YOU MUST READ THIS.

roberto bolaño’s 2666 is killer. i’m only part-way through the first book¹ (what with finals & all) but well hell i just have to recommend it right this instant.

a teeny tiny excerpt, to whet just the edge of your keen interest:

What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows and spurs us on, amid blood and wounds and mortal stench.

i’m not going to write a review of the thing, as i haven’t finished it & i hate book reviews. but the impulse is almost overwhelming;—which is, perhaps, recommendation enough.

it kind of makes me want to tear my hair out.

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1. you should most definitely acquire the 3-volume boxed set of the novel, as it has been released in both that form & in hardcover from farrar, straus & giroux, & both forms are (in typical FSG fashion) lovely, but the thing was originally plotted to be in five parts & released sequentially anyway, & anyway the little QPs are easier to carry around, & it just looks so much more badass.