2666 summer readalong

The Weblog is hosting a reading of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño this month and the next. It will be led by Spanish professor Patrick O'Connors.

The tentative discussion schedule is as follows:

7/12 – Part One
7/19 – Parts Two and Three
7/26 – Part Four - 1
8/2 – Part Four - 2
8/9 – Part Five - 1
8/16 – Part Five - 2

More thoughts by Natasha

Here's what I linked to last time.

Here's more of Natasha's thoughts on RB. (Why didn't they just post the whole thing?)

"Fragments of a return to the native land" (audio)

The audio came from the "Lit&Lunch" program sponsored by the Center for the Art of Translation. It featured Natasha Wimmer discussing her translations of Roberto Bolaño's works and reading two excerpts: from 2666 and Between Parentheses. The audio file can be listened to here. (It was available for download previously - in mp3 format - but I'm no longer sure of the link.)

The total running time was around 50 minutes, broken as follows:


00:01 Natasha Wimmer was introduced.

01:53 Wimmer spoke about Bolaño’s novels and the challenges of translating 2666.

06:19 Wimmer read an excerpt from "The Part About Fate" in 2666. Part of the excerpt can also be read here.

27:40 A reading from Between Parentheses, which she was translating at that time. She read sections from an essay called "Fragments of a return to the native land." This recounted Bolaño's return to Chile in 1998 after a 24-year absence.

38:07 She took some questions from the audience.

49:31 End of audio clip.

The King of the Forest reissued in new cover

Notwithstanding the incorrect attribution (another pseudonym?), this cover design by INK Illustration for The King of the Forest (Invisible Library, 2010) looks plausible.

For an annotated bibliography of the acclaimed German novelist, I refer you to A Solipsist's 2666.




Image © 2011 by INK Illustration

Literary prizes at El Poder de la Palabra; Premio Salambó

I found a site (in Spanish) which compiles all major literary prizes in Latin America. Quite an informative site. Google Translate will come in handy for non-readers of Spanish.

El Poder de la Palabra is a website dedicated to literary writings. It contains excerpts from literary texts in Spanish, as well as biographies of writers.

I'll be featuring here some of the notable prizes. One of these is the Premio Salambó. This award is organized by Club Cultura de la Fnac and Café Salambó. It is given to the best book of fiction published in Spain in the previous year. The jury is composed of 15 renowned authors in Spain and Latin America. It is the only kind of award in Spain in which the winner is chosen exclusively by writers. The award lacks funding however. Perhaps that's the reason why no award was given in the past two years.


Winners of Premio Salambó*:

2001 Javier Cercas (Soldados de Salamina / Soldiers of Salamis)
2002 Javier Marías (Tu rostro mañana 1. Fiebre y lanza / Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear)
2003 Juan Eduardo Zúñiga (Capital de la gloria)
2004 Roberto Bolaño (2666 / 2666)
2005 Alvaro Pombo (Contra natura)
2006 Vicente Molina Foix (El abrecartas)
2007 José María Merino (La glorieta de los fugitivos)
2008 Cristina Fernández Cubas (Todos los cuentos)
2009 -not given-
2010 -not given-



* English titles are added for the three novels available in translation. The entry on Javier Marías is corrected to indicate only the first volume of his novel. The next two volumes have yet to appear in 2002.

True Dawn, True Dusk, Tremble of Twilight

ROBERT PATTINSON CARRYING 2666 (IMAGE)

     The novel, so unanimously acclaimed, was called Twilight and its plot was very simple: a boy of fourteen abandons his family to join the ranks of the revolution. Soon he's engaged in combat against Wrangel's troops. In the midst of battle he's injured and his comrades leave him for dead. But before the vultures come to feed on the bodies, a spaceship drops onto the battlefield and takes him away, along with some of the other mortally wounded soldiers....
     ...
     It wasn't only Gorky who read Twilight. Other famous people did, too, and although none of them wrote to the author to express their admiration, they didn't forget his name, because not only were they famous, their memories were good, too.

– 2666, pp. 718, 721

Global capitalism in 2666

The heart of Bolaño’s critique in 2666 is this: On all sides of the story, the reader is shown people who must step forward to recognize the origins of their way of life if the violence at its core is to be stopped. The diffuse, disparate, and desperate nature of global capitalism has a sheltering and obfuscating digital effect marked by the introduction of false analogs that prevent the acknowledgment of the origins, consequences, or resolutions of our plights. There is a voluntary excess inherent in the system that allows this gap in understanding, making these changes in perspective true only in its enactment. The enactment and making true of this excess is the expenditure that joins the world of global capital under a single system and enforces the separation of its disparate parts. The system of global capitalism requires the ignorance generated by the separation of its parts to maintain the frenzied, excessive activity of its cycle.

– "Lost Analogs A Critique of Global Capitalism in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666" by Matthew Boyd, HESO Magazine

Read the full essay here.

What Ishiguro read in 2009

My reading this year was dominated by Roberto Bolaño's two massive novels, The Savage Detectives and 2666 (both Picador). The first is the superior, but 2666, for all its occasional longueurs, is still quite magnificent. Bolaño links seamlessly South American, US and European traditions; modernism with gritty realism and the crime thriller. These are both important works and the advent of Bolaño is a significant moment in the history of modern fiction.

– Kazuo Ishiguro, Books of the year 2009, The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/22/books-of-the-year-2009

A reader's guide to 2666

I've finished my reread of 2666. I picked it up along with the Salonistas in LibraryThing. The discussion thread (here, with spoilers) contains background information on Bolaño and the book.

Perhaps the first online group read of the novel was the "National Reading '2666' Month", a month-long reading by The New Yorker (The Book Bench) in January 2009. Started in the same month, but running until May, was a reading by bolano-l Google group. The reading was organized by Matt Bucher. After that, there were several more online group discussions, mostly from blogs and reading sites.

Other reading includes the one I posted earlier (over at Leeswamme's Blog).

Below are sets of blog links to two sites whose commentaries I've found useful in understanding the five-part novel. They provide a close reading of the text and appreciation of the nuances of the book's style.

Update: New readalong at The Weblog.

from Caravana de recuerdos (in Spanish and English)

Richard's blogging was part of a group reading back in May 2009.

1. The Part About the Critics

2. The Part About Amalfitano

3. The Part About Fate

4.1 The Part About the Crimes
4.2 The Part About the Crimes
4.3 The Part About the Crimes
4.4 The Part About the Crimes
4.5 The Part About the Crimes

5. The Part About Archimboldi

from Las obras de Roberto Bolaño

Last year Matt Bucher, Maria Bustillos, and others read the 5 parts over a 15-week period, roughly 50-70 pages a week. There were several posts per week, broken into several themes (such as dreams, characters, vocabulary, deaths, and locations).

The Part About the Critics

Week 1: pages 1-51 [post 1, post 2, post 3, characters, dreams, timeline, locations, vocabulary]

Week 2: pages 51-102 [post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, dreams, characters, locations, vocabulary]

Week 3: pages 102-159 [post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, dreams, deaths, locations, characters, vocabulary]

The Part About Amalfitano

Week 4: pages 163-228 [post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, dreams, locations, vocabulary, characters]

The Part About Fate

Week 5: pages 231-290 [post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, dreams, locations, deaths, characters, vocabulary]

Week 6: pages 291-349 [post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, dreams, deaths, locations, vocabulary, characters]

The Part About the Crimes

Week 7: pages 353-404 [post 1, post 2, post 3, deaths, dreams, locations, vocabulary]

Week 8: pages 404-465 [post 1, post 2, post 3, deaths, dreams, locations]

Week 9: pages 466-513 [post 1, deaths, dreams, links, deaths, locations]

Week 10: pages 513-564 [post 1, post 2, locations, dreams, vocabulary]

Week 11: pages 565-633 [post 1, post 2, deaths, dreams]

The Part About Archimboldi

Week 12: pages 637-701 [post 1, post 2, deaths, dreams]

Week 13: pages 702-765 [post 1, post 2, dreams, deaths]

Week 14: pages 766-830 [deaths, dreams]

Week 15: pages 831-893 [post 1, post 2, deaths, dreams]

"Giuseppe Arcimboldo: The prince of produce portraiture"

Toward the end of that intellectual murder mystery [2666], several characters try to locate a brilliant writer who has been missing for years, “Benno von Archimboldi” (a spelling used sometimes). Paintings are referred to in several crucial passages of the novel. Bolaño borrows Arcimboldo’s thought pattern: He makes each element in the narrative ordinary and carefully observed but combines them in an ominous, unsettling way. Characters are shaped as familiar national stereotypes, then placed where they don’t belong — like vegetables in a portrait.  

— from an article on Giuseppe Arcimboldo by Robert Fulford, in the National Post's book blog The Afterword.

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/01/17/giuseppe-arcimboldo-the-prince-of-produce-portraiture/

2666 read-along in March

Leeswammes and others are reading 2666 next month.

Details on how to join the read-along and the schedule here.

The 2011 Roberto Bolaño Reading Challenge