tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post6628109997241944348..comments2024-03-02T02:26:00.928-05:00Comments on bleakonomy: 2666: The Part About Amalfitanotetracontadigonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04604381739383227553noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post-11329032394368182802010-02-18T01:50:15.947-05:002010-02-18T01:50:15.947-05:00Oh, my god, I don't want to post a comment abo...Oh, my god, I don't want to post a comment about this week's reading in The Part about Fate because it's too early...we'll talk in a few days.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post-37786542422828732152010-02-17T12:39:02.444-05:002010-02-17T12:39:02.444-05:00Well, this is quite remarkable and delightfully od...Well, this is quite remarkable and delightfully odd.<br /><br />As I read the book in real time, I find myself struggling with it, and wondering what makes it so celebrated. I feel like I don't grasp its meaning and am missing its value.<br /><br />And then I read these comments, and the various marvelous posts at Infinite Zombies, the main discussion page and your blog, Naptime, and my appreciation deepens. I recall various transcendent sections and images I genuinely loved (Lola cleaning the offices in Paris, the dream of the last Communist philosopher) and suddenly I find myself enjoying the book much more in retrospect.<br /><br />I still don't know that I understand what Bolaño is trying to say with the book as a whole. And I'm still not loving it, <i> per se. </i> (And I'm having the same confounded reaction to the first section of the Part About Fate!) But this discussion has been of immense value to me.<br /><br />Thank you, sincerely. This is turning out to be an incredibly rewarding experience.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11213051268392108382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post-77791575980923805082010-02-16T23:10:49.475-05:002010-02-16T23:10:49.475-05:00Laughing out loud at the tree full of hummingbirds...Laughing out loud at the tree full of hummingbirds.<br /><br />Ah, Dan. Herein lies the difference of life experience. Every time I read the slurs in this section, I rolled my eyes and sighed "macho fuckheads" and chalked it up to a Latin culture that I have always found so misogynistic I can baarely tolerate it. I wasn't rubbed too raw by the homosexual slurs, though, for the same reason I will later be really, really upset at some of the crime stuff that might not affect you as deeply.<br /><br />Sorry you're not loving the novel yet. I can't claim to love it, but I did enjoy this section enormously. It was the bleak and mystical and surreal bordering on insane atmosphere that I've wanted from 2666. I'm not willing yet to say I love anything more than this section, but I'm glad I tolerated the critics to get this far.<br /><br />Your point, btw, about the portentous arid menace means you do "get" this text, and you are not lacking in any reading skills. the book might not wind up to be your cup of tea, but you know damned well that any lack of passion on your part for art is not a sign of your lack, but of a fundamental lack of connection that indicates different taste, not thickheadedness. I'm saying that if you wind up tossing 2666 aside, neither you nor the novel has failed. <br />After all, some intelligent, creative, thoughtful people didn't like Infinite Jest. I don't *get* them, but I don't think they're missing anything. I think it didn't resonate with them the way it did with us. And I know, thus far, I'm not recommending 2666 to anyone. We'll see how the next 600 pages go.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post-22187762823967305822010-02-16T18:58:16.322-05:002010-02-16T18:58:16.322-05:00Never again will I be able to look at a tree full ...Never again will I be able to look at a tree full of hummingbirds without exclaiming delightedly, "That is so gay!"<br /><br />I'm loving these conversations SO much, can I say. <br /><br />Absolutely I get too how you are fed up with the "you're different from us" thing. (So am I, for different reasons.) Consider, though, the truly effete remark Bolaño made to that interviewer about his relationship to his own prizefighter father, and how it would have been a 'magnificent aesthetic response' if he'd been gay, but it didn't work out because he was straight. I thought oh my god, how patronizing, but then I remembered the total fiasco of my own sole attempt at fashionable part-time lesbianism, and had to shut my mouth. Anyway I could go on about this stuff forever, but what I meant to say was: this book is 100% about how effed up these hetero guys are, it's literally nothing to do with "maricones" per se. Is it testosterone poisoning? We don't know, but what we do know is that it's men, not women, who are abducting a ton of girls and then torturing and killing them in that strange, sad border town. And this is a real thing that is really happening, in a real border town, to this day.dorkismohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16453069633096561767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post-29333578027939814642010-02-15T22:08:33.642-05:002010-02-15T22:08:33.642-05:00First off, I'm not reacting to this book with ...First off, I'm not reacting to this book with resentment, as opposed to how I felt when I threw in the towel reading <i> Against the Day.</i> While I'm certainly not <i> loving 2666, </i> neither am I hating it. But I really want to be loving it. I suppose the best way of putting it is that I <i> appreciate</i> it, which is far less than how I'd choose to feel if I could.<br /><br />I don't need it to be an Agatha Christie whodunit. However, I would point out that <i> Infinite Jest </i> managed to say some remarkably beautiful, profound, true things, and did so while creating indelible characters and telling an engaging story. I don't really ask for escapism, but I also have a hard time seeing what it is that Bolaño would have me see. It's not clear to me yet, but I'll be patient.<br /><br />With "faggot," well... yes, I (again) appreciate that all you say is true. I suspected that my reaction reflects a cultural divide to a great degree. But, as one of those Martians incomprehensible to macho men [cue Village People], it is past tedious for me to be reminded of how goddam alien I seem to a particular type of man. I. Get. It. And Bolaño returns to that theme many times in this section for reasons that aren't clear to me.<br /><br />I also think Guerra's son is as gay as a tree full of hummingbirds, for what it's worth.<br /><br />Before I leave, thanks for taking the time to write such a lengthy, thoughtful response. Your posts over at the main Bolaño page have really deepend my appreciation for the book, and have brought me closer to loving it than I would have if left to my own devices.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11213051268392108382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5393996338560944889.post-51954508178544319102010-02-15T19:05:51.718-05:002010-02-15T19:05:51.718-05:00Here is the thing. I love the book and I love this...Here is the thing. I love the book and I love this section and yet I don't think you're "missing" anything in what you say. The difference between your perspective and mine is kind of twofold. One thing is, you can't read this book as if it were just a story, I don't think. It's more like testimony, about what human beings are like. It's not even an indictment; it's observation, but writ very large and in great detail. You know how a lot of people don't care for e.g. the Wardine section in <i>Infinite Jest</i>? This is like that, only more so. <br /><br />It's really a <i>cri du coeur</i>, which sounds melodramatic but the question Bolaño is asking is, how am I supposed to write a novel in the face of the kind of stuff that is really going on in this world? A man like Bolaño is not going be writing some kind of Agatha Christie tea-party whodunit in the face of the unholy shit that is going on every day. The purpose of this book is the opposite of escapism, I am saying. It's to grab your head and <i>make you look</i>. Not judge so much as <i>see</i>.<br /><br />The other thing is, "faggot." Here is where I submit you have to let go of the yanqui a little bit and think about what it is to grow up in the purest culture of macho on this earth (at least I can't think of a more extreme case, right down to the etymology.) It's not like "faggot." For a Hispanic man (I really don't include Frenchmen or Italians in this, though they aren't all that far behind) masculinity, power, virility, all these things are <i>linked</i> in a way that an American could maybe understand best by considering someone like Tony Montana or Tony Soprano. What would a guy like that think of a homosexual male? To such guys, gay men are like Martians. They are fascinated and repelled in a manner that an ordinary educated American guy would find hard to fathom. It's so far away from them that it literally does not seem human to them, they're so centered in their sexual identity and "performance" issues of power and sex and strength that are all mashed together in that horrible way they have. This is true today, right this minute, and it is nothing like the American ideal of virility exemplified by say, Humphrey Bogart (not even getting anywhere near Matt Damon.)<br /><br />(In short, I want you to like this book more!!)dorkismohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16453069633096561767noreply@blogger.com