Read Online 2666 Folio French Edition Roberto Bolano 9782070437139 Books
Read Online 2666 Folio French Edition Roberto Bolano 9782070437139 Books
Download As PDF : 2666 Folio French Edition Roberto Bolano 9782070437139 Books
Written with burning intesity in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life, "2666" has been greeted across the world as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing everything in imagination, beauty and scope. It is a novel on an astonishing scale from a passionate visionary.
'The best book of 2008 ... A masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year' "Time"
'Readers who have snacked on Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano' "Sunday Times"
'Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' "Guardian"
Read Online 2666 Folio French Edition Roberto Bolano 9782070437139 Books
"Wow. It took me half a year after ordering to actually pick up the book and read it. It started sort if slow. I thought it was ok. But it's like quick sand... once you step in you try to get out but it sucks you in a little, then a little more, then a little more, until you realise you can't leave it and it will swallow you entirely. It's a masterpiece. It's dark, full of hundreds of small stories, lives, fates, secrets, facts... Just wow... Not a loud wow, but a quiet almost silent wow with eyes wide open that makes other people wonder..."
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2666 Folio French Edition Roberto Bolano 9782070437139 Books Reviews :
2666 Folio French Edition Roberto Bolano 9782070437139 Books Reviews
- I would guess that one of the most complimentary things you could say about a book just read is that you can’t wait to read it again. Perhaps even more so when that book is a dense 893-page epic, in that reading it even one time takes extreme devotion and time. Well, that’s the way I felt after turning that final page of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, partly because I simply enjoyed the journey, overwhelmed by his hypnotic prose, and partly because of the structure of the novel itself, and the nagging thought I have that I’m missing something beyond the obvious that ties together the five parts of the book, some hidden nexus that even now lies just outside my grasp.
2666 is a difficult book to explain, and therefore to review. I'm sure I've not yet understood everything there is to know within its pages.
The novel is really five individual books or novelettes, loosely connected by some similar characters, locations, and interwoven thematic material. They are, however, somewhat stylistically different.
The first, THE PART ABOUT THE CRITICS, follows a disparate group of European literary scholars as they try to track down the mysterious and reclusive German author Benno van Archimboldi. Ultimately, in their quest to find their literary hero, they are led to the northern Mexican border town of Santa Teresa, where they meet a Chilean professor, Amalfitano, who in 1974 translated one of Archimboldi's novels. But was Archimboldi really in Santa Teresa? If so, what on earth would have brought him there?
Part two, THE PART ABOUT AMALFITANO, tells the story of philosophy professor Amalfitano, his wife Lola, and his daughter, Rosa, about how they came to Santa Teresa, and what happened there.
In part three, THE PART ABOUT FATE, we're introduced to a new character, Oscar Fate, an art reporter for a New York newspaper who is sent to cover a boxing match in Santa Teresa, Mexico.
Part four, and longest of the five, THE PART ABOUT THE CRIMES, is brutal and relentless. For nearly 300 pages, Bolaño dispassionately catalogs dozens upon dozens of rapes and murders of women in Santa Teresa through the eyes of local law enforcement who believe they have one or more serial killers in their midst. This was the most difficult of the sections to finish. As the crimes and clinical descriptions pile up, one after another after another, you become numb, and the horror turns to mere tedium. I'm sure it's the exact effect the author had in mind.
Finally, part five, THE PART ABOUT ARCHIMBOLDI, and the novel turns finally to the mysterious German author, the focus of the search from part one, and the reason for being in Santa Teresa in the first place.
While it is easy to summarize the sections, it is not so easy to dig deeper and capture the real spirit of the novel in a review like this. I'm not exactly sure how Bolaño does it, but he writes in a way that mesmerizes the reader. While his prose is beautiful, it treats everything, even the horrific, in a prosaic, deadening manner. It has a strange dulling of the senses effect, but keeps you reading, turning the pages.
Bolaño often goes on extended digressions, sometimes many pages long to the point that you forget the original point. He peppers the novel with strange and sometimes humorous non sequiturs.
It had been very long since Lotte thought about her brother and Klaus's question came as something of a surprise. Around this time Lotte and Werner had gotten involved in real estate, which neither of them knew anything about, and they were afraid of losing money. So Lotte's answer was vague she told him that his uncle was ten years older than she was, more or less, and that the way he made a living wasn't exactly a model for young people, more or less, and that it had been a long time since the family had news of him, because he had disappeared from the face of the earth, more or less. [873]
Throughout the novel, Bolaño tosses in seemingly extraneous details, bits of information, which, in the end, really do turn out to be extraneous. Characters come and go, never to be seen again. 2666 is a slice of life – it's messy, many mysteries are left unexplained. There is no tidy bow. And, more than anything, the deaths in Santa Teresa haunt everything in the book. If there is anything that ties the five sections together, it's the mystery of the killings of Santa Teresa, and the constant threat of death.
And I know I say this a lot, but the book will not be to everyone's liking. Definitely not a summer beach book. And, no, the title is never explained. - Roberto Bolaño's 2666 definitely changed the way I read fiction. I first read this massive posthumous tome years ago when I was still searching to uncover my own style and much of this novel lodged itself into the dark corners of my mind. There have been many times where I will be doing some thoughtless task and suddenly a nugget of truth from 2666 will pop into the forefront of my brain; to me, this is the ultimate litmus test for a good book—you can't shake it, even years later.
Bolaño's writing covers the spectrum of styles dark and brooding, poetic and lyrical, dry and empty while still stunningly gorgeous. Not every one of the 900 pages inside 2666 is a drop-dead winner, but there is too much excellence here to even notice where it slightly falters. Some have argued that Bolaño's publisher should have released this big book as five separate novels as the author first intended, but I disagree; I like it as is chopped up, messy, dirty, and scattered as all hell, like a diverse smorgasbord of literary delight.
The largely looming character throughout, Archimboldi, is as memorable as any other character from classic postmodern literature. By the time we get inside Archimboldi's head and experience his world after the long lead up, the reward is intensely satisfying. Like a benevolent version of McCarthy's "The Judge" from BLOOD MERIDIAN, Archimboldi is unforgettable.
Bolaño proves that plot *can* be overrated. Love triangles, mysterious murders in the desert, disappearing peoples, European academia, and the nature of war on the soul it's all fair game for 2666. It's about everything and it's about nothing, and when done right, that's where some of our best stories can come from. - Wow. It took me half a year after ordering to actually pick up the book and read it. It started sort if slow. I thought it was ok. But it's like quick sand... once you step in you try to get out but it sucks you in a little, then a little more, then a little more, until you realise you can't leave it and it will swallow you entirely. It's a masterpiece. It's dark, full of hundreds of small stories, lives, fates, secrets, facts... Just wow... Not a loud wow, but a quiet almost silent wow with eyes wide open that makes other people wonder...
- I'm posting a quick review here because I just read this for the second time and came to see other people's thoughts, and am *astonished* at how silly some of the most popular reviews are. If you're worried about total narrative satisfaction, or don't like challenging books, fine, but don't judge the book by a measure it's not trying to meet. This is big, torrential, imperfect masterpiece, to use a Bolano line in reviewing him. Read it if you like reading.
- This is the first book I've read by Bolano. I had already read about the book- the fact that it was published posthumously, basic description. Actually, why I chose the book was because a character in a short story I read was reading it. I mention this because what I found most intriguing was not knowing where the story was going to wind up. Bolano has all of these disparate asides within each part which I kept track of wondering if these things would turn out to be the most important part of the story. So often I have a clear idea of where the story will lead and in this case I didn't. My only criticism would be about the 4th part the Part About the Murders. Each murder is addressed which got a bit tedious at times.
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