The trajectory of the narrative is ambitious and at times elliptical, traversing Europe and the United States until, at the centre of it, the reader drops off into the abyss of the lawless border city of Santa Teresa, emerging, just barely, the journey only half over, before returning to the past and falling again into another abyss, that of WWII. The book is divided into five parts, entitled very simply: “The Part About the Critics,” “The Part About Amalfitano,” “The Part About Fate,” “The Part About the Crimes,” and “The Part About Archimboldi.” Five parts propelled by chance encounters, randomness and collisions between characters–all related, but not interdependent. Furthermore, in the afterword, we are told to consider 2666 as being written by one of the protagonists of The Savage Detectives, Arturo Belano, largely considered to be Bolaño’s alter ego.* 2666* is a book to read in a state of urgency and anxiety, in much the same way we can imagine it being written Bolaño was in a race against time and ultimately succumbed to liver failure in 2003 at the age of 50, with the novel almost complete. The Savage Detectives, the novel for which Chilean born Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1999, ends in Santa Teresa, the same city around which the narrative of 2666 revolves. In Amulet we find mention of the ominous date–the cryptic title, which is never again mentioned in the body of 2666, making for the first mystery in a novel filled with difficult questions. In fact it would be necessary to look back to prior works to find its first stirrings. 2666 is a long and divergent journey, one of such great distance and with so many intersections that at the end of it all, which is really no end at all, the reader must think hard to remember the first leg of the quest.
In Roberto Bolaño’s ambitious novel 2666, we see the myriad embodiments of evil conjured and unleashed, sometimes subtly disguised as just a glitch of the human condition, barely perceptible and not easily named, and at other times with fury from the blackest hearts of men, politicians, criminals and countries working together as one monstrosity.
The proverb, “Evil thoughts spring from the heart,” is presented in the preface to the epic novel, Don Quixote.
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