December 2010
36 posts
2 tags
“What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even the bookish pharmacists are...”
– From Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
Dec 31st
2 tags
2666: Finished
I’ve just finished reading Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. I’m kind of in a daze, but then again I’m always in a daze after finishing books. Here, though, there’s just so much to digest. Unlike previous recent epics I’ve read - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay come to mind - I’m unsure what 2666 was even about. The five...
Dec 30th
Dec 28th
1 note
5 tags
Dec 27th
5 tags
Dec 26th
1 note
2 tags
Dec 25th
95 notes
Dec 24th
1,335 notes
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral...”
– Mark Twain (via thoughtsdetained)
Dec 23rd
28 notes
“All revolutions degenerate into governments.”
– Mexican proverb
Dec 22nd
2 tags
2666: Fame
From Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, in post-WWII Cologne, following the acceptance of his first novel by a publishing house in Hamburg, Hans Reiter, now Benno von Archimboldi, on fame. “Until that moment Archimboldi had never thought about fame. Hitler was famous. Göring was famous. The people he loved or remembered fondly weren’t famous, they just satisfied certain needs. Döblin was is...
Dec 21st
3 tags
Dec 20th
1 note
3 tags
Dec 19th
Dec 17th
14 notes
5 tags
Dec 16th
5 tags
Dec 10th
2 notes
5 tags
Dec 10th
2 tags
“What is it I want you to do? asked the congresswoman. I want you to write about...”
– Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
Dec 9th
6 tags
Dec 9th
8 notes
3 tags
Dec 8th
6 tags
Dec 8th
2 notes
3 tags
Dec 7th
1 note
2 tags
2666: Elvira Campos
From Roberto Bolaño’s epic novel, a paragraph about the lover of a police detective who is haunted by a recent case involving the torture, rape, and murder of two girls. A minor character living in a city gripped by a never-ending string of murdered women. Though not directly about Bolaño’s favorite subjects - Santa Teresa, a city based on Juárez, or the desert - the paragraph is a...
Dec 7th
5 tags
Dec 7th
3 notes
3 tags
Dec 5th
5 tags
Dec 5th
1 note
1 tag
Dec 5th
5 tags
Dec 4th
5 tags
Dec 4th
5 tags
Dec 4th
4 tags
Dec 3rd
6 tags
Dec 3rd
1 note
2 tags
Returning to 2666
When I left for Europe three months ago, I considered taking Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 with me. I was about a third of the way through the fourth section, and really didn’t want to stop reading it. The intensity, fluidity, beauty of the writing had hooked me. Four hundred pages in, I felt like I was in the middle of the best kind of prose poem. But lugging around a giant book just...
Dec 3rd
1 note
4 tags
Dec 2nd
5 notes
5 tags
Dec 2nd
66 notes
5 tags
Dec 1st
2 notes
5 tags
Dec 1st
70 notes