Done. And surrounded by notes that say things like "Nazi mythology," "meta=narrative," "multiple dimensions - unending - reinvention," and "semblance." And completely disinclined to write about any of them. I do not feel the sense of accomplishment that I was anticipating upon completing the work, but a sense of sad peacefulness akin to something one might take away from a funeral. Because I feel as if I have just read a couple hundred pages or more of Bolano's self-written obituary in which we catch poignant glimpses of the author "wearing his madman's garb under his suit of armor," or under whatever trappings corporeal existence may have occasionally demanded of him.
So the elusive Archimboldi's story finally blows in on the wind whispered first as fairy tale then as the secrets of those clinging to defining moments lost to the second world war and finally as remnants. But the story here in the final part was really, for me, about the craft of writing as voiced through its various practitioners. The defining moment when Ansky realizes he is a writer:
"Then the one-eyed man shifted in his chair, pulled a blanket up to his chin, and said: our commander's name was Korolenko and he died the same day. Then, at supersonic speed, Ansky imagined Verbitsky and Korolenko, he saw Korolenko mocking Verbitsky, heard what Korolenko said behind Verbitsky's back, entered into Verbitsky's night thoughts, Korolenko's desires, into each man's vague and shifting dreams, into their convictions and their rides on horseback, the forests they left behind and the flooded lands they crossed, the sounds of night in the open and the unintelligible morning conversations before they mounted again. He saw villages and farmland, he saw churches and hazy clouds of smoke rising on the horizon, until he came to the day when they both died, Verbitsky and Korolenko, a perfectly gray day, utterly gray, as if a thousand-mile-long cloud had passed over the land without stopping, endless.
At that moment, which hardly lasted a second, Ansky decided that he didn't want to be a soldier, but at the very same moment the officer handed him a paper and told him to sign. Now he was a soldier."
Or in the words of the old man who rents Archimboldi a typewriter:
"There's nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself, I mean. How much better off the poor man would be if he devoted himself to reading. Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions. Writing, meanwhile, is almost always empty. There's nothing in the guts of the man who sits there writing. Nothing, I mean to say, that his wife, at a given moment, might recognize. He writes like someone taking dictation. His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!"
Or in any number of places in this fifth part. And here I am left wondering what more this might have yielded if Bolano had been given a bit more time. A more "finished" product or a different direction if not guided by death? But I think the rest of my impressions can wait until the big 2666 shared read in January and February when distance will have replaced sentiment with reason.
And speaking of sentiment, this shared reading experience has been a gift. And I know it will not be over any time soon as we all pick up Kristin Lavransdatter for the last three months of the year, and then turn to all things Virginia Woolf (with a little Leonard thrown in) in the new year, but I still feel a little reluctant to let the experience go. The conversations, traveling from one of our blogs to another, was rich and diverse and open and challenging. Many, many thanks to our hosts Claire and Steph for the kind invitation to the memorable party.
