I read this as a part of the Bolaño Bolaño group read, intending to blog my progress along the way. Ha! As it transpires, any ”progress’ was limited to a strictly mechanical traverse from beginning to end. I finished the book but, despite the perusal of nigh on nine hundred pages, reached the end not one jot wiser.
Really? Nothing?! Well, not quite nothing… Continue reading
See that title? That might be the only positive remark I have to make this week. The Part About the Crimes continues with more murder, much more mutilation. It is uncomfortable and depressing, and I wonder why I put myself through it.
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Part 4 is The Part About the Crimes. *heaves a sigh* Fifty pages of murder and rape, all women, more often than not very young, sometimes pregnant, and frequently about five foot seven… An edifying read it was not. Just in case that is not sufficiently depressing there is police corruption and brutality. A vision of hell:
‘Fires were constantly being reported in the dump where she was found, most of them set on purpose, others flaring up by chance, so there was some possibility the body had been charred by a random blaze, not set alight by the murderer.’
The second half of The Part About Fate has a pronounced dream-like quality. The normal rules do not apply:
‘The fighter in the white shorts fell again. His mouth guard popped out and flew across the ring, falling right next to Fate. [...] He’s going to fight without a mouth guard, thought Fate, and he bent down and felt for the mouth guard but he couldn’t find it. Who took it? he thought. I haven’t moved and I haven’t seen anybody else move, so who the fuck took the mouth guard?’
Having been persuaded by the kids to suffer two hours of the vilely-named and garishly-coloured ‘chucklebutties,’ (effectively a hamster cage for kids,) I thought that, piped music and screaming “other people’s kids” not withstanding, it might be a good opportunity to grab some extra reading time. Continue reading
Part 3 is called The Part about Fate. Which sounds promising. Until several pages in when Quincy Miller, one of the cast of entirely new but not all entirely alive characters, reveals that he is also known as Oscar Fate. This is verging on depressing. Oscar Fate is a black journalist, who introduces a (small) host of the subjects of his various pitches. As in previous sections one cannot, without some digging, be entirely sure which are fictional and which are not. I have not done this week’s research yet!
At this point I was becoming slightly grumpy, and inclined to suspect that Bolaño has been leading his readers a merry dance because he can.
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Week 4 was comprised of the entirety of Book 2, ‘The Part About Amalfitano,’ which made for an enjoyable read. It isn’t the sort of book which attracts a lot of interest from spectators (reading as a spectator sport? It’ll never catch on.) But I was asked today ‘What is it about?’ And could reply, only, ‘Damned if I know!’
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My header would constitute a reprehesible spoiler, but of course I refer merely to the fact that the end of Week 3 marks the completion of Book 1 – The Part About the Critics. (By the terms of the original schedule I don’t think I should be at this point yet, but it’s pretty much anarchy here.)
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