Wasn't I supposed to write something on 2666? I ordered it from the USA after all, to read it early. What foolishness: early. Why couldn't I wait? There is something disgusting about owning hardbacks. And it's worse when you order them from another country, when you're keen, when you really want to read them. And when you have enough money to do so. But really, you can only read when you're skint. And I'm not skint any more ...
Still, there it was, 2666, ready for me to take away for Christmas. I read it over 10 days or so, almost all of it, and then, sorry because it was soon to finish, I finished the last pages here in the office. And I was sorry, because that was about it for Bolano, I'd read everything I could find, and all in a row. Everything - and hadn't I waited until nearly everything was translated, until I get all of it and wolf it down, one book after another? One book after another ... at least I ddn't buy the first few, at least I borrowed them.
2666 ... I read it in the basement, taking a few hours a day. And I wrote pencilled notes on the blank first pages - what an idiot! Pencilled notes, and for what - a review? Was I going to write a review? Mocking laughter. What had I to say on the book of the season? What was I going to add? And that's a second disgusting thing: to read what everyone else was reading. And even to be out ahead with my reading, to have it a few weeks before it officially became available in the UK. More laughter ...
I look at my notes, wondering what I was thinking. Slog, says one. Wonders on every page, says another. Whimsically mad, says another. Keeping the wheels turning. Logorrhea - no doubt spelt wrong, and didn't I mean graphomania? But who knows what I meant. And then, literary splendour, with a dash to V. What could V mean? Ah yes, the fifth part of the book. And literary splendour, which must have been double edged. Splendour, to be sure, incidents and panoramas, wonders and splendours, all that: but of a literary kind. It was all too terribly literary: was that what I meant?
But then I enjoyed V, part five, I have to admit that. Part IV, The Part About the Crimes, was terribly boring. It must explain the word slog, and perhaps the misspelt and misused logorrhea. Admit it, you liked part five. Another note: V madness of narrative. And another V: narrative rush, anxious - where's it going?, almost too fast, almost outracing the narration. And then, so much happens anything could happen.
And I begin to remember: that was what I was going to write in my daft imaginary review. That was what I was dreaming about in the cellar. I would have said what drove me through this book and some other books by Bolano was that racing, racing narrative, out ahead of me and all of us and Bolano, who, after all, didn't have long to live.
A racing narrative - and racing against what? Death - he didn't have long to live, Bolano, everyone knows that. But perhaps there is a racing that has no against. A racing like that of the skywriter of the still-too-Magic-Realist Distant Star. Racing that is the life of writing, and that leaps out ahead of it. That mystic point ahead of writing and drawing it on, and drawing the whole of the narrative with it, magnetising every narrative filing.
How urgently Bolano wrote! How urgent, the need to write! So urgent, indeed that he sought too much to keep the wheels turning, to grind on the plot, to grind out the writing, page after dull page. And there are many, many dull pages here. Many longeurs, as you can say in reviewer-speak. So many pages that do not catch flame, which list and ramble and digress. But then, compared to that mystic point, what else is there but digression?
The novel is a mad walk. The novel is five mad walks - its five parts. And there are mad walks within those mad walks - endless interrupting monologues, so many speakers who speak at uninterrupted lengths. Who speaks like that? Have you ever met anyone like that? Monologuers who speak with whimsical madness?
I wrote this phrase on the blank first pages: careening monologues. I think I was pleased with the word, careening. I think it came to me on the way to the bathroom (I had a ferocious cold, and went there for more tissues). I think I was about to sneeze, and the phrase came to me: careening monologues.
What idiocy! What vanity! There is nothing more disgusting than a well-turned phrase. That is the third horror. And here's another phrase: furiously boring. What has that got to go with anything? And then, so much happens anything could happen. Yes, that seems right. Anything could happen. This book knows no law. Off it goes in a million directions.
Bolano prepares us for this. Most reviewers noticed it: the book of geometry hung on the washing line divided into three parts that, although they constituted a whole, nevertheless worked independently of one another. Look it up, you lazy fucker. Here's the phrase, 'each independent, but functionally correlated by the sweep of the whole'. That on the three parts of the geometry book. Amalfitano's book. Amalfitano's washing line a la Duchamp.
Didn't I rather like part two of the book, all about him? Not as much as I liked him, the melancholy professor, lost in a city that would always be foreign to him, and fearing for his daughter. Part two: I thought Amalfitano was like whatshisname the father in The Savage Detectives - look it up, I can't be bothered.
Wistfully mad. Whimsically mad. But there are dull, dull passages in part two too. Dull passages, too long, giving every detail, telling us everything, everything in a mad profusion. And then part two ends, just like that. Just like that, although Bolano tells us why in another much-quoted passage, where someone or other explains why he prefers novellas like Metamorphosis and Bartleby to total novels like Don Quixote or Sentimental Journey.
Something like that. Someone or other. Can't be bothered to look it up, I've got enough to do and not much time, and I want only to let my stupid review-post sail ahead of itself. To throw up one of those parascending parachutes to catch the wind, to let my writing be drawn along, what joy, as relief from a million administrative tasks, and besides isn't everyone getting bored with the usual posts, the interminable adventures of W. and I?
You owe something to what readers you have, I tell myself. You owe something to yourself, idiot, I tell myself, the caffeine singing in your bloodstream. Now, what else is disgusting? Your self-indulgence. Your self-flagellation, if that's what it can be called. Your parade of horrors ...
The second part of Bolano's 'modular epic' (someone clever called it that) ends too early, you're beached, and then comes the third flat-footed section, the third laborious section about Oscar Fate (a nickname) and his wanderings. His real name is Quincy Williams and he's a black man from the USA come south of the border, a correspondent for a black-interest paper.
What happens? A million details. Laboriousness. Some characters I didn't care about. And then Amalfitano's daughter Rosa who is called beautiful by the narrator. I cared about her (because she was Amalfitano's; because she was called beautiful). I thought: she's going to get killed. But instead, after too many pages, she escapes with Fate over the border. She gets out. She's not going to get killed with all the others, with so many others in the almost infnitely long part four of the book, the interminable The Part About the Crimes, which contain the most boring pages in literature (even post-literature literature, which 2666 itself is).
But nevertheless, but nonetheless, there's still something out far ahead of the narrative, drawing it on. Still a kind of racing, still an imperative to narrate that gathers up the details and digressions, still a mad forward movement, a momentum. I owe it to myself to finish the book, I said to myself, wanting to give up on part four. I owe it to the £20 I spent on it, and on shipping it from the States - what a disgrace!
But really I owe it to the book and to what is more than the book, the future that writes slantwise across its pages. A book to come in 2666, which is perhaps nothing other that 2666 itself, that unexplained date. 2666: the mystic point, the apocalypse when all is revealed.
For isn't it all bent towards that, Bolano's disarticulated novel? Doesn't it wing its way there, don't the piled-up paragraphs sing in its direction? Doesn't it sound itself there out in deep water? Doesn't it dream of itself in the reaches of space? Doesn't it stand out ahead of us, impassable destiny? Doesn't it promise itself, impossible redemption, a kind of messianism of narrative that would make sense of everything that has gone before, and even our own lives as readers?
And now, do you see, I've borrowed something of the same parascending parachute, the same out ahead that draws me along like those new-fangled racers on the beach, those wheeled chariots with a parachute out ahead of them, land yachts they're called I think, I even saw on on the moor the other day, a few of us watched it racing over the grass ... now I've the wind in my own stupid sails. What laughter, mocking laughter.
Is this really what I want to do with my day? Is this a good way to spend my time, to expend it, to pour it down the drain, to laugh at it and let it laugh at me, to die a little, to let death come close a little, to look out ahead of my life to dream of something that might redeem it, and writing all the while, writing that is my racing cart and chariot, writing that binds phrase to phrase, stretched sentence to sentence, that allows a post to scroll down the page as when you shoot a comedy gun and there unscrolls a written, bang! rather than a real bang.
No bullets here. Just comedy. Just grotesquerie. In truth, I'm bored, bored of the office, bored of administration, bored of dull northern days, bored of reading, bored of living, bored of interminable W.-and-I posts ...
But where was I? Part four was boring, yes, and part five? Part five began thrillingly. It was a thrilling adventure, literary style. A relief after the murders. A new character, in a new part of the world, sketched in a rather literary way, but with momentum nonetheless, with movement nevertheless, you could turn the pages again quickly, you could wander what would happen, your imagination ran ahead - how would part five bind the previous parts into a whole?
Ah Bolano, Bolano, off he goes again, the kite is up bobbing in the air, everything's fine, there's a rush of narrative, a new wind ... the novel's ablaze again, it's like a spaceship on re-entry, cone burning, brushing the edge of the atmosphere, returning to the world, to real life, to my life as a reader. That's how it was for many pages (the happiest).
And then? Too many digressions, too many over-articulate characters, too many 'careening monologues' (laughter). It's not a novel but a collage! It's all misdirection and decoys! And who is this character? Is he only a cipher? He doesn't seem real! I want Amalfitano back - what happened to him?
I don't care about the scholars in part one, nor about Fate. I suppose I'm mildly intrigued about Haas, he seems interesting enough, but Archimboldi (though he's not called that yet) is hollow, too hollow, and the narrative is all set-piece and flourish! 2666 ties up nicely enough in the last 20 pages. It's neat, it's nice, but it's over and the mystical point sails ahead.
Over - and where has it gone, that point, that urgency of narrative? Where's it gone? It passed with Bolano, or rather with the completion (pretty much) of reading Bolano. Gone ... Bolano's dead, and my reading of his books is dead, and when's the next writer like this going to come along (hope: Jonathan Littell with The Kindly Ones, Jacques Roubaud with The Loop)?
What else were going to share? What other great thoughts were you going to unfurl? The wheel's come off your chariot, hasn't it? Your land-yacht's bust. Put up the post and laugh at the typos (but they laugh at you). Put it up and laugh at the grammatical infidelities (but they find you funny, just hilarious ...) You're the ape of thought, the ape of writing, your fingers too big for the keys and all you do is hoot, hoot at big books and point at bigger ones, hoot and point, hoot and point ...
(The best review of 2666? Scott Esposito's.)