2666 by Roberto Bolano REVIEW 

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I just finished 2666 a week ago, and while a second rereading is definitely something I intend to do, here is what I currently think of the novel. There came a point in the part about the crimes in which I became numb and simply skimmed over the descriptions of the murders. I experienced that part as a story about the recurring characters with interruptions about the killings, similarly to how one watches tv with commercials. This is how I have lived the violence in Ciudad Juárez and, more boradly, in the rest of México and the world. Life happens, and violence happens, both switching between foreground and background. I don't think the novel is making an argument about the bleakeness of life and the inevitability of suffering, nor the other way around, about how despite its horrors, it can be beautiful. For me, this novel presents the human experience as neutrally as possible, including episodes of suffering and happiness alike, being partial to neither. This is a complex and nevertheless meaningless novel, in the way that life is meaningless and complex. This novel exists, and that is all I can say about it.

This book was my first introduction into Bolano. It is my top 5 favorite book I would bring with me if the world ended. I love it. I fell in love with Bolano because of it.

I agree with your thoughts on The Savage Detectives being a better work of fiction overall, but I still hold 2666 in higher regard. I read 2666 before The Savage Detectives and for me the two novels feel inexorably linked in a way that goes beyond the fact that they're both written by the same man. I don't get this sense of a bond between any of his other works like By Night in Chile for example. For me there is a duality in the two novels as there is with life and death or the two sides of a coin. In The Savage Detectives many of the characters are full of life and motion and in my opinion, imbued with the heat of the desert. This book feels for me like the precursor to 2666 because, especially in the end when (spoiler alert) Cesarea is shot, Madero is still left with Lupe and Cesarea's poems. The two visceral realists are still on the run. Though the quest is complete and the poets found the poet, Bolano ends the book with a question. Though the book deals with the entropic flow you mention in regards to 2666, I don't think Bolano takes this theme quite as far in The Savage Detectives. What makes 2666 the superior work despite being technically and narratively insufficient is that Bolano is pushing for "what's outside the window". I don't think I'm educated well enough to put it into the right words but there really is a sense as you read 2666 of something building up, as if an explosion is coming. But that explosion is not, well, explosive. Instead we get Hans the diver who rather than being constantly assaulted by sunlight like the other characters is characterized by his time spent underwater, his time spent cold, his time spent in a place where the light is warped rather than direct. Bolano is perhaps trying to come to grips with the reality of the murders, trying to assign a perpetrator to them, but instead he finds and delivers to us just another man, which both thwarts his purpose while realizing his point. In my opinion 2666 is the true masterpiece because although it fails to be as whole or engaging as The Savage Detectives, Bolano is able to take the reader with him outside the window. Sorry if I got any details wrong, it's been over a year since I read 2666 and almost a year since The Savage Detectives. It is always great to consider the unpublished part 6 that was supposedly found. Great review!

Funny that you compared Bolano to DFW, because I read 2666 and Infinite Jest within about six months of each other in my last year of college. I was surprised that despite being technically finished, Infinite Jest felt more slapped-together and in more dire need of revision, whereas 2666 captivated me from beginning to end. Even the cliffhanger ending, which Bolano did not intend to be the finale, feels like the perfect closing note in its own way. One of the first really "big" novels that I loved.

This book is definitely on my TBR. Best reviewer on youtube!

I found that reading 2666 was incredibly smooth (I am Mexican) but on the other side, reading Gravity's Rainbow has been an absolute challenge. It's incredible how the differences in context and language completely transform the experience of reading.

I applaud your interesting choice to organize your books by color. Oh, and thanks for the book review/recommendation.

AH I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR YEARS NOW!

Just finished this book last night. I loved it so much.

Great video for 2666, my favorite novel. That passage you picked is amazing; sounds cool in english too.

Please review Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

This is a brilliant review. I did not care for this book and struggled to finish it. But, I also had a feeling there was more there than I was seeing. You nailed that feeling too. I plan to revisit the book in the near future. Also, I plan to look the Savage Detectives. Thank you.

That descending to hell analogy is very accurate my friend... You had a point there. Actually, the reader starts from that point and time the critics gather around Archimboldi's work and then it starts to descend to the real inferno where you end up standing face to face to Benno Von Archimboldi, the devil himself... This work has so many lectures of course, for example, when the critics recreate the literate figure of Archimboldi but in that case, they are creating fiction within fiction, they are celebrating the writer, no the person and that is kind of entomological horror if you thing about it... The descending is also in terms from high culture (the academic world- the critcs) to low-culture where the ground human depravity (the crimes and the normality of it) is the norm. Obviously, this cross-over is a leit motiv in Bolaño's work.

I love The Savage Detectives so much! I’m reading it for the second time right now and enjoying it every little bit as much as the first time I read it. I’m hoping to tackle 2666 soon-ish, but first I want to read some his shortest fiction.

Fantastic !

Going through this currently, and man, wow! I'm gonna have to immediately re-read once I'm done. Monumental book

Could you do a review of Life A User’s Manual sometime?

Yes! Yes! Yes! I was the one who was always telling you about Bolaño's "The Savage Detectives" and "2666". I am super glad you read these books. Now you have to read "Woes of the true policeman", which is a sort of sequel/prequel to 2666. Sort of, at least. I love Roberto Bolaño, I love him a lot and he is my friend. Even though I have never met him and even though he is dead, he is my friend, because reading is making friends with the dead. Un abbraccio.

I haven't fished reading 2666 yet, but agree (as far as I've gotten) with your assessment. Wonderful review.

Great review. I really, really like your reviews and commentary. I agree, 2666 is not as enjoyable as The Savage Detectives, or maybe not as cohesive a work. But, whoa, 2666 really hit me hard. As you said, the book kind of builds in intensity, or meaninfulness. It starts out on an almost trivial level, these three academics circling each other trying to figure out who's hooking up with who or whatever. Then it gets more strange and intense in the next two parts. And the two hundred something pages of murders. I knew reading that would be really hard, I read it on vacation when I had time, and I gritted my teeth and got through it. But I think that fourth section was really important, really central to the book. Because I think it was meant to unnerve or unsettle the reader before the last section, which I found to be really profound. Like you summarized better than I could, that section is about the horrors of the twentieth century, world war two and destruction and poverty and everything else. After parts 1-4, especially 4, and then all that Archimboldi went through in part 5, it's so completely understandable how he decided to basically drop out from the world, disappear, as much as possible, become completely anonymous. It's been a few years since I read it so I don't entirely remember the ending, but as I remember it it was a pretty bleak lesson, of the horrors of the world and the need to limit yourself in your exposure to it.

Hi Bookchemist! Greetings from Puerto Rico. I love your videos and all your literature insights. I wish I could be as well read and knowledgeable as you.

Awesome review. I'm glad you're liking Bolaño, hes a favorite. For me 2666 is like a flower garden, hidden right underneath a beautiful colorful array of mixed petals and aromas, there is a patch of dirt and manure with worms and ladybugs crawling around biting at the leaves and roots. I can see how you prefer Savage Detectives, it is the more complete novel and it plays more with the medium, I still prefer 2666, as to why? cant really put into words. Happy reading and I hope you read more of his books.

I was half way through 2666 years ago and then just couldn’t continue reading for some reason. I love Savage Detectives but this felt heavier. Thanks for the inspiring video. Think I’m going to pick it up again tomorrow 😬

Just finished this book today after reading it for a month. I found it frustrating at times for it’s lack of “closure,” as you called it. I loved it though. It’s one big abyss that defies interpretation. Thanks for giving links to the reviews. Gonna read Lethem’s now.

Been thinking of reading this book but I'm still reading Ralph Ellison's, Invisible Man.

Talk about coincidences, I'm reading 2666 at this very moment! I just dropped the book to check RU-vid for a while and you were on my notifications. Regarding the title: 2666 is a date, and it is foreshadowed in two of his previous novels. In Amulet there's this passage: "and then we began to walk along Guerrero avenue, they a little slower than before, me a little faster than before, the Guerrero, looks above all like a cemetery, but not a cemetery from 1974, nor a cemetery from 1968, nor a cemetery from 1975, but like a cemetery from the year 2666, a cemetery forgotten underneath a dead or unborn eyelid, the dispassioned aquosities of an eye that for wanting to forget something has ended up forgetting everything." That segment is mentioned in the editorial note at the end of the novel. But in The Savage Detectives there's also this segment: "And Cesárea said something about days to come, although the teacher imagined that if Cesárea had spent time on that senseless plan it was simply because she lived such a lonely life. But Cesárea spoke of times to come and the teacher, to change the subject, asked her what times she meant and when they would be. And Cesárea named a date, sometime around the year 2600. Two thousand six hundred and something."

That Hitsugaya shirt is awesome!

Part 4 reminds me a bit of Blood meridian during its middle.

I think you're really gonna love From Hell by Alan Moore and Sandman by Neil Gaiman

I love this book with all my heart

what coincident!! I read 2666 right now. I'm still reading the part about fate.

Currently reading this, and it's alright so far. A LOT could've been edited out.

Yay!

Finally!

I consider Bolaño one of the best contemporary writers. I read both books: "The Savage Detectives" and "2666". Both novels are written with a great plot and a disturbing side, but this is too extensive and the parte of the crimes breaks the rhythm of the narrative. The Savage Detectives it's a more polished book. But i recommend both novels. ONLY the great authores have the power to ask questions and force us to start reading again!

Grande stima per il lavoro di divulgazione e condivisione che fai, seguirti è sempre un piacere :) Piccolo consiglio autunnale: ci sono dei testi/saggi introduttivi e digeribili che consiglieresti a chi si vuole approcciare alla letteratura post-moderna da un pdv teorico? In inglese vanno più che bene. Grazie in anticipo e buon proseguimento!

Good review! In spanish is "Two thousand..."

This was a weighty one to tackle, I've got a copy sitting proudly on my shelves waiting to be read. Might have to get off my ass and do so, after this video!

Speaking of viewer recommendations, An author whom I don't think you've read and that you might enjoy quite a bit, is Iain Sinclair, whose works combine a vortex of modernism, post-modernism, geography and spirits of place, travelogue, and occult historical rant. He's also an independent filmmaker of some interest. Slow Chocolate Autopsy has some comic strip sequences illustrated by Dave McKean, which makes it more enticing for the new reader. Check him out.

I never thought of the narrative progressively getting worse like the inferno that actually gives the structure more sense. Also I interrupted the killing chapter as how the deaths are often times seen as more background element and more sensational/banal crimes(like the church pissing) take center stage. It usually seemed stuff like murder unless politically/racially motivated doesn't get national attention. Also while I loved this book I agree with you I wouldnt put it next to Ulysses or GR but I think it's much better than IJ. Also what did the geometry on the close line mean lol

Where is your videos about top 5 McCarthy and Delillo books? It's gone man

09:50 I think the moral of the Crimes part is that that society is corrupted. There's a passage in which Policemen are chauvinists against women, and the other policemen just don't care. Then this German character got in jail wrongly, but the authorities condemn him knowing they all lack minimal morals. There are these suspects on doing necrophilia movies, so is a generalized terror or decadence. In interviews, Bolaño also tells about this Mexican author Juan Rulfo, whose characters are pretty insensitive assassins. I've read other books, like La Pista de Hielo, and there's cultural criticism against Spaniards too, in the form of nepotism... Bolaño said once to an awful Chilean journalist that he used to prefer to be Bolivian (...). So there's continuous criticism against Hispanic culture in Bolaño's work, and that's why he choose a german character in his last effort. Once a woman asked him why in Nocturno de Chile there's a character that tells another one that all men are sodomites, and he answers her that the problem in Literature is what to do with horror.

After I finished 2666, I definitely believed The Savage Detectives was better. But over time, after thinking about certain scenes (especially from the final part) and rereading the Part About the Critics, I changed my mind. Both novels have sprawling stories with some sections that are more interesting than others. But 2666 is superior because it has better characters and the overall themes of senseless violence and legacy resonated more with me. So let it digest awhile and perhaps you'll prefer this one. Have you read his short stories? I recommend the collection "Last Evenings on Earth."

I found 2666 a more memorable and powerful read, especially given that it is based on real events. The Savage Detectives is an easier read but it’s not as memorable. I read ‘The Savage Detectives’ six months ago and ‘2666’ over one year ago. I recall much more about ‘2666’ than ‘The Savage Detectives’.

You should read Haruki Murakami!

I can't get into it.

2666 seemed to me like an extension of Savage Detectives in its treatment of the theme of social evil. Evil, it wanted to illustrate, is a kind of immanent fact of the cosmos that emerges between and among social groups. I don't think it had much more interesting to say though. Savage Detectives did a better job of connecting it to nationalism and fascism. Both books ultimately reming me of McCarthy, and like most McCarthy, I found 2666 at least ultimately kind of empty and self-defeating. And the representation of the murders, despite the reviewer's protestations to the contrary, I did find exploitative, in the most obvious sense that the "victims" were used to make a point, rather than treated as human beings worth caring about. Maybe not pornography, but exploitative surely.

Solo cuando lo leas en español podrás opinar 😉

Is ur PhD done??

I hate your color coaded bookshelf. Last Bookstore has one like that too and it hurts the eyes.

Dude, why do you have sex and the city on your shelf?