Roberto Bolaño
2666

Personally, I say screw e-books. There are newborns that weigh less than this tome, and I would recommend it only for the “thud” that this hefty kilogram of well-bound pages can provide when finally closed. I believe that to fully enjoy the work I want to talk to you about today, it is necessary to give it a consistently light attention: if nibbled with too much parsimony, the risk of starting it with the falling leaves and finishing it with the first blooming buds becomes real, transforming the precise needlework into a shapeless mass of uneven threads. Too many names to remember, changes of location, genre variations, and the countless twists of a plot that takes on the shape of a huge circle that doesn't even close in the end. That Bolaño knew how to write is obvious, that it was an activity he adored is even more evident: while flipping through the pages, it felt like I had Gaudí's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona in front of my eyes; my mouth progressively opening as I tried to understand how it's possible for a human being to have all that beauty in mind. Similarly, "2666" is a work still under construction given the multiple elements put on the table and the impossibility, due to premature passing, of a conclusion as the artist had intended. In a way, those cranes are also behind "2666." And it is impressive.

Following Bolaño's advice, I decided to bite into it without order. So I started from the third part not out of a special affection for the number 3, but out of sheer laziness: in the middle, the pages flip more easily, and the weight of the tome makes reading pleasant even from the ground, my favorite position for chewing ink. I ended up in Mexico: certainly a badass place, especially if you are a young girl and live in the cheerful Santa Teresa. A run-up and, voilà, a feline leap to the end, when the pages seem lighter, and I found myself tossed between planes in the USA and recent times’ Germany: the first threads intertwining. After finishing the last part, the second in chronological order, the circle does not close, it hints as if inviting you to continue. The author's pivot is not to provide definitive answers but to tell us a huge story; in search of an elusive writer (Benno Von Arcimboldi), we traverse continents, decades for a book that repeatedly changes genre from biographical to hard-boiled, to detective, to philosophical. Hundreds of valuable sentences that I felt the need to underline for a work unable to sit still and quiet; as if it were searching for something and who cares if, in the end, it finds it. A metaphor for life? The plot doesn't matter, you'll forget it, and it will blur after a few weeks: what will remain is the feeling of having engaged in a massive 10,000-piece puzzle and having lost about twenty pieces who knows where, maybe under the carpet. Bolaño seems to tell us: "don’t you think it’s beautiful to write in such a free, unconventional way?" It seems to ask, have you understood how to do it?

Honestly, no.

Reading "2666" is a bitter pleasure. That initial “thud”, I wouldn't call it satisfying, but frustrating for all those who spend evenings filling the pages of a Moleskine with the spicy facts of the past week. Writing on the brink of death such a anomalous, heterogeneous, enjoyable in reading and intellectually stimulating work almost makes you lose the will, it brings you back to the correct, uncomfortable, and insignificant position that befits you. I think that's why it feels like stones have ended up between the keys of my computer tonight. I reread, and it's a big mess; damn it, it feels like a politician's speech in the middle of an election campaign, but in my defense, I must say that it wasn't the doctor who ordered me to write these lines. Luckily, the smoke raised should also have the power to intrigue anyone who, tilting their head and frowning, will want to pause.