Bolano Creates Posthumous Sensation With Novel of Art, Murder

[Dave Monroe]

Bolano Creates Posthumous Sensation With Novel of Art, Murder
Review by Craig Seligman


Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The most ambitious novelists sometimes drive
themselves over the deep end, producing behemoths of such vastness and
difficulty that nobody much wants to read them.

The most famous example is ``Finnegans Wake,'' the 1939 novel for
which James Joyce more or less invented a new language. The most
recent is Thomas Pynchon's 2006 doorstop, ``Against the Day'' -- or it
was until the much-anticipated publication in English of ``2666'' by
the Chilean master Roberto Bolano, who died, at 50, in 2003.

Bolano's astronomical reputation was sealed in the English- speaking
world with the posthumous 2006 appearance of ``The Savage
Detectives.'' He was still working on ``2666'' at his death. Those
readers who make it to page 893, where the text abruptly ends, and
find themselves on the verge of the big plot development that promises
to tie the whole baggy monster together, may assume ``2666'' is
unfinished. But according to his American editor Bolano intended his
story to end -- or rather, not to end -- that way.

``2666'' is really five back-to-back novels, loosely connected. The
first one, ``The Part About the Critics,'' is a shaggy-dog story in
which four literary scholars try to track down their obsession, a
highly reclusive German author named Benno von Archimboldi. The last
one, ``The Part About Archimboldi,'' fills in the life that eludes the
critics.

Bolano views his academics with amused contempt, as minor human beings
whose literary passion masks their absence of talent. Their busy
lives, as they hop from conference to conference and bed to bed, are
insignificant things.

Santa Teresa

His great novelist, in contrast, is a (literally) towering figure
(``in this day and age he likely would have played basketball'') whose
biography hits the high points of 20th- century history. Born in 1920,
Archimboldi serves with Hitler's army on the Eastern front, allowing
Bolano to haul Stalinism and the Holocaust (and the historical
resonance his huge ambitions demand) into an otherwise contemporary
story.

The second and third novels are both brief, and both stray from the
major themes of art and death. They take place mainly in ``Santa
Teresa,'' which is Bolano's name for Ciudad Juarez, the northern
Mexican city which is also the setting for the fourth novel, ``The
Part About the Crimes'' -- the longest of the five, the most original,
easily the most controversial and the one on which the reputation of
the entire enterprise will almost surely rest.

Police Reports

Since 1993, hundreds of young women and girls have been murdered in
Ciudad Juarez. ``The Part About the Crimes'' is a fictional chronicle
of the deaths. Detached in tone, it reads like a series of police
reports detailing, case by case, the post-mortem evidence of rape and
torture. These 280 somber pages leave no doubt as to Bolano's mastery
(or Natasha Wimmer's exceptional skill as a translator).

The effect is of a long, horrific drone, amid which a few other
stories (involving investigators, reporters, suspects) materialize,
gather strength for a while and then dissipate like clouds. As I
forced myself to keep reading, I found myself wondering some of the
same things that occurred to me a few years ago during gum surgery --
questions like ``What did I ever do to deserve this?'' and ``My god,
why isn't it over yet?''

I finally had to skip to the last section, ``The Part About
Archimboldi,'' and then return. It was a good strategy, since some of
what appears arbitrary in ``The Part About the Crimes'' turns out to
fit snugly into the structure of the whole, and beginning to grasp the
larger scheme makes the relentless harshness easier to take.

Academic Manna

Joyce predicted that ``Finnegans Wake'' would ``keep the professors
busy for centuries arguing over what I mean.'' The enigmatic ``2666''
should prove another gold mine for the academics Bolano regards as
insects. But in fact what troubles me most about the book (aside from
its ugliness) is its obstinate refusal to yield meaning, to let on to
its author's intentions. There's a line, though maybe not a very
distinct one, between artistic ambiguity and intellectual stinginess.

On the other hand, ``2666'' could be an exemplary novel for a world
inundated with information but desperately short on analysis.
Brutality, blankness -- is this the mirror of our age?

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