Joey > Recent Status Updates

finished vol 1. will probably take a bit of a break before vol 2

Dream: 5/5.

So far this book is the most overwritten, pretentious and smug books I've ever read - worsened by the fact that it's trying so hard not to be any of those things. Every page makes me hate it more.

So far so good, except for how my mind has been blown.

Wow. Beautiful boisterous and pious all at once. And to end the chapter with Stephen wiping snot on a rock? Joyce, I love you.

I don't know what just happened. All I know is I want to cry for a very long time. Bolano pounds the reader, unrelenting, with dead girl after dead girl. Some are anonymous, some whose killers are found, but all are terribly tragic. That leaves little time to mention Klaus Haas, or Harry Magana, or Lalo Cura. I feel broken, can Archimboldi save me?

This book is completely eclectic, and fills me alternatively with sorrow and happiness, both of which are seeped with insight into the workings of the universe. I can't stop reading, even if the mysteries look like they will never be solved.

Part 1 is finished, offering a complete work in and of itself, and closure, in some sense, for the scholars. They have failed to solve the mystery of Archimboldi, perhaps Amalfatino can. In any case, Bolano's work is already sprawling with brilliance and a hurricane of beauty and thought.

Almost there...