2666

Read from Tuesday, February 15th to Wednesday, March 2nd.

This is the epic, final novel 2666, by Roberto Bolano.   At almost 900 pages, this was the masterpiece that Bolano rushed to finish in the last years of his life before he died in 2004.  The book is divided into five parts, and Bolano originally intended them to be published separately, so that his descendants and publishers could support themselves better on the sales.  However, they were all published together, since they all relate to the same themes.  Overall, the book revolves around the hundreds of murders of young girls in Santa Teresa, Mexico, on the border with the U.S.  It is based on the actual murders of women in Juarez, and Santa Teresa is the fictional city.  All of the stories seem to revolve around these murders, and all the characters end up being drawn to Santa Teresa.  It is the center of the world.

The first part is about the critics.  Pelletier from Paris, Espinoza from Madrid, and Morini from Turin are three of the most prominent scholars on the recluse author Benno von Archimboldi, a German writer of the second half of the 20th century.  Norton is a woman from London, and she joins their literary crew.  All four are obsessed with Archimboldi, but no one has ever met him.  While writing papers and attending conferences about the author and others, Pelletier and Espinoza make moves on Norton, and a strange love triangle develops.  The men adore her and want her to make a decision, but she is unable.  They both share her off and on for years, while Morini has a small crisis while pondering an English artist's decision to cut off his hand in the name of art.  Eventually, their obsession with Archimboldi reaches a breaking point, and they receive a tip from a young scholar that he has been seen in Mexico going to Santa Teresa.  Pelletier, Espinoza and Norton travel to Santa Teresa in search of him.  They team up with Amalfitano, a local professor, and search hotels and libraries and other sources.  They learn about the murders, and the search peters out, and they get sucked into the city.  Espinoza dates a local girl, and Pelletier spends all his time re-reading Archimboldi, and Norton leaves Mexico in a panic, back to Europe.  She writes that she realized who she really wanted was Morini all along.  Pelletier and Espinoza realize that that is the closest they will come to finding Archimboldi, and that is the ending of that part. 

Each of these parts is like a small story in itself.  The second part is about Amalfitano.  It starts in Spain years earlier when he was married to a woman named Lola and they had a young daughter, Rosa.  Lola went crazy and ran off to find a poet she was in love with.  The poet was in an insane asylum, and Lola watched him from behind the fence.  She still wrote letters to Amalfitano, and eventually she became destitute and moved to France, where she died of Aids.  Amalfitano took a position at the University in Santa Teresa, but he slowly lost his mind as well.  He heard a voice in his head, and had conversations with this ghost.  In one of the memorable symbols, he hung a geometry book out on the clothesline to study the effect of the weather on the book.  He was afraid for Rosa growing up in Santa Teresa, afraid of the murderers. 

The third part is about Fate.  Oscar Fate is a black reporter for a magazine in New York.  His mother just passed away, and he accepted a story in Detroit about a former Black Panther leader.  However, once he finished that story, the magazine sent him to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match, since the sports writer also just died.  Fate tries his best to cover the fight, getting involved in the training, talking with other reporters from Santa Teresa.  He of course learns about all the murders, befriending a reporter from Mexico City who is scared to meet the supposed killer they have behind bars.  She wants Fate to come with her to the prison.  Fate also becomes friends with a Santa Teresa reporter named Chuco Flores.  They go to the fight together, and Chuco's girlfriend is Rosa Amalfitano.  After the fight and a drunken evening, Fate has fallen in love with Rosa, and he tries to find her and steal her away from Chuco.  She runs away with Fate, saying that Chuco was involved in some rough stuff.  They go back to her house, and Amalfitano wants her to leave with Fate, giving her his savings so she can escape to Europe.  All those guys are mixed up the murders somehow, Amalfitano explains.  They leave Mexico, but first stop at the prison with the Mexican City reporter.  The supposed killer, Klaus Haas, is a tall German who speaks sadistically of a giant coming toward him, and who is going to make it all right.

The fourth part is about the murders, and it is the longest and most emotionally draining section of literature I've ever read.  It describes, in exquisite detail, the police investigation of the Santa Teresa murders.  Beginning in the early 1990's, there are a few murders each month.  Girls between 10 and 30 (typically), are found murdered and left in the desert or a dump on the outskirts of the city.  Usually, the girls are workers at a maquiladora, one of the many sweatshops in town.  They are usually beaten and raped, and eventually strangled to death and found with no clothes on.  Some of the cases are clear, like it was an angry husband who confessed, although the vast majority of cases go unsolved.  Each murder is described, with the name of the victim, the cause of death, the location, the date, and the status of the police investigation.  They are inter-spliced with the story of the overall investigation.  Inspector Juan de Dios is in love with an older pyschiatrist, and young Lalo Cura is new to the force from a rural town.  Some detectives, like Epifanio, are jaded and ruthless.  The murders are systematic. Midway though, they arrest Klaus Haas, who owned an electronics store and was a German and U.S. citizen.  He had had contact with one of the victims, and they pinned many murders on him, although the case is weak and he is stuck in jail for the rest of the book.  There are stories of reporters that try to uncover details.  A congresswoman hires a private detective to investigate the death of her friend.  Depressingly, nothing is resolved and nobody is held accountable.  All evidence points to a giant, system-wide problem among the drug cartels, the youth gangs, and corruption in government.

The fifth and final part returns to the story of Archimboldi.  Born Hans Reiter in Germany in 1920, he used to love exploring underwater.  He was very tall and lanky and introspective.  He worked cleaning with his family for a rich estate.  He befriended the young nephew, Halder, and they moved to Berlin and stayed friends there.  Then he was drafted and fought for the Nazis on the Eastern Front.  He was very brave because he does not fear death.  Reiter at one point discovers a journal in Ukraine of a Jew who was caught between the Communist purges and the Nazi advances.  Reiter is not an evil Nazi, he is just going with the situation presented before him.  He is not a fighter, but just accepts things as they are.  After the war, he works as a bouncer in Cologne and marries a crazy girl he met during the war.  He writes a book, and tries to get it published.  Most houses won't accept it, but in Hamburg he finds someone who likes him and his work.  Mr. Bubis takes him under his wing, and Reiter changes his pen name to Benno von Archimboldi.  Bubis's wife is the niece of the rich Baron Hans used to work for.  They have an occasional affair throughout the years, as Archimboldi publishes more and more novels.  He is never very successful nor recognized, all the scholars and academics would pick up on him much later on in his career.  Finally, as an old man, he hears from his younger sister, who he hasn't seen in many years.  Her son, Klaus Haas, was arrested in Mexico for murder, and she needs his help.  Archimboldi travels to Santa Teresa, and he is that giant coming to make things right.

That is how the story finally ends.  There is no traditional ending, and so it seems even more like real life.  It is a novel that encompasses an entire era.  It goes from 1920's Germany to the Eastern Front, to modern Europe, America and finally to that black hole of Santa Teresa.  There are many side stories and anecdotes that I cannot do justice to.  It is fantastic, with prose like poetry, and it is also very dark and morbid.  It is a bleak view of humanity at many times, but you still hope for something better.  There are flashes of beauty throughout.   I wish Bolano could have survived longer so we could enjoy more of his work.  I read the Savage Detectives earlier this year, and that was amazing as well.  Highly recommend this book.  Five out of five stars.