2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano

2666: A Novel Roberto Bolano ebook
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 0312429215, 9780312429218
Page: 912
Format: epub

The wide ranging geography and time frame of 2666 defy easy summary. More than a month ago I began reading Roberto Bolaño's 2666, I suppose on a lark. For the past week, I have been walking around, trying to think of what — finally — to say about Roberto Bolaño's novel, 2666. If the streets of Santa Teresa and the style of 2666 are anarchic and the epigraph refers to our corrosive modernity and its abuses of freedom and desires, then we can anticipate an even more sprawling post-modern novel. In the New York Times, Steven Millhauser recently wrote about the distinctions between the genre of the short story and the novel. Facetious, I know, but hey, I got through the book. 2666 opens with a novel about four European literary critics, academics, who specialize in the work of a fictional German novelist, Benno von Archimboldi. Not every writer would write a novel in the form of a completely invented encyclopaedia of imaginary writers and call the result Nazi Literature in the Americas. I can imagine that as a book 2666 would present a huge challenge to me, because it's very testing in places. And the experience was generally positive. The reason I bought 2666 wasn't because I knew I was getting stomach flu, but because of my occasional worry that I'm too old to experience a new novel as a masterpiece. Roberto Bolaño's final novel 2666, released posthumously, is a sprawling literary tome. "You could say 2666 is the epic novel that Borges never wrote. By Roberto Bolaño (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) $30.