I love a year’s Best Of lists. At the close of 2008, they kept delivering up Roberto Bolano’s 2666. I’d come close once before to reading his The Savage Detectives,so now I grew most intrigued. But 900 pages of literary fiction is nothing to approach lightly, and I let a few weeks go by without making a move.
Then I had a spendid idea. Why not challenge others along with myself? I emailed my men’s book group suggesting we acquire the book, read it by end April, and then go out to celebrate and discuss. Three brave souls took me up.
Well, inevitably I’ve made a slow start. But my son entered the race and has recently finished 2666. He’s insisting on coming to our slap-up dinner. Last week I emailed the other three participants, a couple of whom have done much better than me, and we’ve now agreed to extend our deadline until the middle of May.
I have begun. And what magic! I’m immersed very early in what, in lesser authors’ hands, would be dull stuff indeed, the interlocking tales of four academic experts on a reclusive writer. But Bolano crams density into each paragraph; as my son says, you have to concentrate because you sense everything has meaning.
The Bolano Challenge is here!
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