrator [maybe] and so forth) that the book is, imo, the finest example of modernist/pos-modernist idea/dream-of-a-novel - grandiose in scope, but soon deliberatley 'destroying' its own structure etc etc. I though it could have go on for another 900 pages and it would be still as good as it was.
And final note: it's one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time: it's both clever and entertaining to keep you turning pages. The Crimes part is absolute pinnacle, chilling, amorphous, enigmatic, crushing.
Just read or re-read Pynchon and Delillo.
"Bolano is a period piece. His excess attracts and withers away." - Harold Bloom, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Yale
He never said that. That's not even his style of author bashing.
not him but yes he has, in private correspondance
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Oh, you're right, it was more like
"Dude, Pynchon and Delillo are SHIT. Read PKD! Far more successful!" - Roberto 'Globalism is bad, m'kay' Bolano
Latin American DFW. Smug writer who talked shit but then couldn't deliver.
Read Pynchon and Delillo instead.
Bolaño was a great writter, and this book kill him.
Oh okay. I'm a little incredulous since Bloom always talks about how busy he is and how he has an assistant to wade through and ignore all but the most important ones. Dunno why he decided to respond to this one.
However I've not once seen a sincere attempt to email him on Veeky Forums before. Maybe he really is willing to answer his fans questions. Someone bother him about something and see what happens.
he used to answer every (reasonable, serious) email, or close to it, but has since stopped.
>Oh okay. I'm a little incredulous since Bloom always talks about how busy he is and how he has an assistant to wade through and ignore all but the most important ones. Dunno why he decided to respond to this one.
Because he pretends he hates technology but then forces his wife to read all his e-mails and gets his whatever poor RA got assigned to him to use the university library system and sign out the books he wants.
But he's right about Bolano.
lol at taking that old fart Bloom so seriously, he seems so backward-thinking that he would not acknowledge anything new whatever it was
>I would think, How can they not see? I would sit with Harold Bloom with some regularity, hand over a book I thought highly of, say, by Jack Gilbert or McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and wait for him to refuse even to look. Or if he did look, he’d not seem to see in it what I’d see. Later, when he was assembling his western canon, he stuck in, I believe, Blood Meridian and the great Suttree.
(from some interview with Gordon Lish)
>i'm thinking of picking it up to read after the Brothers K (I just read Infinite Jest).
wew lad, wew
Yeah, no shit. He made some cowardly comment about how maybe the Yahwist was a female and some reviewer was like "Dude, it's Bethesheba." And then he starts going around being like "Yes...the Yahwist is Bethesheba, mind blown, yet????"
None of his ideas are his own.
I emailed him ages ago asking about John Green cos i didnt think he would reply but he did and just said he didnt read the stuff and called it cancer but in old person lingo. Id find it but its on my phone and id have to edit out my email.
I sent him another one afterwards cos he replied asking why Casares wasnt on his canon but he ignored it cos he's pretty sore about that list.
He wrote this to provide for his children because he knew he was dying and needed a commercial success, much like the painter the characters visit early in the novel that cuts off his dominant hand to drive up the value of his paintings.
That doesn't make it a bad book, it's very enjoyable
Go 4 it big man
>He wrote this to provide for his children because he knew he was dying and needed a commercial success
Nah, m8, nah. He wanted to be issued separately; each part being a book - so it would make more money... But the wife wtih the editor decided otherwise, cause they thought it make much more sense in being one huge book. (and it was fuckin success; and consequently it was published by single parts as well).
It is not so much "unfinished" as much as "unpolished". Bolaño was satisfied with the book's stucture and prose, but he apperently wanted to mull over the book a few more months (apperently, the final draft was due in two) before he passed away.
The present book is pretty much what it would have been, barring a few changes here and there. The book is thematically conslusive and satisfying, and I recommnenir fully (alongisde his other magnus opus, The Savage Detectives).
Some people might feel his novel is "incomplete" because the plot is mostly unreaolved at the end. However, this ties in to his exploration of the concept of "truth" and how fact and fiction are difficult to seperate when exploring true events.
more like professor of sucking balls at Yale. 2666 is beautiful and while I love Pynchon and DeliLlo, they're very different from Mariachi Pynchon.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a waste. Definitely somewhat dissatisfied. It seemed like the entire loosely connected thread was about to come together. Like some drawing where the final stroke of the artist's hand reveals the subject of the piece. Individually, some of the stories are better than others. Difficult to explain without spoiling anything. If you do choose to read it, don't use the first portion with that academic cucktrio to gauge what the rest of the book will be like. It's weak shit compared to the rest.
Oh man, you're in for a surprise when you finish TBK.
pleb
It's the second-best section. 5 > 1 > 2 > 4 > 3
Part one isn't "bad," I just don't care about their obsession with some mysterious author or their love triangle. Two dudes in constant competition get played by some whore and she goes for the goddamned cripple. What a tweest!! Who gives a shit? Weak ass opening. Does nothing for me.
Guess I'm a pleb.
Only if you don't pay attention. While it wont give you the complete answers it will wrap up several thematic elements. Yes its "unfinished" but that lends to the beauty and weirdness of it all. Go for it user. However, before you do maybe take a break from all the doorstoppers.
the first part is about loving literature and the myth of large epic authors (which the novel deconstructs by the end). We are suppossed to sympathize with the critic's love of archimboldi as we admire authors like Joyce, DFW, or Pynchon. We meme those authors because their life is as interesting as their work.
grats you completely missed the point of the opening
see for a glimpse
you are indeed a pleb. at least you know it.
>but m-muh indispensiblity
>called it cancer but in old person lingo
Why the fuck did I lose to this?
Which in itself is hilarious considering all the mythos around Bolano himself
I don't need the love of literature and idolization of authors to be explained to me in some roundabout plot line about two competitive pedants getting cucked by a roastie.
It's fucking boring compared to the rest of the book.
>Roberto 'Globalism is bad, m'kay' Bolano
wdhmbt
I like to think he sort of new his own status and wrote this novel to completely deconstruct that concept.
>Any part of 2666.
>Fucking boring.
Even if the plot is not to your tastes, the prose is great throughout. Saying it's boring because of one aspect of the plot is maximum pleb.