I’m going to devote the entire upcoming week to Roberto Bolano’s magnum opus 2666, which FSG publishes in November. Perhaps because of its size, I’m not going to do anything as comprehensive as a book review. Instead, I’ll be posting disparate thoughts on various sections of the novel, posts with more of a conversational bent. A kind of serialized criticism, if you will.
If you’d like a bit more information before the onslaught of insight, bone up now. Bolano’s been heralded as the heir to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the vanguard of a new wave of Latin American authors. Originally from Chile, he was a prolific poet and writer, publishing most of his work in a ten-year span during which he sometimes wrote for sixteen hours a day, and his characters are often novelists, journalists, scholars, and poets. Other than 2666, some of his other novels include The Savage Detectives, Nazi Literature in the Americas, and By Night in Chile.
