2666
i've been trying to write a post on Roberto Bolano's novel 2666 for the last like... two hours.
i simply do not know which angle to take. and then i don't think i could take just one angle. it would be irreverent to the masterpiece to neglect the entirety of it's meaning.
there are an overwhelming amount of things to say about it and because of it.
and then there's the question: if something like that speaks for itself, why even say anything about it?
i couldn't recommend 2666 to everyone, but i wish that i could. it is very dark, it's pages are slammed full of the worst occurrences and images but also the most beautiful of writings. the most profound of situations - between writer and writing, between writer and living, between writer and dying, between writer and reader, between writing and reading, between reader and reading, between reader and writing, between writing and world, between writer and world, between reader and world, between fact and fiction, word and world.
things mean this much: so much that we feel we couldn't say all of them. why do we feel that way? because we don't have the time. if i had the time, i could tell you every single thing about 2666. but i don't have time. and so i won't.
2666 is about time. it is about time and about death's place in that. it is about how we act in light of death and how we act in light of time. how time causes us to die; how death enslaves us in time and frees us from time. these profound observances, shining threads in the grand tapestry of verbal significance that 2666 is, are manifested in the characters and in the author (narrator of 2666) - the things they say and the things they do.
a small sample of this:
"They seemed suddenly to freeze, lose all sense of time, and turn completely inward, as if they were bypassing the abyss of daily life, the abyss of people, the abyss of conversation, and had decided to approach a kind of lakeside region, a late-romantic region, where the borders were clocked from dusk to dusk, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, an eternity, like the minutes of those condemned to die, like the minutes of women who've just given birth and are condemned to die, who understand that more time isn't more eternity and nevertheless wish with all their souls for more time, and their wails are birds that come flying every so often across the double lakeside landscape, so calmly, like luxurious excrescences or heartbeats."
2666, to me, is arresting in it's beauty because it is a bloody illustration of a cracked and crooked earth, and yet it is undeniable that through these cracks, and through Bolano's pages, shines hope. the word "hope" sounds so fluffy and bubbly, but this is not the aspect of it that i or Bolano intend to show. the hope in 2666 is a fierce hope. it is the most patient reality, and it's double edges are the sharpest blades. Bolano uses this hope because it is this and only this that can slice through the toughness of the world he has shown us in this novel. reality, in the eyes of Bolano, is both this awful and this promising.
"this idea of the world, petty, limited, crusted with the grime of the familiar, tends to persist and acquire authority and eloquence with the passage of time."
all truth is God's truth. praise the Lord.
i simply do not know which angle to take. and then i don't think i could take just one angle. it would be irreverent to the masterpiece to neglect the entirety of it's meaning.
there are an overwhelming amount of things to say about it and because of it.
and then there's the question: if something like that speaks for itself, why even say anything about it?
i couldn't recommend 2666 to everyone, but i wish that i could. it is very dark, it's pages are slammed full of the worst occurrences and images but also the most beautiful of writings. the most profound of situations - between writer and writing, between writer and living, between writer and dying, between writer and reader, between writing and reading, between reader and reading, between reader and writing, between writing and world, between writer and world, between reader and world, between fact and fiction, word and world.
things mean this much: so much that we feel we couldn't say all of them. why do we feel that way? because we don't have the time. if i had the time, i could tell you every single thing about 2666. but i don't have time. and so i won't.
2666 is about time. it is about time and about death's place in that. it is about how we act in light of death and how we act in light of time. how time causes us to die; how death enslaves us in time and frees us from time. these profound observances, shining threads in the grand tapestry of verbal significance that 2666 is, are manifested in the characters and in the author (narrator of 2666) - the things they say and the things they do.
a small sample of this:
"They seemed suddenly to freeze, lose all sense of time, and turn completely inward, as if they were bypassing the abyss of daily life, the abyss of people, the abyss of conversation, and had decided to approach a kind of lakeside region, a late-romantic region, where the borders were clocked from dusk to dusk, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, an eternity, like the minutes of those condemned to die, like the minutes of women who've just given birth and are condemned to die, who understand that more time isn't more eternity and nevertheless wish with all their souls for more time, and their wails are birds that come flying every so often across the double lakeside landscape, so calmly, like luxurious excrescences or heartbeats."
2666, to me, is arresting in it's beauty because it is a bloody illustration of a cracked and crooked earth, and yet it is undeniable that through these cracks, and through Bolano's pages, shines hope. the word "hope" sounds so fluffy and bubbly, but this is not the aspect of it that i or Bolano intend to show. the hope in 2666 is a fierce hope. it is the most patient reality, and it's double edges are the sharpest blades. Bolano uses this hope because it is this and only this that can slice through the toughness of the world he has shown us in this novel. reality, in the eyes of Bolano, is both this awful and this promising.
"this idea of the world, petty, limited, crusted with the grime of the familiar, tends to persist and acquire authority and eloquence with the passage of time."
all truth is God's truth. praise the Lord.
Comments
there's something beautifully true about that...
We are small and irrelevant and the smallest and simplest choices and actions that we make/take can have such huge repercussions not only for ourselves, but for those we love or those we think we love or those who simply cross our paths.
Timshel!