what should I read, this or 2666?

2666. Don't fall for the pomo meme.

Read 2666. Underworld has been the most disappointing book I have read.

>>8489979
If you're American (or Canadian I guess) read underworld. If you're anything else read 2666

>>8490198
why is it that?

>>8490207
Because only Americans believe their literature is worth something.

>>8490068
Underworld 110%.

Bolano is just derivative Pynchon and Delillo (hence why he insults both of them and pretends PKD is better).

2666 is basically a combination of Gravity's Rainbow and Underworld.

Read both. Read Underworld first, though. DeLillo is the greatest postwar novelist.

Also 2666 is nothing like GR.

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>>8489979
"It shows a man driving a car. It is the simplest sort of family video. You see a man at the wheel of a medium Dodge.

It is just a kid aiming her camera through the rear window of the family car at the windshield of the car behind her...It is the kid's own privacy that is being protected here. She is twelve years old and her name is being withheld even though she is neither the victim nor the perpetrator of the crime but only the means of recording it.

It shows a man in his forties wearing a pale shirt open at the throat, the image washed by reflections and sunlight, with many jostled moments.

It is not just another video homicide. It is a homicide recorded by a child who thought she was doing something simple and maybe halfway clever, shooting some tape of a man in a car.

He sees the girl and waves briefly, wagging a hand without taking it off the wheel - and underplayed reaction that makes you like him…

It shows him giving an abbreviated wave, stiff-palmed, like a flag at a siding...

You know how fmailies make up games. This is just another game in which the child invents the rules as she goes along. She likes the idea of videotaping a man in his car. She has probably never done it before and she sees no reason to vary the format or terminate early or pan to another car. Thisis her game and she is learning it and playing it as the same time. She feels halfway clever and inventive and maybe slightly intrusive as well, a little of brazenness that spices any game."

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>>8490405
"And you keep on looking. You look because this is the nature of the footage, to make a channeled path through time, to give things a shape and a destiny.

Of course if she had panned to another car, the right car at the precise time, she would have caught the gunman as he fired.

He is hit soon after. If you've seen the tape many times you know from the hand wave exactly when he will be hit. It is something, naturally, that you wait for. You say to your wife, if you're at home and she is there, Now here is where he gets it….

Now here is where he gets it. You see him jolted, sort of wire-shocked – then he seizes up and falls toward the door or maybe learns or slides into the door is the proper way to put it. It is awful and unremarkable at the same time. Here it comes all right. He is shot, head-shot, and the camera reacts, the child reacts – there is a jolting movement but she keeps on taping, there is a sympathetic response, a nerve response, her heart is beating faster but she keeps the camera trained on the subject as he slides into the door and even as you see him die you're thinking of the girl. At some level the girl has to be present here, watching what you're watching, unprepared – the girl is seeing this cold and you have to marvel at the fact that she keeps the tape rolling.

It shows the car drifting toward the guardrail and then there's a jostling sense of two other lanes and part of another car, a split-second blur, and the tape ends here, either because the girl stopped shooting or because some central authority, the police or the district attorney or the TV station, decided there was nothing else you had to see.

This is either the tenth or eleventh homicide committed by the Texas Highway Killer. The number is uncertain because the police believe that one of the shootings may have been a copycat crime.

The more you watch the tape, the deader and colder and more relentless it becomes. The tape sucks the air right out of your chest but you watch it every time."

Haven't read 2666 but Underworld's probably better. It was a great book.

>>8490345
Thematically, it's very similar. Pynchon and Delillo had a huge influence on Bolano and for him to dismiss them in a douchey way is literally DFW-tier.

Plus the translation of 2666 is shit-tier.

>>8490415
what do you find wrong with it? literally just read in another thread that the translation did a dece job.

>>8490445
he's a pseud

>>8490445
Wimmer is a talentless hack and it's clear to anyone who speaks a romance language.

>>8490468
See?

>>8490451
>>8490445

>>8490471
watch her interviews on youtube

>>8489979
Just noticed that the cover is the world trade center

edgy

>>8492029
What's edgy about that? The book came out in 1997, by the way.

>>8489979
if you can read spanish read any of those
if you don't, stay with underworld

>>8492029
>huge landmark in NYC
>built in the 70s
>lasted for about 30 years
>anything mentioning or referencing the towers in that 30 year span is now declared to be edgy by some millenial on the literature section of a alaskan toboggan herding website

now THAT's edgy

>>8492036
I know, I was sort of kidding

>>8492053
How do you herd toboggans?

>>8492065
you herd with the toboggans, you absolute pleb

>>8489979
2666 blew my mind. It was far reaching and wonderful. Read it. Read DeLillo too. Read all you can. If you don't read you might not know what Aleppo is or make some other equally embarrassing gaff.

The first third of Underworld is better than 2666. 2666 is better than the entirety of Underworld.

>>8492099
timely kek

>>8492099
I didn't know what Aleppo was until a guy got made fun of for not knowing what Aleppo was.

>>8490214
*tips fedora*

I recently finished Underworld, and while I thought it was disappointing in several key ways it was still good. The prologue alone is worth the price of admission.

>>8490214
Blam.

>>8492108
read more and read widely so that you can know what people are referring to when they use words and names.

>>8490345
>DeLillo is the greatest postwar novelist.


ummm what war? Iraq maybe?

>>8492177
Postwar means WWll.

>>8492201
I think he meant that there are greater novelists in that era.

>>8492205
No American novelist desu

>>8492201
seriously you think delilo is better than gass, gaddis, pynchon? that's bold m8

i haven't even read anything by him. where should i start with him

>>8492223
meant for
>>8492218

Read Underworld, beginning and end of that book are among the best I've read in any book, the prose just takes off and if you're down for the ride it's gorgeous. 2666 is nice but I feel some of the beauty is lost in translation, regardless of how good a job Woods did. It's fun, lots of nested stories and there's an interesting sort of main thread to them which isn't totally dissimilar to how baseball acts as this sort of unifying motif throughout underworld. Both are great, but Underworld>2666 anyday

>>8492223
I'd start with White Noise honestly, it touches on a lot of his favorite themes, it's sort of a postmodern staple, and it's a good introduction to his style. If you fall in love with the prose, Dellilo is for you. If not, well you still read a pretty good book.

>>8492223
I'm a fan of those other writers, particularly Pynchon, but DeLillo more closely aligns with my personal aesthetics. He had a nice long peak and even most of his "failures" are interesting.

White Noise, Libra, Mao ll and Underworld are the big four with him. Mao ll is my personal favorite, but White Noise is maybe the most accessible for a beginner.

2666

>>8492029
there's a section where the main character looks at WTC and then stares a huge garbage fill

In Underworld, was Matty an aspie?

>>8492337
>>8492350
thanks lads.