The Washington Post today publishes Steven Moore’s review of 2666. Moore is one of the preeminent scholars of “big books”, namely Gaddis, Pynchon, Joyce, and Wallace. It’s a short review with the headline “The Killing Fields”:
This is a delightfully bookish novel, filled with writers, critics, publishers, copy editors, reporters — all illustrating how reading and writing help make sense of the world. Archimboldi is a grim, humorless character, but we’re told “he derived pleasure from writing, a pleasure similar to that of the detective on the heels of the killer”; Bolano likewise exults in his indefatigable storytelling skills and his mastery of an arsenal of styles, from factual to frivolous, from plain to purple. In this he is expertly partnered by Natasha Wimmer, whose translation is fluid and faithful. The novel is probably longer than it needs to be, but there isn’t a boring page in it, and I suspect further study would justify everything here.
He ends up concluding that “Bolaño has joined the immortals.”
As a bonus, check out this interview with Moore in Splice Today.
