Let the criticism begin!

Full Disclosure: I finished reading this section a few weeks ago so that I could mull over questions and thoughts to pose to fellow readers… only I didn’t really write anything down, so my impressions of this section are not as sharp and clear as they might have been a few weeks ago, when I probably should have written this post.  Oh well, if I seem tentative or like I’m futzing about, we’ll consider it an exercise in style and homage to Bolaño himself.  At least I’ll have 4 more attempts to get this right! Also, I want to emphasize that Claire and I are using this opportunity to make 2666 a more communal reading experience, but people are free to read at their own pace.  We’re reading one section per month, and ask that you try to post your thoughts on each section within each month… But of course if you fall behind, that’s completely fine and we still want to hear what you thought!  If you haven’t started but would like to join along, please feel free!  Just post a comment at the bottom of this post linking to your review of Part One, and I’ll be sure to link to it.  And for people who already said they were going to read along, if I haven’t included your review but it’s been posted (or you post after I’ve published this), please do the same and I’ll be sure to add you to this round-up!

When I think back on this first part of 2666, the thing that sticks out to me was how much I didn’t hate it!  That sounds strange, I know, given that I elected to host this read-along with Claire, but I really feared going into the belly of the beast (or at this point, the maw… the belly is yet to come, I think!).  I worried that I would really dislike the book.  From what I had read about the book during the 2009 Tournament of Books, it did not at all sound like a book I would enjoy, since the two commentators over at The Morning News found the book bloated, boring, sexist, homophobic, and generally a mess.  I worried the book would be pretentious and unapproachable, but seeing that I already had a copy of it in my apartment, I knew I had to at least give it a shot before excising it from my life; it was only fair.  Enter Claire whose enthusiasm to read the book was almost infectious, and I decided that maybe if I had a buddy going into this read, maybe if I didn’t commit myself to exclusively reading the book non-stop until it or I was done, that would be the best way to tackle it.  And thus, a read-along was born.

I found “The Part About The Critics” to be a pretty engaging and enjoyable section.  I loved that it focused on books and scholars, and that there was an undercurrent of a mystery story gradually pulling it along.  At first I couldn’t keep the characters straight, but I kept with it, and eventually sheer repetition of their names and nationalities allowed me to differentiate them.  Much has already been said by my fellow readers about Bolaño’s writing and attention to detail (sometime the mundane), but one thing I thought I would mention is that sometimes I felt this attention was misplaced.  That is, he goes into the details of how many times someone’s name was said in a conversation or what floors everyone was staying on, and yet I felt his characterization and development of his characters was lacking.  I felt we were dealing more with caricatures than actual people, and many of their motivations were either very shallow or opaque to me.  I felt the two younger male scholars were essentially interchangeable (what made the Frenchman any different from the Spaniard, save for his lengthier sexual stamina?), the older Italian scholar a simple father/teacher figure – sick and lonely, and the female figure was mostly indecisive and promiscuous, a vessel for the male trio’s sexual urges.  I suppose I simply didn’t feel like I knew or understood these characters very well, and while leaving certain things hidden in shadows and unaddressed can allow your readers to build their own stories, to spin their own hypotheses and theories, this shift in emphasis away from the people in the story was a bit strange to me.  Perhaps it is just a sign that 2666 is more a book of ideas than it is of people?

Despite minimal characterization, I did enjoy Bolaño’s writing and prose in this section.  A few parts were completely mystifying to me (Claire was enamored with the dreams that peppered Part One, but I didn’t know what to make of them!), and sometimes I felt portions dragged, but by and large I found this part to be interesting and, unexpected to me, very playful.  I hadn’t expected Bolaño to display such wit and humor – sometimes I found myself smirking as I read a passage where Bolaño was being quite cheeky or poking fun at one of his characters.  I thought the humor added important levity to the part, which could get quite dark and ponderous at times.  I also think there were times where the characters behave cluelessly or in a frustrating way, and it was always gratifying when Bolaño seemed to be nudging and winking at the reader, letting them know that we weren’t meant to take everything with the utmost solemnity.  I also liked that he seemed to call scholarly obsession into question, pointing out how absurd some of these conferences can become – the debates and discussions that arise, how obscure people’s theses can become, how these questions only ignite the passions of a select few, how obsession can take people out into the deserts of Mexico and leave them stranded, all in the pursuit of something that may not even exist.

I do think that there is a lot in this first part that could be explored in more depth, and I also feel like this section could withstand multiple re-readings.  I think certain themes may have begun to arise, but it will be hard to say without reading on.  I think we see that this section deals with the notion of pursuit – the scholars pursue Archimboldi, the men pursue Liz, people are traveling back and forth almost nonstop from one country to the next.  There is also the issue of the severed hand made art, which I have a hard time understanding… does it represent an intermingling of the grotesque and the divine (from something ugly, art is made?) – certainly other readers have remarked on the potential comingling of violence and sexuality in Bolaño’s work.  Or might it represent sacrifice in the face of passion – the artist literally gives himself over to his work?  I’ve heard that later parts of the book make elements of this first part clearer, so perhaps it is best to withhold speculation until I’ve learned a bit more!  To that end, I’m not sure that I feel this section could successfully stand on its own.  Finishing it, I wanted to immediately start reading the next section so I could get shed a little more light on what was going on!

One thing that did strike me about this section, though no one else has touched on it yet, was Bolaño’s approach to sexuality.  I have to admit that there were elements that did feel misogynistic and homophobic, and they made me uneasy.  I do think certain elements are meant to be tongue in cheek, but of course this means the author relies on the reader being sufficiently enlightened to catch the irony in his statements rather than innocently embracing them all.  Also, I struggle with how I feel about an author that has elements of misogyny and homophobia in his writing, even if there is a joking vibe about some of it.  Does that make it ok, if you mask you controversial/distasteful material as though it’s not meant to be taken seriously? There is an undeniable machismo running through this section, as evidenced by all the discussion of the libidinal prowess of the two young male scholars (“he could have fucked all night…”) and also in their attack on the London cabbie.  Many have wondered at that scene, but I really saw it as yet another manifestation of these primal, male, dark urges… their sexual desires have thus for been subverted by Liz, and thus they assert their masculinity by destroying another man.  I’d really like to know how other readers felt about the issues of sexuality, and the way Bolaño represents women in his novel.

So, for me this wasn’t a perfect read as there were things that made me uncomfortable and that I think could become problematic in later books, BUT I’m really eager to read Book Two, and I hope all of my fellow readers are too!  I think there was more good than bad here, and I found Part One to be a surprisingly good read.   A few questions and then I’ll direct you to my fellow 2666 readers!

•    Did you feel this section could stand alone as its own published work?
•    What did you like best about this section?  What did you like least?
•    Any surprises for you as a reader thus far?
•    Hazard a guess and tell me what you think Bolaño’s getting at in Part One. (not really a question… oh well)
•    How have you responded to Bolaño’s take on sexuality and violence?  Do you feel the cab scene was an isolated incident or does it foreshadow things to come?
•    Can anyone make sense of the numerous dream sequences for me?

Other thoughts on Part One:

• My fellow co-host, Claire, @ kiss a cloud
• Emily @ Evening All Afternoon
• Jackie @ Farm Lane Books
• Lu @ Regular Rumination
• E.L. Fay @ This Book And I Could Be Friends
• Gavin @ Page 247
• Richard @ Caravan De Recuerdos
• More to come…