Pēdējā laikā ir sanācis lasīt ļoti labas un labas grāmatas. Tomēr pavisam nesen pabeidzu grāmatu, par ko man nav vispār nekādu šaubu, ka tā ir ģeniāla. Runa ir par Roberto Bolaño darbu '2666' un es pilnībā saprotu literatūras vērtētāju sajūsmu.
Amazon vērtējums 1/5
It's hard to recap the story of 2666, because despite its 900 pages, there is none. It's more a collection of many little stories, each a page, or two, or five, that start to develop, then go nowhere, surrounding 200 pages of monotonous descriptions of hundreds of murdered girls. It's hard to see much of a point other than rape and murder of young women can become mundane and even monotonous even in real life as in a novel, when it gets repeated over and over again, identical each time.
I really don't understand the hype about this book, other than its length and subject matter, and the fact that the author died, making the novel somehow too sacred to criticize. Of the 3 pillars of a novel, characters, plot, and language, it succeeds at none of them. There is no plot to carry the reader through. There are plenty of characters, but none with any depth or development. In the first section, which is the most coherent as a story, it's nearly impossible to differentiate the 4 main characters other than one is French, one German, one female, and one crippled. They think alike, act alike, and speak alike. Perhaps that was the point, but it really felt like Bolano had no point at all. This 90 page section should have been a smart, crisp 25 page short story.
As for the writing, I don't know if it the problem is in original or with the translation, but it comes out stilted, awkward, and difficult to read, like the word-for-word translation that comes out of Google or other machine translation tools. Since the writing has the feel of the first draft that it was rather than a polished novel, I suspect the majority of the problem is in the novel itself, though translating 900 pages while the printing presses are waiting has to be daunting task without the time to reread, revise, and contemplate how to best recreate each sentence or paragraph in English.
The first 400 pages of the book, while rambling and poorly written, do show signs of an interesting story, with different threads that look like they'll converge on the mystery of the murdered girls and the mysterious Archimbaldi. But they don't, and the slow, boring, bumpy ride into the killing fields just leaves us stunned. Maybe that was Bolano's aim, but even if so, it's been done before, in books like Robert Stone's Dog Soldier, and far, far better.
As to comparisons with Kafka's unfinished masterpieces, The Trial and The Castle, that only makes me angry. Those are great novels. This is 900 pages of words that mean nothing. Don't waste your time.
Amazon vērtējums 1/5
It's hard to recap the story of 2666, because despite its 900 pages, there is none. It's more a collection of many little stories, each a page, or two, or five, that start to develop, then go nowhere, surrounding 200 pages of monotonous descriptions of hundreds of murdered girls. It's hard to see much of a point other than rape and murder of young women can become mundane and even monotonous even in real life as in a novel, when it gets repeated over and over again, identical each time.
I really don't understand the hype about this book, other than its length and subject matter, and the fact that the author died, making the novel somehow too sacred to criticize. Of the 3 pillars of a novel, characters, plot, and language, it succeeds at none of them. There is no plot to carry the reader through. There are plenty of characters, but none with any depth or development. In the first section, which is the most coherent as a story, it's nearly impossible to differentiate the 4 main characters other than one is French, one German, one female, and one crippled. They think alike, act alike, and speak alike. Perhaps that was the point, but it really felt like Bolano had no point at all. This 90 page section should have been a smart, crisp 25 page short story.
As for the writing, I don't know if it the problem is in original or with the translation, but it comes out stilted, awkward, and difficult to read, like the word-for-word translation that comes out of Google or other machine translation tools. Since the writing has the feel of the first draft that it was rather than a polished novel, I suspect the majority of the problem is in the novel itself, though translating 900 pages while the printing presses are waiting has to be daunting task without the time to reread, revise, and contemplate how to best recreate each sentence or paragraph in English.
The first 400 pages of the book, while rambling and poorly written, do show signs of an interesting story, with different threads that look like they'll converge on the mystery of the murdered girls and the mysterious Archimbaldi. But they don't, and the slow, boring, bumpy ride into the killing fields just leaves us stunned. Maybe that was Bolano's aim, but even if so, it's been done before, in books like Robert Stone's Dog Soldier, and far, far better.
As to comparisons with Kafka's unfinished masterpieces, The Trial and The Castle, that only makes me angry. Those are great novels. This is 900 pages of words that mean nothing. Don't waste your time.
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