A cuatro profesores de literatura, Jean-Claude Pelletier (francés), Piero Morini (italiano), Manuel Espinoza (español) y Liz Norton (inglesa), los une su común fascinación por la obra de Beño von Archimboldi, un enigmático escritor alemán cuyo prestigio crece en todo el mundo. La complicidad entre los cuatro adquiere pronto trazas de vodevil intelectual y cosmopolita -con ménage á trois incluido-, y desemboca en un disparatado peregrinaje a Santa Teresa (trasunto de Ciudad Juárez), en la frontera de México con Estados Unidos, donde hay quien dice que Archimboldi ha sido visto. Ya en Santa Teresa, Pelletier y Espinoza se enteran de que la ciudad viene siendo desde años atrás escenario de una larga cadena de crímenes atroces. En los vertederos de la ciudad no cesan de aparecer los cadáveres de mujeres, muchas de ellas apenas adolescentes, con señales de haber sido salvajemente violadas y torturadas. Es el primer asomo de la novela al agujero negro en que terminarán por precipitarse sus múltiples y procelosos caudales, repletos de personajes memorables cuyas historias, a caballo siempre entre la risa y el horror, abarcan dos continentes e incluyen, entre muchas otras cosas, un vertiginoso travelling por la historia europea del siglo XX, por las ruinas de una cultura y una civilización en derrota en las que la literatura continúa invocando un simulacro de salvación. Resulta imposible sugerir siquiera la enormidad y las profundidades de un libro que se construye como una novela empotrada en otra novela empotrada a su vez en otra novela... y que se abre así camino en lo desconocido, allí donde -como dice uno de los personajes- tienen lugar «los combates de verdad, en donde los grandes maestros luchan contra aquello, ese aquello que nos atemoriza a todos, ese aquello que acoquina y encacha, y hay sangre y heridas mortales y fetidez».

Sprawling epic.

This took me a long time read, 116 days I think. There is in no doubt that it's masterful, Bolaño's writing is stylish and throbs with imagery and erudition, a rhapsodic climax to his life (he died whilst writing/editing this).

2666 is a five part gargantuan tome, each episode orbiting in varying proximity around a North-Mexican town, riddled with murders. It also has a backdrop of a German author's mystique (and life in the last chapter) which together serve leitmotifs and themes of loss, death, absence and violence.

The part about the crimes was particularly impressive. The relentless catalogue of death was special and like nothing I've read before. It had to be that long and there had to be that many for such devastating effect.

It reminded me of a dark David Mitchell novel; effortless genre-switching, bewildering pedantry.

It's definitely worth the effort, a great, great, novel, abundant with the human condition and the weaknesses and strengths of our species. ( )

I’ve never read anything quite like this. There’s definitely a reward in reading “2666,” but it’s nothing like other expansive books of this size and hype. It’s no “Infinite Jest,” for instance, in that you don’t feel this massive cerebral payout at the end, but you feel something when you’ve finished it. All in all, there is plenty of space for the reader to chew on what they’ve read, and that’s quite enough for me. There’s a high-brow element that doubles the reader’s satisfaction (because of said element, I can use the term “satisfaction” in my review). ( )

A novel in 5 parts? 5 linked novels?

Interesting, exhausting, glad I read it but it is just too long and not as tight as it might have been.

We have academics in search of the mysterious German writer Archimboldi they all study. It's almost a club--and no one knows what happened to the author. These 3 go searching in Santa Teresa, Mexico, where rumor has it he has gone.

We have a drafted WW2 German soldier, Hans Reiter, who leaves his mother and sister and goes with his unit to Romania, Russia, and parts unnamed. He sees things, he is a bit of a loner, he manages to stay alive.

In Santa Teresa women are regularly murdered, there has to be a serial killer. (This is part 4, and it is exhausting.) Are the police incompetent? Are they afraid the cartel is involved and don't want to cross them? Or is the cartel involved and they are paying off/called off the police? They do occasionally make one-off domestic violence arrest. And then they pull in one man, a German immigrant who worked with one of the victims, and charge him with several of the murders. He holds press conferences and from jail and seems to run the place.

Back to Europe, we learn more about Reiter's life after the war. He is a survivor, and a loner, and we learn how these parts connect together.

Interesting, but I found there to be big gaps (ch 4 is exhausting and hard and even more so because what is Bolano's point?--it was inspired by murders in Juarez, but Bolano does not/did not get to make his point about murders of women vs police vs cartels vs what he is getting at?). And it's just unnecessarily long. The first two chapters are actually fairly funny knowing how some academics work, but they are still too long. ( )

Sprawling, fragmented, tedious for very long stretches, lifeless characters: '2666' is more of a relentless assault course than an education or pleasure. I can't believe I persisted to the end, but I'm glad I did, for the challenge of taking on a 'big' literary book. It may be clever, heroic and worthy as literary struggle and play, but it's not enriched or disrupted my sense of life and people, beyond marvelling at Bolano's capacity to indulge in postmodern meta-self-referential obsessions and concentric circles of storytelling within storytelling. Ho hum.

Update :

So, clearly I missed a lot in this. Many thanks to Chris Via for his excellent videos on 2666, I should have watched those before embarking on reading this. (Maybe I’ll read it again….) I would urge you to ignore my review and star rating and head straight to Chris’ YouTube channel at Leaf by Leaf https://youtube.com/@LeafbyLeaf. Mea culpa. ( )