NOTE: My review for 2666 was uploaded much earlier, but has still yet to appear on Amazon.
2666, the marvelously maddening, posthumously published novel by the late Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño totals close to 900 pages in its American edition and is separated into five parts. In a brief forward by Ignacio Echevarría, Bolaño’s literary executor, Echevarría writes that Bolaño intended for each of the novel’s five parts to be published as individual works.
The first section, titled “The Part About the Critics,” follows four European academics (three men and one woman) who share an obsession with an obscure, reclusive German novelist, Benno von Archimboldi. Rumors surface at a conference in France regarding his whereabouts and the critics travel to northern Mexico, to the border city of Santa Teresa (standing in for Ciudad Juarez) in search of Archimboldi. The section concludes shortly thereafter, with the critics coming up short in their investigation. From here on, Santa Teresa serves as the novel’s central setting, with an ensemble of countless characters shifting in and out of focus.
The second section, titled “The Part About Amalfitano,” follows a professor of philosophy at the University of Santa Teresa who begins to hear voices and gradually loses his mind. Amalfitano appeared very briefly in the first section, serving as a tour guide to one of the European academics in Santa Teresa.
The third section, titled “The Part About Fate,” follows an American journalist named Oscar Fate, on assignment in Santa Teresa to write about a boxing match, only to cross paths with Amalfitano’s daughter Rose. The novel grows increasingly grim during the second and third sections, with occasional mentions being made of the serial murders occurring in Santa Teresa, culminating in the novel’s forth (and longest) section, titled “The Part About the Crimes.”
This section chronicles, sequentially, a series of unsolved murders numbering in excess of 300. Bolaño describes each of the murders in the cold, clinical language of a forensic pathologist. The section features an enormous cast of characters, including innumerable policemen, private detectives and reporters, all attempting to solve the spree of murders, in addition to the hundreds of female victims, many of whom remain unidentified. The strange, potent power of Bolaño’s prose in this section lies in its complete and utter detachment, the numbing banality of its relentless cataloging of atrocity:
“A few days after the murder of Paula Sanchez Garces, the body of a girl of about seventeen, five foot seven, long hair, and slight build, appeared by the Casas Negras highway. She had been stabbed three times, and there were abrasions on her wrists and ankles and marks on her neck. The cause of death, according to the medical examiner, was one of stab wounds. She was dressed in a red T-shirt, white bra, black panties, and red high heels. She wasn’t wearing pants or a skirt. After vaginal and anal swabs were taken, it was concluded that the victim had been raped. Later, one of the medical examiner’s assistants discovered that the shoes the victim was wearing were at least two sizes too big for her. No identification of any kind was found, and the case was closed.”
For nearly 300 pages, Bolaño recounts such murders, the cumulative effect of which is equal parts dull and agonizing, the polar opposite of popular entertainment’s generally sensationalized depiction of crime and murder. In the novel’s fifth and final section, titled “The Part About Archimboldi,” the elusive German writer Benno von Archimboldi takes center stage, during which Bolaño recounts nearly the entire span of his fanciful life, from childhood to World War II, before finally depositing him in the desolate Santa Teresa desert.
As a whole, 2666 is compulsively readable, though individual sections don’t quite hold up when weighted against the novel’s horrifyingly hypnotic centerpiece. “The Part About Fate,” stands out as the weakest section, perhaps because it feels most unrelated to the novel’s principal narrative. Nonetheless, the section features one of Bolaño’s most memorable and vibrant passages: a bizarre rant delivered by a former Black Panther turned motivational speaker that totals roughly ten pages:
“[The] sun has its uses, as any fool knows, said Seaman. From up close its hell, but from far away you’d have to be a vampire not to see how useful it is, how beautiful. Then he began to talk about things that were useful back in the day, things once generally appreciated but now distrusted instead, like smiles. In the fifties, for example, he said, a smile opened doors for you. I don’t know if it could get you places, but it could definitely open doors. Now nobody trusts a smile.”
In “The Part About the Crimes,” only one out of the hundreds of women whose deaths fill Bolaño’s catalog of violence manages to somehow survive her vicious attack, crawling to the front door of a hospital, only to die before being afforded an opportunity to reveal the truth. The passage is simultaneously electrifying and infuriating, much like the whole of Bolaño’s experimental novel.
Third World Literature 