Sipped Ink vol 4 issue 1

2666 pp1-84

One of the pleasures to be had in beginning a new book (perhaps particularly in the case of a writer whom you haven’t read before) is in making the acquaintances of your author and narrator(s). What are their interests; their passions; the techniques by which they will depict the world for you? If the back-cover synopsis hadn’t already made it clear that 2666 was going to be an ensemble piece, it doesn’t take long before that’s readily apparent to the reader. Bolaño starts with one character (Pelletier), then expands to a second (Morini), then quickly a third (Espinoza), and a forth (Norton) whilst using all of them to frame a fifth, whose absence is itself a kind of presence in the narrative: Archimboldi. In the novel’s opening 84 pages we spend the majority of our time with this quartet in various configurations, but we’re also quickly introduced to Bolaño’s penchant for excursion. The story leaks from one place to another and one time period to another, with duties of narration passed off temporarily from the central (semi-)omniscient third-person to surrogates like the Swabian and Mrs Bubis — the sense that everyone has a story to tell, and that this 900 page novel will seek to accommodate as many of them as is viable is simultaneously intoxicating and a little overwhelming.

It did not take long for me to feel that I knew P,M,E, & N reasonably well, such is Bolaño’s skill in drawing his characters. But equally I appreciated the glimpses we got of other lives: the farm owner that rigs a horse race; the former mug maker now ‘London bum’; the artist who removed his painting hand…. It is by design, I think, that it’s difficult to say which, if any, will have greater import deeper into the novel. It feels equally likely at this early stage that we might never see these people again, or that one of the book’s five sections may be entirely dedicated to them.

And Bolaño seems to treat detail similarly. The novel’s most ornate stylistic flourish thus far is obviously that marathon five-page sentence at pp.18-22! We’re given plenty of fine detail we’ll likely never need to know, about characters we may not hear of again in the remaining 800+ pages, but as flamboyantly discursive as it is, it’s (tellingly) teasingly light on real detail about Archimboldi; we learn far more about a widowed lady whom we had not previously been introduced to. Perhaps Archimboldi, despite the frequency with which his name is invoked, will prove to be a relatively minor element of the narrative — there appears to be only one way to find out.

Even amongst the central quartet there’s a detectable imbalance of attention. We spend more time with P & E than M or N, and no significant time with N by herself in the same way that we do with E & P. And Bolaño is happy to apply the elasticity of his narrative structure in ways both favourable and detrimental to any and all of his central characters. Compare for instance the compressed, opaque (and playfully funny) version of P & E’s conversation about N at pp.40-41 (which in many novels would be permitted elaboration as it concerns what seem to be three important relationships: P & N; E & N; & P & E) to the aforementioned fice-page sentence of a (so far, at least) tangential character.

That said, despite his playfulness, in general I have found Bolaño to be a pleasingly straightforward writer thus far. He’s engaged with his characters (major and minor) and their lived experiences, rather than objective facts about his settings. He’s also interested in their psychology perhaps more than their actions, but writes them in a way that doesn’t feel too introspective or lacking in dynamism. Some of his turns of phrase are impressively evocative, such as the description of Mrs. Bubis as a ‘woman who plunged into the abyss sitting down’ [26]. Though very occasionally it feels like one gets away from him a bit, and one wonders whether–had he lived to further revise the manuscript–similes such as (of the possibility of a ménage à trois) ’like a howling Indian witch doctor’ [61] would have survived the red pen.

After 84 pages I feel like I’m still feeling out the narrator to some extent. For the most part the third-person narration is kept at a certain distance, but there is a pleasant willingness to interject on occasion. Sometimes it’s pointing out small elements that the reader may overlook: ’(here we have a German proper name ending in a vowel)’ [10], and sometimes it’s to address the reader directly, such as with teases like (8 pages into an 898 page novel) ‘but we’ll get to that later’ [8].

Sometimes the narrator is happy to reveal that they know more than us:

‘As for what passed through Liz Norton’s head, it’s better not to say.’ [16]

But, subtly, there’s also a limit imposed on their omniscience:

‘It’s unclear whether Pelletier or Espinoza made the call’ [64]

How these narrative dynamics play out over the remainder of the book will be interesting to learn.

The week’s reading culminates with a bit of a shock. The racist outbursts and assault on the taxi driver (complete with odd sexual equivalency), and the subsequent theft of the taxi [74] were–to me at least–entirely unexpected. It’s the first moment of ignorance, violence, or impassioned anger we’ve seen from two academics who have otherwise seemed to us rational, and more prone to intellectual conflict (eg. with rival Archimboldian sects) than to physical violence. And P & E appear similarly shocked in the weeks following the act, fearing that the violence has exposed some heretofore unknown element of their characters. Their later attempts to justify their actions to themselves [79-80] are self-deluding and futile from the outset.

Forgoing for a moment the possibility that there are elements to their histories to which we are not (yet?) privy, their ‘adventures in prostitution’ [81] also seem to indicate that something about the men has indeed changed. Shocking as it was this feels like an episode that has the potential to work as an inciting incident for P & E, and which we might look back on later in the book as a moment of some importance.

Early though it is, I’m unable to stop myself looking already for signs of thematic concerns that might run through the novel. The clearest I have found so far feels as though it has something to do with one’s relationship to Art (and, by extension, with the wider world). Early on N’s reading habits are explicitly contrasted with those of her male peers:

For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths, as Morini, Espinoza, and Pelletier believed it to be. [9]

We might compare this with the week’s final sentence:

“Whores are there to be fucked,” Espinoza said… “not psychoanalyzed.” [84]

There are also the divergent reactions to the work of George Grosz–laughter or depression–in Mrs. Bubis’s allegory [27]. And we might also include the episode of the competing lectures and reactions thereto at p.17, though it is also doubtlessly a tongue-in-cheek comment on English-language literary provincialism (see also the conspicuously short paragraph at p.38). Tangentially, it may be worth noting that none of Bolaño’s fiction was translated into English during his lifetime.

It’s not uncommon for literary works to be concerned with the place of Art in the world, and it may be too early to tell whether this will form a major part of 2666. Bolaño, however, was certainly interested in the theme. In his 1997 short story ‘Dentist’ the titular character gives something that might be construed as the author’s own viewpoint:

‘That’s what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It’s the only thing that really is particular and personal. It’s the expression and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular. And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home. But my friend said: What I mean is the secret story…. The secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter. But every damn thing matters! It’s just that we don’t realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don’t even realize that’s a lie.’

The idea that ‘every damn thing matters’, perhaps combined with Morini’s surety that ‘nothing is ever behind us’ [43], provides a way into reading 2666. It’s a dense knot and one we’ve only just begun to explore.