Finished 2666. A very impressive if slightly uneven book.
The first section details the lives of and romantic entanglements between four literary critics who are all interested in a reclusive German author by the name of Benno von Archimboldi. They eventually track the author to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa, where hundreds of women have been killed over the course of the previous ten years. In Santa Teresa they meet Amalfitano, a philosophy professor with frayed nerves, and their entangled relationships come to a head. End of part one, The Part About the Critics, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and this is the last we hear of these four characters for the rest of the book.
The second part is the shortest, and it is The Part About Amalfitano. It starts off about his wife, who was crazy and obsessed with a crazy gay poet in an insane asylum, but not much really happens with that. Amalfitano and his daughter move to Santa Teresa (this part takes place before The Part About the Critics), and Amalfitano starts to go crazy himself as he worries more and more that his daughter might become a victim of the killings. He starts hearing voices and hangs a geometry book from a clothesline. Thus ends part two, which I didn't find very satisfying as a thing unto itself.
Part three, The Part About Fate, follows a black reporter from Harlem who usually writes profiles of interesting characters (last Black communist in Brooklyn, ex Black Panther turned preacher, etc.) for a black newspaper. His mother dies and soon after he gets offered an assignment to do something a little different than he's used to: head to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match between the Mexican champ and a local Harlem boxer. He goes, and this part turns a little noir as he ends up learning about the killings and has a wild night with people who may or may not be involved and he tries to rescue Amalfitano's daughter. I won't give much away about this section, since it's supposed to be suspenseful, but I'll say I enjoyed it a lot.
Then comes The Part About the Crimes. This section was the hardest to get through. It's also the longest. About 50% of the time, if not more, is just flat description of crime scenes, or the circumstances surrounding how a woman's body was found, how it was identified, what was known about the disappearance, etc. Completely detached, like a police report. There's a little bit of a story about an Arizona sheriff investigating the disappearance of an Arizona woman. And sort of a story about a police inspector who falls in love with the head of an insane asylum. And a little bit about a TV psychic. And towards the end we get the story of a prominent female Mexican politician who has a personal stake in finding out the truth behind the killings. And we also get a bit about a German man (don't worry, it's not Archimboldi) who is arrested for the killings even though the killings go on after he's imprisoned. But for the most part, this section is incredibly tedious. The stories don't really go anywhere, and the there's not much to pull the reader through.
The fifth section, The Part About Archimboldi, however, was my favorite. It's the second longest, and I didn't want it to end. Hard to sum up, but it basically follows the interesting life of the writer, mostly during and after WWII, leading up to what brings him to Mexico. Lots of fun little parts to this section, weird Borgesian stories, and poetic bits of prose. I loved it.
Altogether, a really cool book. Unlike anything else I've ever read. It doesn't provide closure; the Santa Teresa killings are based on real life killings in the city of Ciudad Juarez, so it's understandable that they aren't resolved in the book. But the book is worth it not only for the local pleasures but also for the pleasure of using the five disconnected parts to think about what the book's hidden center might be. I had fun, at least. |
