Roberto Bolano's 2666

Finished reading 2666 and now I'm ready for 2015! It's a masterpiece from a master storyteller. I was completely absorbed by the different stories, the main ones and the many "digressive" others that enter so quietly and then leave with a memorable exit. The Part about the Critics, about a love quadrangle, is almost mathematical in the working out of the plot. The Part about Amalfitano is an acute psychological portrait of fear. The Part about Fate moves like an American TV series. The Part about the Crimes is almost unbearable to read as it recounts, like a police procedural, the serial killings of women in the city of Santa Theresa. The last section, The Part about Archimboldi, is the biography of a writer. Oscar Fate, a black reporter from New York is at the center of of his story, just as his section is at the center of book, his name raising obviously questions about fate and choice. Part 2 balances Amalfitano's fear of losing his daughter against Part 4's account of the killings, the longest section of the book. In Part 1, the critics Jean-Claude Pelletier, Piero Morini, Manuel Espinoza, and Liz Norton look in vain for their writer, who is only found by the reader in Part 5. We discover Archimboldi's reason for going to Santa Theresa, and realize fully that his quest is both foolish and heroic, that of a new Don Quixote.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Thumboo's "Ulysses by the Merlion"

I've just revised a poem written years ago, a poem that delineates the different responses of four readers, of different generations, to the seminal nationalistic poem by Edwin Thumboo . Thumboo is reckoned to be the first major Singaporean poet writing in English. First, Thumboo's poem, then followed by mine. ULYSSES BY THE MERLION (for Maurice Baker) I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire, Contended with Circe Who loved the squeal of pigs; Passed Scylla and Charybdis To seven years with Calypso, Heaved in battle against the gods. Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself. But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory... Puzzles. Nothing, nothing in my days Foreshadowed this Half-beast, half-fish, This powerful creature of land and sea. Peoples settled here, Brought to th
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic
Read more

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Examples from ar
Read more