2666

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 is a sprawling epic of a novel. Or rather five novels, linked by common characters, themes, and images. Each section is linked to the previous ones, dealing with events or characters who were previously introduced, whether briefly or in depth. 2666 has twin suns -- Santa Teresa, Mexico (a stand-in for Ciudad Juarez) and Benno von Archimboldi, a reclusive German author, the study of whose work is the focus of the first book of the novel.

2666 opens with an introduction to four critics, and their introduction to Archimboldi's oeuvre. It then explores their work, their travels, their relationships with each other, and Archimboldi's growing recognition; as the critics are introduce to Archimboldi (in the late 70s and early 80s), he's

". . .an utter failure, an author whose books languished on the dustiest shelves in the stores or were remaindered or forgotten in publisher's warehouses before being pulped."

At the end of the section, by the mid-late 90s, he's rumored to be on the short list for the Nobel, as our critics search for him in Santa Teresa, Mexico.

From here, we're introduced to a literature professor assigned to tour the critics around, his daughter, who he fears will be abducted and murdered, like so many other women, an American journalist in town for a boxing match who is fascinated by the murders, various policemen, and in the penultimate section, a hideous, lengthy catalog of the deaths of women, ranging from prepubescent to matronly.

That the fictional city of Santa Teresa is one of the axes 2666 revolves around is true, but Santa Teresa really only has one axes -- the murders. The descriptions of the victims is clinical, repetitive, and horrific in its vast scope. The women are mostly young, in their late teens or early twenties, but we get some girls before the onset of puberty, and those in their thirties, forties, and later. Some of the murders are solved (as to how solved that really is, we don't know), but most are closed when no more information can be found, such as the alleged killer disappears. Perhaps the hardest part of this section is that this isn't a detective novel, where everything will be neatly wrapped up at the end -- people are arrested, and a prominent character is convicted and jailed for some of the murders, but they continue. Other suspects are mentioned, then never dealt with again.

The final section of the novel is an intimate look at the enigmatic Archimboldi, the other axis of 2666. In a somewhat jarring departure from the rest of the novel, where all we learn of him is that his name is probably a pseudonym, and that he's a very tall, very old German writer, the final section follows him from his childhood through his old age, although parts of it are told in a way that echoes Bolaño's other works -- we hear about him not through third person omniscient or limited, but from conversations other characters have about him, while he is elsewhere.

2666 doesn't offer many answers, only questions. I'd bought it a few years ago and held off on reading until I'd read more of Bolaño's work, and I'm glad I did. It's absolutely fascinating.

The Burning Plain

The Burning Plain is a classic of Mexican literature, and I can certainly see why. These short stories are all sparse, yet powerful.

Each is short -- some are practically anecdotes. Others are apparently internal monologues. Others are dialogues that read like one person is imagining what the other would say. They build and slowly reveal.

In "The Hill of the Comadres", the narrator opens the story by stating that two of his friends are dead. As he continues, he eventually confesses to killing one of them, but even that seems almost tangential to his recollections. It's about despair, loneliness, deterioration of a community.

"We're Very Poor" is summed up in its first sentence: "Everything is going from bad to worse here."

"Luvina" almost seems like it doesn't fit here. Not that it's a bad story, but it seems tinged with fantasy, like a bad dream. It reminded me of Roberto Bolaño, although if I'd done my homework Bolaño would remind me of Rulfo.

"Anacleto Morones" is the longest in the collection,  and almost seems like an extended setup for a dirty joke.

My favorite story in the collection? Probably "The Burning Plain", which is also the most straightforward, I think. Least straightforward? "The Man."

This is something to revisit, although probably not all at once.

Murder City

Murder City isn't quite what I expected. Rather than a sober overview of Mexico's troubles, this is a depressing narrative that skips between scenes and characters, like a bad dream. Murders without motive, seemingly without reason, without explanations, and certainly without consequences for the killers.

Throughout Murder City, Bowden uses jump cuts -- he describes a murder, a threat, an incident, in a paragraph and then flashes to another, and another, before returning (or moving) to a something else. The referenced instances may recur, or may not. One thread that runs through nearly all of them, though, is that witnesses or neighbors saw or noticed nothing, or saw men "dressed as commandos."

Bowden has several people and settings he returns to again and again, but the three most prevalent are the story of a former beauty queen who came to the city to party, was gang-raped for days and lost her mind (Miss Sinaloa), a killer for one of the cartels (Murder Artist), and the intimidation and silencing of the Mexican press by both the cartels and the government (Dead Reporter Driving). These are the only chapters that are titled, others are merely denoted by the page breaks.

Overall, this book doesn't give a sense of perspective on the violence in Ciudad Juarez, but underscores the senselessness of it all. And that is precisely the point.

The Savage Detectives

I've heard Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives described as "the kind of novel Borges could have written." I'm not sure I agree, but it's not an entirely far-fetched comparison -- the two protagonists (based on Bolaño and a friend of his) are on a quest to find a respected member of an obscure avant-garde group, and their meanderings after the meeting (or after their attempt at the meeting) are told through a series of anecdotes, related by persons of varying degrees of intimacy and familiarity -- we have former lovers, traveling companions, members of antipodal literary movements, minor functionaries, neighbors, drinking buddies, etc. Each anecdote (vignette) is well crafted, and as such, this could be a work of Borges'. However, if this were a Borges novel (or the Borges novel, since there are none), I doubt that there would be as much sex, booze, or weed involved. Additionally, the vignettes would take place during the search for Cesarea Tinajero, rather than afterwards. They also might be a bit less mundane -- while the vignettes aren't from bland people, it seems every narrator is slowly losing their mind in a different way. While we occasionally (often?) encounter such narrators in Borges' work, the worlds he creates are slightly more fantastic (in the most literal sense) than what is in The Savage Detectives.

Regardless of my quibbling, this is a hell of a novel. The initial structure was a bit odd (now there's a complaint, especially considering the previous novel reviewed here is Nabokov's Pale Fire) in that the first section is a series of diary entries from a bookish young poet who is introduced to our future protagonists, drops out of law school, and becomes a member of their movement. This section is much devoted to his coming of age -- his first experiences with sex, with cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana. In contrast, the second section is the aforementioned vignettes, spanning twenty years (1976-1996), in which our diarist is mentioned once -- when a scholar denies that he (the diarist, not the scholar) had been a member of the "gang". (In fact, this reference to the diarist comes in the second-to-last vignette, as if to remind the reader how the novel began. The last vignette is a continuation of the first -- an old poet that the two protagonists had visited in 1976, before setting off on their journey. His story is broken up throughout the novel, but stitched together, his (half dozen? dozen?) mini-chapters form one complete narrative of an evening he had spent drinking with the two protagonists). The vignettes almost take the form of interviews: as if the person being questioned had been asked "Tell me about your experiences with Arturo Belano and/or Ulises Lima", or "Tell me about your experiences in [time and place] and how they relate to Belano and Lima," and then was given free reign to ramble onwards. The final section is a resumption of the initial diary, concerning the continuation of the protagonists' search for the vanished poetess.

Despite The Savage Detectives being a novel about poets and poetry, the only poem written by a character in the novel that we as readers are shown is Cesarea Tinajero's sole published poem, which, other than its title, is wordless. I find this to be a good joke, as well as a good contrast to Pale Fire, which featured almost a thousand lines of subpar poetry. (Additionally, the protagonists are described as "more drug dealers than poets", which may or may not be a fair characterization -- their stories are only told secondhand.)

Beyond crediting Bolaño, I must credit the translator, Natasha Wimmer, who certainly had a difficult task, as this novel is clearly filled with slang in the original. (More or less difficult than translating Juvenal? Probably less, since at least Wimmer has contemporaries who have lived immersed in whatever vernacular this is written in).

Absolutely recommended.

The Power and the Glory

I was at first tempted to read The Power and the Glory as entirely allegorical, that the travails of the unnamed whisky priest are the persecutions of the Church in Mexico, and that his weaknesses represent the failures of the Church, due to it being an organization made of fallible men, as hard as they try to do good. However, this doesn't work particularly well, (with the exception of the final chapter) although the novel is not without allegory -- the half-caste mestizo as the Judas figure is merely the most obvious. While the priest's suffering and persecution is not Christ's, or that of a saint (contrast the whisky priest with the story of Juan, a martyred priest who certainly could be a saint that a devout woman reads to her children), he is unequivocally a man of God, despite his very human failings -- he had been proud and self-satisfied prior to the persecutions and outlawing of Catholicism, and afterwards, he turned to drink, even fathering a child in an alcoholic stupor. He is unable to regret this unconfessed sin, as he loves the child, so how can he truly repent for a sin he is not sorry for? (Not that it matters much anyway, as a renegade priest, one does not have many opportunities to attend confession.)

The novel is spent in squalor, among the poor towns of that certain Mexican state where it is set. (The setting is meant to evoke Tabasco, but Greene changes some of the geography. All place names are real, as far as I am aware. There are certainly towns with the names mentioned in the novel in Mexico.) All of the characters that we meet share a certain hopelessness with the priest -- there's Tench, the dentist, who wants ether, drink, and to be elsewhere -- although not necessarily back in England with his family. There's the lieutenant, an atheist, a self-described "man of the people" who can't relate to anyone and commits atrocities. There's Fellows, the happy-go-lucky banana salesman, his hypochondriac wife, and his precocious daughter, Coral. The only one of them who feels real is Coral, she's likely dead at the end of the novel. While the people don't always feel real or fully fleshed out, the settings do -- like jump cuts in a movie, each place is realized.

Overall, I have to be about the ten thousandth reviewer to conclude that this is an excellent novel, that Greene manages to write a pro-Catholic novel without it being merely an apologia. This, of course, makes it infinitely easier to read. The ending of the novel seems more allegorical than anything, which is satisfying, because on a real level, there can be no happy ending.