Why do you like this book so much?

why do you like this book so much?

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'ta chingon

b/c of the cover

from what I remember I really only enjoyed the first part. the work seemed to fall apart after the professors were no longer the focus, although the translation could be to blame more than bolano. it had a mystical aspect to it which was done very well early on, and while he tried to keep it up through the rest of the work, it wasn't always reproduced well. the ending was cute tho, and I thought it was quite fitting in reference to the uncertainty and seemingly aimless direction the work went by. his allusions were fun

overall pretty nice with a tip-top cover

It kept me alienated but also engaged in all elements over such a long and varied plot, which is a trick even short stories have trouble with.

ta chevere

I like Bolano's journalistic prose and I dug the interweaving plots and phantasmagoria of the whole thing.

what other good spanish

For me, 2666, and much of Bolano's other work, is there to intimate a sense of a concealed doom. The key word is "convergence," where the various parts of 2666 all converge, whether overtly or indirectly, towards Santa Teresa. The events of the novel, and what came before, and even elements of Bolano's other works, all hurtle together with irreversible force towards an ultimate conclusion, to be resolved in the enigmatic year 2666. However, (and I understand this might be the part that gets iffy), it is not our providence to understand in a logical or coherent way what that conclusion is.

Nor is it the providence of Bolano himself. Bolano stated that the entire work is narrated by Belano, his literary alter ego. And it is the cast of the novel (and by extension the world) who is speaking through Belano, who speaks through Bolano. What we get in our hands is the distilled essence of Belano's vision, something that hints at an apocalyptic vision but does not narrate or explain.

(There is also another case of people speaking through others through narrative with the Soviet authors, whose manuscript interrupts the Archimboldi narrative. Story within a story within a story, woo!)

You can look towards globalization and the influence of Nazis/WWII for some more mundane themes, and the idea that Santa Teresa/Mexico is a microcosm of the world and human history/future (both geographically and temporally) is certainly valid. Personally, I read it as a representation of, or perhaps more accurately as signs indicating, "chaos." There is a fundamental, dare I say visceral, sense that something is wrong with the world being described in Bolano's work(s). At times apparent and wide-ranging (the horrors of WWI, the grotesque murders) and at other times personal and obtuse (the chaotic personal lives of the critics, Fate's descent into the chaos of Mexico from sheer coincidence).

I am reminded of the Second Coming:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:
[...]
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The difference is that instead of the age of Christ coming to an end in the year 2000, it is the age of [whatever Bolano saw] spiraling towards chaos in the year 2666. You have the similar sense that a revelation/cataclysm shift/change is at hand, and you get a vast, ancestral image from the collective unconsciousness manifesting itself in the events of the novel as well as the thoughts of the authors/writers, real and fictional, that inhabit his world.

good post, faggot. I can't think of a way mock it.

>Veeky Forums - Literature

I was thinking of picking this book up. Considering this is his last work would it be okay for me to start on this book or should I read some of his earlier works before I begin on 2666?

It's been posted before.
warosu.org/lit/thread/S7468196

IS fun. I'm a hedonistic reader.

And that's what Borges would answer.

Try the savage detectives before 2666. It's just as good, less complex and a bit shorter. Besides 2666 uses some stuff related to his previous novels so you might get some minor data if you've read his other works before

SD is an excellent book that stands on its own merit. Reading it now and really enjoying it...

The prose is just amazing. It reads really easily, which for a book that big is a great thing.

The characters are quite well fleshed out.

The story goes all over the place while managing to be cohesive.

Do get memed and read 2666. Don't get memed and read The Savage Detectives though. The former is fantastic, and the latter is shit. Or at least it's shit up to where I'm at (chapter 6 of the second section), but that doesn't promise to change.

Reposting from a different thread:

>I found Detectives very good and interesting technique-wise.
How?

Assuming nothing changes: The first section was bland. The characters are unidimensional as fuck - and when you think they have more than one, you go into the second section and you see them reestablish themselves as unidimensional cunts.

The narrative style is nothing much either. The first section (and I'm assuming the third one too) is just a fist-person, diary style. Even Anne Frank's dad did better. The second section would appear interesting in its approach, but after 6 chapters, it's long grown annoying as fuck. And I have over 20 chapters to go in that section too, god damn it all. And if the "clipping" style of the second section hadn't gotten boring as shit, its subject matter certainly did. If you thought Maria was a Mary Sue, holy fuck does Belano take the cake.

The only reason I can see for this novel to be popular is if you fall in one of these two categories:
1 - faggots who want to "live the literary life" through the characters, except you're much better reading biographies of real authors. Even the most fucked up IRL authors weren't as annoying as the fucking viscerealists. Hell, I'll take Bosie over these niggers any day - or maybe not, maybe they'd just be pretty much the same.
2 - Huge whores who liked feeling validated by Maria Font, and being able to say "oh, even faggots are in love with me". Also, god dammit, Angelica, by the end of the first section I thought you were actually still a virgin, maybe, but then in the second section you go and narrate how Pancho broke your hymen in that party after all. Fucking Bolaño and his love for huge gaping vaginas.

The same can not be said of 2666. Even if some (or most) of the characters in 2666 are unlikeable, there's a few redeeming ones - and even the annoying ones actually have a number of layers. And the technique just can't be compared - 2666 might be humongous, but it reads like water. The Savage Detectives is far from that.

>Reposting from a different thread
could you fucking not plox

It's my own post though.

oh i know

>the characters are annoying
>therefore the book is bad

go back to reading fulfillment self insert fanfiction. ready player one, maybe?

Nobody replied to my answer though. A faggot started trying to explain how the titles of "cuck" and "whore" are actually positive from his point of view or something, but nobody explained to me why this absolutely bland book is so popular.

And I say this as someone who loved 2666, whores and all.

A book with annoying characters can be good. Crime and Punishment, for example. Or The Sound and the Fury, say. Or Ningen Shikkaku.

But it goes well beyond that. The characters in The Savage Detectives are unidimensional as fuck. The prose can't be compared at all with the one in 2666 (I was memed that TSD was actually lighter reading than 2666. Fucking bullshit). The style of the second section, though a bit interesting, gets old fast. Quite fast. And all the self-fellating in that section should give Bolaño the award for the biggest Gary Stu in history. Fuck Belano. Seriously, fuck Belano. And I'm only 6 chapters in on that.

Now, if it gets better later, please, seriously, please, let me know. But going from the first section and the first 6 chapters of the second section, man is this book shit.

Oh, and by the way, if anything is self-insert fanfiction, it's TSD. The first part is self-insert fanfiction for the reader (I dare you to tell me the reason you like it isn't because you self-insert as García Madero) and the second part is a self-insert for the writer (and here it goes again: seriously, fuck Belano).

I OFFICIALLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO CONSTITUTE A QUADRILOGY ALONG WITH INFINITE JOKE, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AND ODISSEUS

>The prose can't be compared at all with the one in 2666

>i read a translation

Nope. I read it in spanish, my native language. Again, 2666 is really light reading, a magisterial use of prose, while TSD is much bulkier. The first part is nothing to write home about, and the second one, while novel, get old and annoying fast.

On the topic of The Savage Detectives:

Bolaño sucks at telling stories.
They often end up with no end or with one of those multiple "what if" ends that he is terribly fond of, so I can agree with the people that say that TSD is not good story telling.

But Bolaño is excellent at creating, portraying and inserting characters, topics and themes of his daily life into his works.

Now for that user saying the characters are unidimensional, how come? what makes you think this? Is it becase the characters seem really vapid and only think about what they want to do on a personal level? You have to understand that these characters are kids, by the end of the main story the year is 1976, these guys are between 17-22 OF COURSE they are stupid and selfish. On top of that this is a work influenced by the Latin American way of life in the 70s, it is not about living the literary lifestyle I'd say its much more of a coming of age novel where the characters slowly grow up and realize that sometimes what you like to do is not worth it or not really recognised as something good or trascendent.

With that said, if you read a translation learn spanish, read the real thing and also, get familiar with the context because this TSD from my point of view can also be considered as a piece of Historic Novel. (Much like PKD The man in the High castle, La visión de los vencidos by Miguel Leon-Portilla or even Il formaggio e i vermi. Il cosmo di un mugnaio del '500 from Carlo Ginzburg)

Fun fact: Ginzburg's book was published in 1976, the same year Belano and friends escape to Sonora to look for Cesarea.

>it is not about living the literary lifestyle I'd say its much more of a coming of age novel where the characters slowly grow up and realize that sometimes what you like to do is not worth it or not really recognised as something good or trascendent
That's the thing - it's not. The characters, at least up to the point I'm at, are the same they were at the beginning. They don't grow. At all. I see no development whatsoever, and yeah, I haven't finished yet, sure, but still, no development at all in the first half of the book.

If they end up evolving, that's great. Maybe they're not as unidimensional as I thought. But at least for now, I see no layers in their personalities at all. Unlike in 2666.

But it's not just that they don't evolve. It's that they're all the same character, with a few tweaks. They're all either García Madero but not as smart, or Bolano but in love with or deeply affected by Bolano.

>if you read a translation learn spanish
I know Spanish. It's my first language. I'm reading it in Spanish. I read 2666 in spanish too.

Also,
>Bolaño sucks at telling stories
I mean, sure, 2666 was his last work and all, but it is fantastic at doing just that. It's a huge book with a number of interconnected stories (and yeah, I guess the same could be said about TSD, but in quite a different way), and it even has quite unique, quite multidimensional characters telling small stories that make the book much richer. Like, say, that guy that tells the story of Archimboldi coming to his town when he was much younger, that goes on a tangent about this lady who goes to Argentina and meets a young gaucho and shit. It's a great story inside the story, told fantastically in a voice different from every other character's voice.

That's what I mean when I say the characters in TSD are unidimensional and the ones in 2666 aren't. You couldn't distinguish the TSD ones if Bolaño didn't tell you who they were (except by certain tweeks to this unipersonality, like knowing it's Piel Divina because he fucks anything that moves, say). Maybe that's why the second section gets so old so fast. But in 2666, the characters are properly fleshed out from the start, even the minor ones like that old dude who tells that story.

I think you need to read The Savage Detectives twice to see the subtle themes of writing, life and death he is slowly weaving into the novel. The novel weaves into the narrative the balance between life and death in a poet's life. Keep your antennae up for any mention of Belano.

What's outside the window?

Cool story bro -- SD is still great. I just finished another 75 or so pages tonight. Really dug all those muggings in Vienna.

Interesting there two noticeable stands here: Bolaño tells a good story, but with flat characters; or the converse: the story is suckish, but the characters are interesting.


There's your Masters dissertation. Don't mention it.

Or both the characters and story are flat in TSD and interesting in 2666.

>masters dissertation

more like middle school book report

>That's the thing - it's not. The characters, at least up to the point I'm at, are the same they were at the beginning. They don't grow. At all. I see no development whatsoever, and yeah, I haven't finished yet, sure, but still, no development at all in the first half of the book.

You say you're in chapter 6 of the second part? Then you haven't read jackshit of the second part. The second part ends in 1996, while you are barely in May 1977, little more than 2 years after the end of Part One. Read the god damn book

>Mary Sue

mama mia that was a quick way to get me to stop taking you seriously

its overrated. read dilillo instead. less dribble

>american "literature"

kek

>reading translations
kek

>dribble

what????

ta chido

>Fucking Bolaño and his love for huge gaping vaginas.
this

It's sorta a mystery that show only half its face. Maybe you'll find connections but there is no certainty. This gives me solice

should i actually learn spanish or do i betray my no-translation policy for this book?

i've only read english novels since i developed an almost insufferable obsession with the idea that i'm literally reading someone else's interpretation of a work in another language. tarkovsky's nostalghia haunts me

learning spanish is not that difficult and you will get to read a lot of good shit in their original language

what's wrong with reading someone's interpretation of a book?

>Norton and Morini fuck
Really? REALLY?

>almost insufferable
don't be modest

>It's another thread about this

I find it funny that people's jimmies get rustled by other people liking 2666 and that people on Veeky Forums claim "nobody can explain why they like it", "they just like it for its hipster value" etc but then those people ignore the threads where people talk about why they like it.

If you didn't like 2666 then that's fine bro but why waste time complaining about it and demanding that others explain why they like it? It's a silly way to handle not liking a book, just move on and read something else.

This may seem like I'm reading into OP's post too much but it seems as though over the past several years I've seen dozens of threads where people try to assert that nobody can explain why they like 2666 as if they are trying to feel validated for not liking it.

nice shitpost, american trash

It's rare that somebody writes such a long post but says absolutely nothing

keep this up and it will be eventually

didnt read 2666 but I think The Savage Detectives is genius, and the middle part (which is two thirds of the book), would stand on its own as a short stories collection.

Reacting defensively, you must be OP? I didn't write "absolutely nothing", I discussed why I thought these threads were common and what I thought the motivation might be for the people who make them. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to post. It's not as though we are all obliged to only post responses to OP's question and that anything besides this is "nothing".

I thought it was unnecessary to write a detailed post explaining why I liked 2666 because there are many other people who do that in these threads and I was instead posting with the intent of helping people like OP realize that posting these sorts of threads won't bring them validation and that they should just move on. If you would like me to post about why I personally liked 2666 then say so and I'm happy to do so.

I don't think you meant to reply to my post

it is already
it already is
already it is
already is it

Actually OP this is the book that inspired me to make the most valiant attempt I can to learn Spanish. This book has Presence. The whole dead author thing, the unfinished quality, the directionless narratives, the 'undercurrents of convergence' or whatever, it's an overgrown thicket of a book that comes closer to the sublime than anything else of the last couple decades.