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News & ArtsSaturday, December 13, 2008
Books This Week in the Book Section
Posted by Paul Constant on Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 3:43 PM
This week in the book section, Brendan Kiley investigates Roberto Bolaño's gigantic opus 2666.
2666 has one constant: The characters—whether they come from Paris, Chile, or Harlem—all eventually have to navigate the eddies of poverty and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a harsh, dry land of narcs and factory workers, turkey buzzards and grubby cafes, tough guys (boxers, reporters, detectives) and tougher broads (politicians, lawyers, whores), and the occasional anxious and abstracted college professor. A land where, Bolaño writes, "the sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower."
Much more—including geometry books hanging from clothes lines, a numbing succession of murders and rapes, the way Bolaño's family completely ignored his final wishes, and why big books are being ignored by pharmacists—over here.
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