So, I started 2666 over the weekend, and got about forty pages into it, and my hasty initial non-analytical snap judgement (pre- any informed mental developments generated through the not-quite-here-yet group read conversations, which, judging by the links, one might truly begin to suspect could safely be called a web read) is that those might be among the most smoothly unremarkably decent pages I've read in some time. To be clear: a book can not be judged on 40 pages alone. To also be clear: nothing about those pages leapt from the book's binding to perform salacious acts upon my person. Which certainly means nothing bad about the book; I did in fact enjoy those forty pages; I will almost certainly read at least another 40 pages, perhaps even sooner than I might expect. But nothing about them has pierced through a hype-built desire to remain a little bit (honestly and for the good of the thing) still-yet-skeptical about the whole thing. In any event: onward.
4 comments:
That was basically my feeling about all of 2666. "This book is fine. I don't want my time back or anything."
And now I'm partway through The Savage Detectives feeling the same. So maybe I'm not cut out for Bolano.
Yeah. It's like, I want to get it? What people get about it? But maybe I won't. Or maybe I will! Who knows!
Well, the sections of 2666 are modular and yet complimentary. Thus, while I personally loved the first section the first time around, by the time I finished the last section, so many layers had built upon the first that it was simply amazing upon re-read.
The pacing of the novel picks up almost immediately after the first section closes and barely slows. I hope you end up continuing/liking the novel.
I'm sticking with it, and I do like it, but it's more in a...the book hasn't proved itself to me yet, way. Like, I'm more interested in finding out what everyone else sees in the book (which is yet to come of course) than I am in the material in front of me (so far). If that makes sense.
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