Far From Brooklyn

Reading ‘2666‘ by Roberto Bolaño

This is a work of genius.  It’s almost certainly the best novel I’ve read in years… and I think it may well be the best novel of the past decade.

But I couldn’t finish it. I had to set it aside about two-thirds of the way through the fourth of the novel’s five segments.  That fourth section, “The Part About the Crimes,” catalogs in a very cold and methodical way a multitude of murders, mainly of women, in fictional Santa Teresa, a stand-in for the real city of Juarez, where hundreds of women have been murdered over the past 10 or more years.

“The Part About the Crimes” is troubling at first, then numbing, then horrible, and finally too graphic and relentless.  I couldn’t continue, especially because it was apparent that the narrative would have no real story, nor could there be any hope of a “conclusion” or a “solution” to the crimes.  It’s clear that they are not the work of one man or one group of men.  The murders are individual crimes and most likely committed by unrelated individuals.  In aggregate, the repeated descriptions of the bodies and crimes force the reader to look painfully and closely at a society twisted by violence.  And it works – I was riveted and horrified, and ultimately couldn’t read any more.  It was keeping me from sleeping and I opted to stop.

I can’t decide if this is a failing of the novel or a powerful commendation.  I just don’t know.

I do know that the first two sections of the novel – virtually independent novellas – blew me away.  Part one, “The Part About the Critics,” is a Nabakovian tale of four scholars who share an obsession with a German writer with unlikely name of Benno Von Archimboldi. The scholars pair off in various sexual and philosophical combinations, while the nature and perhaps even the existence of Archimboldi remains uncertain.  The novella ends with them making a pilgrimage to Santa Teresa, where Archimboldi is thought to be or have been.  There is a satisfying denouement – although hardly a neatly tied-off conclusion – and then the story resumes, in part two, “The Part About Amalfitano,” by following a relatively minor character whom the scholars have met in Santa Teresa.  It’s in this, the second portion or second independent novella, that we begin to understand the unfolding horror in Santa Teresa.

Bolaño pulls off a mighty neat trick here: Parts one and two of “2666” are really about the same thing – intellectuals more comfortable with the abstract than the real.  But the first novel is a sort of frolic – the banter is playful, the shifting amorous allegiances do not lead to excessive grief or feuding, and the whole idea of the mysterious Archimboldi is a sort of a mind game.  But in the second section, much more is at stake, and the academic preference for intellectual pursuit suddenly seems obscene and selfish, because in this case the main character, Amalfitano, is paying insufficient attention to the reality of his city and the palpable danger facing his teenage daughter.  This novella, much shorter than the first, has a visceral impact, and while the conclusion is somewhat unsatisfying, it feels organic and real.

The third section, “The Part About Fate,” (and it’s worth noting that these “The Part About…” titles are pretty annoying) is the least successful of the four. There’s no pretense of a tangential link between the preceding novella and this one.  The only thing they have in common (and indeed this is the case for the horrifying fourth part as well) is that they are both set in Santa Teresa.  There’s no “handoff” from section to section – the reader must start fresh, learning new characters and new backstory.  For the first time in this book (indeed in anything I’ve read by Bolaño) the scenario rings false.

“The Part About Fate” is indeed about Fate, or at least a man whose name is Fate.  (Ugh.)  He’s a black American who writes for an alternative (black) publication, and perhaps because I know a few things about the world of publishing it all just rang false – Fate’s assignment to cover a boxing match in Mexico is almost painfully unrealistic.  It’s too bad, because the whole backstory could have been edited away without any effect on the narrative; it would have made the entire novella more believable and readable.

“The Part About Fate” does serve a purpose – it’s an extended explication of (and metaphor for) the violence that subtends Santa Teresa.  The city has been revealed to us bit by bit first as a dusty, sleepy, perhaps even charming place, then as a real city with real darkness and real danger, and finally as a potentially monstrous place.

And then we come to part four, which, trust me, is too brutal to describe.  Bolaño is such an extravagantly imaginative writer, he can spin complex and remarkably complete portraits of hundreds of characters if given the chance.  It’s just too horrible to have to read about all of those characters when each of them has been murdered, and often raped or tortured.

Ultimately I had to set the novel down.

That was with some regret, though. “2666″ is probably the most exciting, most powerful, most compelling, and most completely imagined book I have read since … I don’t know, “Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson, or “Blindness” by Jose Saramago.  As I grow old/er, I am less and less likely to be swept away by a work of fiction.  I think it’s partially age and partially a reflection of the sheer volume of literature I’ve read over the years.  Nevertheless it pains me some to set aside a book like this unfinished.

But I just couldn’t read any more.

I did skip forward and start the fifth and final section of the novel, but I couldn’t quite engage with it – I didn’t wish to be brutalized any more and I wasn’t sure Bolaño was done with brutality.  Indeed, I don’t see how he could be, given the novel’s thematic structure.  And so this novel, certainly the best I have read this year and possibly the best in almost 10 years, will be reshelved, unfinished.

Postscript, Dec. 16, 2009

Well, I ended up finishing 2666 after all.

I won’t say that the final segment of the novel blew me away – I was already blown away in both negative and positive ways and there was no more need for that.

It required, no surprise, a brand new investment of time and effort, a learning curve of new characters and situations.

The best of it was the extraordinary storytelling playfulness. There is never a straight line from Point A to Point B. In order to learn the identity of Benno von Archimboldi, the reader has to bushwack through a series of tangential sidestories. and by the time we’ve arrived we hardly remember why we were traveling there.

The worst of it was the growing certainty I felt that the novel could not help but end in a state of complete irresolution, and that is by and large what did happen – there were simply too many (and too radically separate) plotlines to be wrapped up.  No one could have done it – not John Irving, not Charles Dickens, not John Fowles, not John Le Carre, not any master of plotting.

And even if by some miracle a novelist were to twist this all off, that too would have irritating and false – I cannot imagine any closure except one that was hackneyed.

That said, the author does manage to make a few key links back to the earlier volumes.  And if the book tends to stumble a bit toward the end, it’s only natural… it’s a novel, and every novel is flawed and tattered by the end.  Only shorter works can begin to flirt with perfection – the two that come to mind off the top of my head are “Catcher in the Rye” and Philip Roth’s not particularly well-known or well-loved “The Ghost Writer.”  (Not particularly well loved by most but I loved it – yeah.)

And so in any case I draw to a close of my consideration, for now, of “2666.”  It’s a towering achievement.  I feel quite sure I will not read it again, which is not unusual for a book this long and this challenging.  But it reflects the nature of the book and the reader – I reread what I love and what gives me pleasure, not necessarily what I admire.

Photo credit: Ciudad Juárez by Astrid Bussink, via Wikimedia Commons