Could anyone recommend a novel that compares to 2666 in scope,

>>9390970
Well 2666 is shit, firstly.

>muh hung like a horse
>muh anal and vaginal rape
>muh they fucked all night

>>9391586
Holy... How will Bolaño ever recover...

>>9391596
He'll just be forgotten in the annals of time, that's all.

Perhaps 100 Years of Solitude? Idk desu

>>9390970
Satantango

>>9391586
Bolaño? more BTFOlaño amirite?

kys.

>>9391606
>dead for almost two decades
>books are still selling
>new prints in several languages every few years
>posthumous work

not likely.

>>9392112
Thanks qt *kiss*

if you know spanish you should check Los Sorias by Alberto Laiseca

also 100 years of solitude, also in spanish because the translation seems spotty

Illuminatus trilogy

>>9390970
This novel is the biggest disappointment of my life desu

>>9390970
The Man Who Loved Dogs. not so much in the surrealism aspect, but scope and characters are there.

Adán Buenosayres, The Savage Detectives, Hopscotch, Abaddón el Exterminador (you should read El Túnel and Sobre héroes y tumbas in that order first).

>>9392143
you must not have much going on in your life.

>>9390970

Can someone tell me what the meaning of 2666 is? What is the book truly "about"?

>>9392868
In a previous novel called Amulet, two characters wander through the Mexico City night talking about poetry and stuff. Without noticing they enter one of the most marginalized areas of the city. One of the characters says that the whole thing looks like a cemetery, but not a regular cemetery, but one from the future, one from the year 2666. Idk,

>>9392868
I wish I had the pasta that anon kept posting. It boiled down to chaos and globalism, but there was more to it.

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>>9393117
>mfw I know the pasta you're talking about
>I'm the one who introduced the chaos~aspect to it

good to see someone is taking me seriously.

>>9393212
Post the damn thing
>>9392868
Bolaño talks about of tons and tons of different shit in the book, basically what is to be an human being in these times, but thats not saying much

>>9392143
Why? The ending? Did you read a translation?

>>9392119
I love bolaño, but seeing that he wanted to sell 2666 as separated books, I'm not sure he considered those posthumous works good enough to be published, I'm not paying full alfaguara price for them.

>>9392373
or he has an incredible life

>>9393474
the get the Debolsillo editions, much more affordable.

>>9393474
>I'm not sure he considered those posthumous works good enough to be published,
oh but they are
if he had lived enough the novel(s) would had probably been a little shorter, and the last one would had had a less open ending
the alfaguara edition cover is little ugly but it has Bolaño's manuscripts for the book at the ending, worth the bux imo, pretty good paper too

>>9393117
i hav it bby u want?

>>9393594
yes please

>>9392868
It doesn't convey any one clear message. It's a a sprawling tome written by a dying poet. Bolaño obviously tried to include as much as he could in a single work.
Don't read 2666 as you would a Dostoyevsky novel, because you will never get a message out of a book that traces the entire 20th century but still makes time to talk about a journalist traveling to Mexico to document a boxing match.

>>9393617
I liked when the lady talked on the tv show about plants and her life, so comfy, and then the guy changed the channel and started watching porn, lel

>>9393601
Here you go, my love. Mommy loves you. Muah!

>For me, 2666, and much of Bolano's other work, is there to intimate a sense of a concealed doom. The key word is "convergence," where the various parts of 2666 all converge, whether overtly or indirectly, towards Santa Teresa. The events of the novel, and what came before, and even elements of Bolano's other works, all hurtle together with irreversible force towards an ultimate conclusion, to be resolved in the enigmatic year 2666. However, (and I understand this might be the part that gets iffy), it is not our providence to understand in a logical or coherent way what that conclusion is.

Nor is it the providence of Bolano himself. Bolano stated that the entire work is narrated by Belano, his literary alter ego. And it is the cast of the novel (and by extension the world) who is speaking through Belano, who speaks through Bolano. What we get in our hands is the distilled essence of Belano's vision, something that hints at an apocalyptic vision but does not narrate or explain.

(There is also another case of people speaking through others through narrative with the Soviet authors, whose manuscript interrupts the Archimboldi narrative. Story within a story within a story, woo!)

You can look towards globalization and the influence of Nazis/WWII for some more mundane themes, and the idea that Santa Teresa/Mexico is a microcosm of the world and human history/future (both geographically and temporally) is certainly valid. Personally, I read it as a representation of, or perhaps more accurately as signs indicating, "chaos." There is a fundamental, dare I say visceral, sense that something is wrong with the world being described in Bolano's work(s). At times apparent and wide-ranging (the horrors of WWI, the grotesque murders) and at other times personal and obtuse (the chaotic personal lives of the critics, Fate's descent into the chaos of Mexico from sheer coincidence).

I am reminded of the Second Coming:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:
[...]
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The difference is that instead of the age of Christ coming to an end in the year 2000, it is the age of [whatever Bolano saw] spiraling towards chaos in the year 2666. You have the similar sense that a revelation/cataclysm shift/change is at hand, and you get a vast, ancestral image from the collective unconsciousness manifesting itself in the events of the novel as well as the thoughts of the authors/writers, real and fictional, that inhabit his world.

>>9393681
pretty good

>>9391586
If those are the things you got from reading the book, then I feel sorry for you

>>9393681
Throw in a joke in there and it could pass for a Pynchonpost.

>>9392868
It's actually a post-structural take on living in a post-apocalyptic world that pretends it is pre-apocalyptic

>>9393681
Yeah that's it. To add to that, throughout the narrative I felt something else, other than random chaos behind the scenes. Some force that was there all along and activated that chaos. It felt like that for every part. This to me comes from the surrealist aspect of the work in general, the dreams, allusions, and dread, and how it was almost like a subdued and really well handled magical realism. but not the kind of Marquez or Cortazar, something more unsettling. Maybe it was each of the countries or settings' own unseen violence. I dunno.

This sounds a lot like a delillo. Is it?

>>9394894
yes, sort of. But Bolaño is more surreal/metaphorical. DeLillo is more blunt.

>>9393681
>bolANO
seriously

>>9393681
There is also a search for truth and meaning. The academics search for Archimboldi and have his worked revered by the literary elite and has some sort of significance what with the Noble and all. Coupled with the question of his identity.

With the police/journalists searching for the killer(s) and the reason behind the crimes and the absolute destruction of beauty (like the desecration of the religious totems) and that the answers are often forgotten or we offer up scapegoats and distractions to settle our unease.

middlemarch bitch

>>9394735
About 350 pages of the book are dedicated to anal and vaginal rape bud

>>9394956
Does Archimboldi symbolize anti establishment of Academia? He was not educated, a peasant, unpretentious, original.

>>9392040
read this

>>9394894
>>9394915

Any recommendation on where to start with Delillo?
Maybe something similar to Bolaño.
I haven't read anything by him.

>>9395158
white noise
or libra maybe
or one of his short stories

>>9395158
his short stories are a good intro. Other than that it doesn't really matter much. He tends to confront similar themes in each of his books so some people think once you read him once, you've read all of him. I vehemently disagree though. His best books are probably Players, Ratners Star, Mao II, Underworld, and Libra. White noise gets a lot of attention but he does similar things better in his later work; I guess white noise is funnier though. His earlier work is more comedic, middle work very serious, and later work more sentimental. Here's a link

https://granta.com/human-moments-in-world-war-iii/

>>9392868
It's about the space someone leaves as they course through history and how in the end books are nice but they're not real

Should I buy a first edition of Nazi Literature In The Americas?

>>9395338
That's a nice book. The last "entry" goes full bolaño.

>>9395158
His more surreal/esperimental stuff is his latest. Point Omega, The Body Artist, Zero K. take a look at those if that's the type of book you're looking for. If you want more straight forward stuff, go to Libra, Mao II, and White Noise. Underworld is like all of DeLillo at once.

>>9395338
If you want the first edition sure. Thats where I started with Bolano, had no idea about his work but the title caught my eye and I was completely swept away. Within maybe two days of reading it I went back to the shop and bought everything I could get my hands on of his

>>9395338
It's a great book. Sort of Borgesian in it's matter of fact presentation.

>>9395361
Have you read Distant Star? it's an expansion of that story.

>>9396714
I haven't. Maybe I have it, I have a couple of bolaños that I haven't read.

Thank you, I'll try to read it soon!

How do I into more Bolano beyond 2666 and Savage Detectives?

>>9398330
Read his short story collections, namely the Insufferable Gaucho and Last Evenings on Earth

>>9398330
I think that his novellas are better than his short stories
By Night in Chile is his best besides 2666 and TSD imo.
Distant Star is also very good and unsettling as fuck. Also set in Pinochet's Chile.
Literatura Nazi in the Américas if you like Borges.
Putas Asesinas is probably the best collection of short stories but I don't think it's available in English yet, same with Una Novelita Lumpen which is also pretty good and very representative of his style.

>>9398330
The next thing you should read probably is Amulet, it expands a history from TSD, and it's were 2666 gets its title.

>>9394968
I don't know what else would you have expected from a novel focused on the feminicides of Ciudad Juárez

>>9394968
your point?

>>9400082
I was responding to
>>9394735
which was a response to
>>9391586

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pretty great desu

>>9394872
interesting
in what sense is it post-structural?

which blando should I read first? amulet?

>>9402550
>blando

>>9402550
how about don't

>>9393117
>>9393681
>people are still pastaing my post

feels good

>>9391586
>>9392143
>>9393340
damn I've had this on my list of books to read and I was actually really excited to start it. Is the translated version not worth it? Or is the book itself not that great?
I know I should probably just read it for myself but if the translated version fucks it up that's a real disappointment.

try Infinite Jest

aaaaaaaaaaand you've just been meme'd by the best

(but for real though, its excellent)

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>>9407053
literally just started that for the first time today

>>9407068
im almost done with it and ive loved every second of it