2010/10

Roberto Bolaño: 2666 (893p. in the very pretty first American edition)

Roberto Bolaño had already won the 1999 Rómelu Gallegos Prize (the Spanish language’s most important literary prize) for his novel Los Detectives Salvajes or The Savage Detectives, but it is his posthumous ‘2666’ that really got the Bolaño hype going, first in America’s literary circles, from where it spread, piggy-backing the gulfstream, to Europe’s shores. ‘2666’ has been called the first great novel of the 21st century, the best book of the 00s – the first American edition was published in 2008.

Of course, there’s been Bolaño’s rock ’n roll lifestyle, or at least reports of it readily picked up by the literary salons, and there’s the sheer length of the book, 893 pages.

Bolaño isn’t the best writer (some passages are close to mundane), but he’s an unbelievable story-teller. Facing a certain death due to illness (he died at age 50), Bolaño spent the last 10 years of his life in a paroxysm of creativity, very much like the universe after the Big Bang, an incredible expansion at light speed, with ever more characters being sucked in, with ever more novels or novellas (they are often interrelated with characters from one reappearing in another) being spun off.

Again, as in The Savage Detectives, the story is about the search for a lost writer (Bolaño himself?!). I myself have liked The Savage Detectives a wee bit better, but maybe you need to read for yourself.