Comments on: Week 7: The Part About the Crimes, pages 353-404

By: David Winn

David Winn — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:36:58 +0000

Tried to leave this comment once before, but it didn’t seem to take, so if it somehow shows up twice, my apologies.

Fictionalizing atrocities must be a tricky business, especially when dealing with real and ongoing events, and I think the question of how well Bolaño’s style serves his subject matter is an interesting one. I’ve posted my thoughts on this question here: http://ablogabout2666.wordpress.com/

I’ve really enjoyed following the discussion here and elsewhere for the past few weeks, and thought I’d leap into the fray.

By: David Winn

David Winn — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:14:34 +0000

Fictionalizing atrocities must be a tricky business, especially when dealing with real and ongoing events, and I think the question of how well Bolaño’s style serves the subject matter is an interesting one. I’ve posted a few thoughts along those lines here: http://ablogabout2666.wordpress.com/

I’ve enjoyed following the discussion here and over at Infinite Zombies for a few weeks now, and finally decided to quit being a lurker and jump into the fray.

By: Oregon Michael

Oregon Michael — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:46:56 +0000

Ms. Zenger, gracias for your comment!

I totally agree when you say:

“But the persistent message up to this point in the book has been that the deaths of these people has been ignored, overlooked, brushed aside…”

The first time I read this part I was not aware of the women being killed in Ciudad Juárez, and after finishing it I’m only just a little more aware. It’s too terrifying a reality to imagine. It sounds like Sunnis and Shi’a killing each other in Iraq. Awful death that I’m only vaguely conscious of.

But for some reason I don’t find this section boring, more fascinating and horrifying. Why fascinating? Why am I attracted to what horrifies me? Is it something I can’t stop looking at, or thinking about? The subject of death. I keep imagining that I might just as easily be killed like the women in the book. So I feel sick but I can’t stop reading.

You’re also spot on when you say it’s “like a tribute to each one,” because the more we understand someone’s death, I think the more we honor them. Maybe this understanding will lead to positive things now and in the future.

By: Susan Zenger

Susan Zenger — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:31:41 +0000

The catalog of deaths is so enervating, it is like reading the phone book but feeling guilty if you can’t keep track of all the data–like your cemetery imagery, Matt. When I started this section, and read the detail with which he attempts to describe the victims, even in some cases vignettes from their personal lives, and I saw the size of this section I became pretty demoralized: he is going to recount each and every one of the deaths of the two hundred women murdered in Santa Teresa, and in agonizing and repetitious detail!
But the persistent message up to this point in the book has been that the deaths of these people has been ignored, overlooked, brushed aside–gone uncounted, unrecognized, unmemorialized as important by “the word”(I.e.conversation overheard by Fate in the US diner right before crossing the border). So this is like a tribute to each one, individually, as any human being deserves: by being worthy of mention. He is rescuing them from literal oblivion. The cross we have to bear is that we have to slog through the catalog. I’ve decided to look at it like doing the pilgrimage, like walking the Camino de Santiago de Campostela”, it is the least I can do for the victims.
Reading about all these murders is, frankly, boring. It clogs the main story lines and weighs the book down like mill stone. Still, how else to get the point across that after a while even the most sensitive person starts becoming inured by the overwhelming bulk and repetition of it all unless the reader him/herself has go through it personall and feel the boredom, tendency to start skimming or ignoring, followed by the guilt? Gotta give it plenty of paginated acreage. Sigh.
When the guilt sets in I just redouble my efforts to pay attention, again, and remember.

By: Dan Summers

Dan Summers — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:11:19 +0000

Perhaps “mocking” is the wrong word. I feel somehow defied, or challenged. Hard to put my finger on it.

Part of the trouble is that, unlike the Holocaust, we are in the middle of these crimes. They are still happening, and we are confronted by their thinly-covered reality.

Sorry about the “comment eaten” comment below. For some reason, my first comment didn’t show up on the computer, and now suddenly it does.

Anyhoodle, I remain incredibly interested in what everyone else has to say. My perspective remains open to being widened.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:07:48 +0000

Dan, maybe try again? Sorry. I don’t see it in the spam queue.

By: Dan Summers

Dan Summers — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:05:30 +0000

Hmmmm. My comment just got eaten.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:31:29 +0000

I sort of see your point, Dan. However, I think there is a correlation drawn between the femicides and the Holocaust and I’m trying to see if the same argument would hold if you replaced “woman murdered in Santa Teresa” with “Polish Jew killed at Auschwitz.” Even in a literary sense, both lives are worth examining. I don’t feel like Bolaño is mocking us.

By: Dan Summers

Dan Summers — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:26:55 +0000

But doesn’t it feel somehow callous, or even ghoulish to try to see the literary stream that wends its way through these murders? At least, that’s how it feels to me. Here are these murders, and it almost feels profane to discuss them on literary terms.

A longer version of the same thing here:
http://bleakonomy.blogspot.com/2010/03/2666-part-about-crimes-pages-353-404.html