26th
This might potentially be useful for people, and it’s a handy sketch of Bolaño’s ouevre, but the author’s description of 2666 paints him as a complete philistine, as far as I’m concerned: “The book is a desert of negative space across which the panting reader will search in vain for the traditional pleasures of the novel: form, character, coherence, meaning.” Seriously, is he insane? It’s an endlessly formally inventive novel, bursting with colourful characters, and practically oozing meaning from its innumerable orifices. His suggestion not to start your journey into Bolaño with this book is, however, probably sound.
He also really loves By Night In Chile, which I found to be Bolano’s most opaque novel, if still dense and powerful for all the reasons he mentions. I would definitely not recommend it to neophytes, and certainly not before The Savage Detectives, which is the obvious place to start, though Last Evenings on Earth is as luminous as he describes it and would certainly not be a bad jump-off.
I’m not sure about that “anti-literature” stuff too. Bolano’s a fluid, exhastively stylish writer, who’s mostly interested in a sort of authorial voice that to me is boldly new but also strangey conversational and familiar. And ya wtf about 2666?
